After more than five years of litigation, federal prosecutors reduced their demands in their racketeering case against Philip Morris and its parent company, Altria Group, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, British American Tobacco, Lorillard Tobacco, Liggett Group, Counsel for Tobacco Research-USA, and the Tobacco Institute.

Many analysts expressed surprise at the Bush administration's lack of zeal in following up its initial request that the tobacco industry fund a 25-year, $130 billion smoking-cessation program. Instead, the government's attorneys suggested a five-year, $10 billion program, along with educational campaigns, reductions in youth smoking rates, and restrictions on practices such as price discounts and in-store displays.

The American Public Health Association decried the Justice Department's lowered penalties, saying that the department had disregarded previous testimony from the government's own expert, Michael Fiore, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, that $130 billion would be necessary to fund the programs. “To lower penalties from $130 billion to $10 billion is unconscionable and places the financial interests of the industry above fighting this nation's leading cause of death,” said Georges C. Benjamin, MD, executive director of the association.