Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2004-06-26
Author: Scott Allen, Globe Staff
Intro: The son of a woman who started receiving free Newport cigarettes at her Roxbury housing project when she was just 9 years old is suing the brand's maker for its role in his mother's death in what legal experts say is the nation's first lawsuit to accuse a tobacco company of deliberately targeting its product to African-American children.
Marie Evans, who died from lung cancer at age 54 in 2002, said that, as a child, she would regularly get free sample packs of 4 to 10 Newports during company giveaways on the edge of a playground at the Orchard Park housing complex. In interviews with lawyers before she died, Evans estimated that she received samples from the "Newport van" 25 to 50 times. She initially traded them for candy, but said she began to smoke at age 13.
"They have employed these marketing strategies to target not only children, but children in the black community," said Rebecca McIntyre of Weisman & McIntyre in Boston, which is filing the lawsuit against North Carolina-based Lorillard Tobacco on Monday in Suffolk Superior Court. "It's evil." . . .
legal analysts say Evans' case could short-circuit the industry's standard argument against adult smokers: they were old enough to know better.
"I don't think any of the other lawsuits have focused on the issue of the deliberate campaign of handing out free samples to a child," said Edward L. Sweda, Jr. . . .
Will Evans argues that his mother was seduced by a marketing strategy that was illegal even in the 1950s . . .
Norman Black, creative director for the advertising agency that promoted Newports from 1974 to 1992, admits he geared his ads to attract underage smokers . . .
Black, who made a public service announcement for Massachusetts in 2000 apologizing for his work for Newport, is remorseful about his career now.
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Quotes from this article:
They set out to addict a child, addicted her and then killed her. We will have a trial.
Michael D. Weisman, who is working on the Evans case -- the nation's first lawsuit to accuse a tobacco company of deliberately targeting its product to African-American children.
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