Tobacco.org

Victim's son: Cig company lured kids to addiction 

In what is believed to be one of the nation's first lawsuits to accuse a tobacco company of targeting black children, the son of a Roxbury woman who died of lung cancer in 2002 says his mother got hooked as a young teen by the free Newport cigarettes the company regularly handed out in her neighborhood playground nearly 50 years ago.

``It was like the ice cream truck arrived,'' Will Evans said yesterday, describing the stories his late mother, Marie Evans, told of the bright green trucks with pretty women handing out smokes near the Orchard Park housing project. . . .

``They would hand out cigarettes . . . near the jungle gym and swingsets,'' said Evans' attorney, Rebecca McIntyre. ``This was a strategy that was evil. There is no other way to characterize it.''

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