The judge in the federal government's racketeering case against the tobacco industry has ruled that cigarette makers broke the law and lied about the dangers of smoking, but U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said a previous appeals-court ruling prevented her from imposing hefty monetary penalties on the industry, Reuters reported Aug. 17.

"Cigarette smoking causes disease, suffering, and death. Despite internal recognition of this fact, defendants have publicly denied, distorted, and minimized the hazards of smoking for decades," Kessler wrote in her opinion. She said that the companies suppressed research on tobacco dangers, destroyed documents to keep them hidden from the public, and manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes in order to addict users.

Companies like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Lorillard chased profits "with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system," said Kessler.

Kessler ordered the companies to make "corrective" public statements about the health effects and addictive nature of cigarettes, and imposed a ban on using health-related claims like "light" and "low-tar" to describe cigarettes. But she did not hit the companies with the hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties sought by public-health advocates or require firms to pay for a $14-billion antismoking campaign sought by the Justice Department.

Kessler said her hands were tied by a February 2005 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which barred the government from seeking $280 billion in past industry profits in the case.

Observers called the ruling a Pyrrhic victory for health advocates. "Although [Big Tobacco] lost, they won. It's a victory for the tobacco companies," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management; tobacco stocks rose on news of the verdict.

"It's ... worthy of a life sentence but instead they got a slap on the wrist," said Cass Wheeler, CEO of the American Heart Association.