The lawsuit alleges that the cigarette companies conspired since the 1950 to defraud and mislead the American public and to conceal information about the harmful effects of smoking. It maintains that smoking is the nation's largest preventable cause of death and disease and taxpayers should not have to bear the responsibility for the staggering costs. For more than 45 years the cigarette companies conducted their business without regard to the truth, the law or the health of the people.

The lawsuit seeks to recover the more than $20 billion a year incurred by the government on health and other programs to treat people with smoking related illnesses.

The lawsuit will present the tobacco industry with major new legal threat after the barrage of cases filed by states and individual smokers in recent years and could expose the companies to a potentially huge liability.

Attorney General Miss Reno said that they have filed a lawsuit that seeks to recover from the tobacco companies the billions of dollars the American taxpayers spend each year on tobacco-related illnesses.

(What about the cost incurred by people n other parts of the world smoking cigarettes imported from U.S.A.? Ed.)