Will the Tobacco Companies Pay Up?

The front page article of the Toronto Star today was quite a surprising one. Labeled Ontario files $50B tobacco suit, the article briefly sums up that Ontario will be suing tobacco companies for the costs of health care related to illness caused by smoking.This leads to the age old debate; can some health problems be scientifically proven to be caused by smoking? Most data on the subject is correlational. In survey style statistics, an association has been found between smoking and diseases such as lung cancer. The relationship is such that people who smoke are also more likely to have lung cancer. As compelling as this ?evidence? may be, any scientist will tell you that correlation does not equal causation. You must always account for a possible third unknown variable. For instance, perhaps most people who smoke also have low SES, which causes an impoverished lifestyle that is ultimately the cause of the lung cancer.To create a more concrete form of evidence, the study needs to be experimental. In this type of study, all other variables would be isolated and controlled for. In this case, if the smoking condition were to have significantly higher levels of lung cancer than the non-smoking condition, you could conclude that smoking causes lung cancer. However, because of ethics, such a study is not possible. You can?t randomly place people in an experimental group that you suspect might be detrimental to their health, and if you chose to use a group that already smoke, you wouldn?t be controlling for those variables that might truly be the cause.With this argument in their favor, can tobacco companies be brought down? How can they when what they are being blamed for can?t be proved?However does anyone have any doubt that what they are being blamed for is not true?Smoking also brings up a complex issue of freedom. Should people be allowed to smoke? Ultimately you would think it should be their right to choose to take the risk that might land them with lung cancer or some other nasty disease. But smoking effects more than just the smoker. It affects the people in close proximity as well. Although in Ontario today, places that you can smoke are quite limited in comparison to what they used to be, which protects a lot of people from the danger of second hand smoke.Second hand smoke is not the only way a smoker affects the rest of the public though. According to the article, health care related costs ??costs taxpayers $1.6 billion annually.? Should people have the right to the choice to smoke when they cause so much health care money to be paid on their behalf?I for one hope the Ontario government is successful in their endeavor, I just hope the time old argument of causation doesn?t stand in their way.