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Comment by Pinckney | Hacker News Reader

"IT'S NOT RICO, DAMMIT": https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...

That's a great blog post. But per the article, this is a RICO suit. Maybe it's not a good one, I'm not qualified to judge. But that's the complaint. And this industry has been successfully sued (by the DoJ) under RICO in the past, so it's not without precedent.

Thanks for posting this. I was interested to see what was the cause for the tobacco companies being liable under RICO, and this article, https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-toba... , had a pretty good overview.

The main point seems to be that the tobacco companies fraudulently covered up what they knew about the dangers of smoking (don't know all the details but assuming this fraudulent activity falls under one of the specific "racketeering activity" crimes).

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but for Juul, would seem to me that it's not enough just to call some of their products "Cool Cucumber" or whatever else can appeal to children, but would need to point to some specific fraudulent activity that Juul engaged in.

IIUC, the traditional tobacco industry is disallowed from marketing to minors. I don't know if those regulations apply to Juul, but if they do, producing advertisements targeted at underage audiences while claiming they're for adults might qualify.

Looking at the Joe Camel case, it doesn't appear to have hinged on "tobacco" per se:

"The FTC charged that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the seller of Camel cigarettes, promoted an addictive and dangerous product through a campaign that was attractive to those too young to purchase cigarettes legally."

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/1997/05/joe-c...

It's be interesting to see the "War on Drugs" shift to focus on (or at least include) tobacco and related products. ;)

It has happened in at least two instances that I can think of: Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is now advocating for a variety of policies not always oriented around drunk driving[1].

Second, the State of California's Department of Public Health is currently running both an anti-vaping campaign, and a smoking cessation campaign, without linking vaping to a reduction in tobacco smoking. In short, they have transformed from anti-tobacco to anti-nicotine.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving#...

2. https://www.flavorshookkids.org/, https://stillblowingsmoke.org/, https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DCDIC/CTCB/Pages/Cal...

I was more thinking "deregister the tobacco companies and put all of their employees in prison. With life (maybe death?) sentences for the executives and senior management".

Just to get it in line with the treatment of other War On Drugs substances.

I mean, why should tobacco get special treatment when the other ones don't? ;)

I've never heard of anybody suggesting tobacco nor nicotine be scheduled under the Controlled Substances Act.

Yeah, but it's kind of a shame. ;)

As an aside, tobacco marketing was incredibly scummy even by the low standards of the advertising industry. I once happened to chat with some people who maintain the library of internal tobacco industry materials: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/

They had horror story after horror story. The one that sticks with me is them building a campaign to target developmentally disabled adults, because they were especially loyal addicts once hooked.

Although in that case, it was criminal RICO. Lesser burden of proof, but with civil RICO the plaintiff has to also prove causation.

The whole reason that blog post exists is that a lot of terrible RICO suits are filed for things which do not in any way meet the legal definition, and the press often fail to question their merits - especially ones fitting narratives they like.

Yes. "It's not RICO dammit" means "the suit that has been filed will likely not succeed on the RICO claim" or "what you're talking about does not meet the RICO elements", not "that suit was not a RICO suit".

> Let me answer that by telling you the elements of civil RICO — that is, the list of things a plaintiff would have to prove to win a RICO case.

> To win, a plaintiff would have to prove (1) conduct, (2) of an enterprise, (3) through a pattern, (4) of racketeering activity called "predicate acts," (5) causing injury to the plaintiff’s "business or property."

I think the fact that the tobacco industry has already been sued under this law makes it more likely that it also applies to this case

If somebody wants to see a real RICO case, Palantir vs. I2 case for a great example.

Every journalist and editor should read that and not even bother writing up civil RICO suits unless you can get an actual lawyer to tell you that particular one is different for some reason.

with that knowledge it makes me want to do a not-ad campaign just to find plaintiffs that want to fund my retirement making shaky RICO suits for them

I would even through in the subsequent PR for free

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