SYDNEY, Australia ? The incoming attorney general for Australia has her sight set on tackling tobacco firms over the country?s plain packing rules, The Australian reports. The former health minister, Nicola Roxon, has said she would ?consider whether there are options? for state governments regarding individual or class action lawsuits against Big Tobacco.
?We are looking at options for what is an appropriate way to reduce levels of smoking in Australia and we can look at whether the tobacco companies are appropriately being held to account,? said Roxon.
She said that officials ?had been taking legal advice, and will be taking legal advice? on whether a lawsuit would be a good idea, but that there wasn?t any hurry. ?I don't think this is the sort of thing that you need to make a decision about in a hasty way,? said Roxon. ?I would welcome individual states considering the issue of whether they might take some action. They, of course, do bear a lot of the health costs caused by tobacco-related disease.?
Roxon has consulted with U.S. attorney and anti-smoking advocate Matthew Myers, who successfully advised U.S. state attorneys general in their tobacco lawsuits that resulted in a Master Settlement of $246 billion over a quarter century.
?What we talked about were the legal principles that underpinned them, that frankly apply to all common-law nations around the world . . . some core principles about the right of government to recover when another party engages in fraud, deceptive behavior or illegally fails to make their product as safe as they can make it,? said Myers of their talk.
Australia?s law goes into effect December 2012, and is being legally challenged by Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco. The U.K. government is considering its own version of plain packaging.
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