MARYLAND has filed a $13 billion (325 million baht) lawsuit against the tobacco industry seeking compensation for medical costs paid by the state to treat tobacco-related diseases, state Attorney General Joseph Curran said on Wednesday.

　The state is asking for $3 billion in damages and $10 billion in punitive sanctions.

　"The tobacco companies to this day deny that nicotine is addictive or that smoking causes cancer," Mr. Curran said.

　"But newly discovered internal documents show that they have known these things for many years ... and that they have stonewalled public health officials for decades. "

　Those named in the suit were Philip Morris Co, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Brown and Williamson Tobacco, B.A.T. Industries, Lorillard Tobacco, the American Tobacco Company, the Liggett Group, the Tobacco Institute, the Council for Tobacco Research-USA and the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton.

　Mr. Curran said he would press for a trial date to be scheduled within two years, adding that litigation could last between two and five years.

　R.J. Reynolds quickly dismissed the Maryland action as having "absolutely no merit in fact or in the law."

　"Independent studies clearly indicate that the level of taxation on cigarettes more than covers any alleged costs of smokers to society," the company insisted.

　"Mr. Curran's statements that somehow the industry knew something the public did not simply does not pass anyone's reality test. Polls indicate that more Americans know the issues related to smoking - 99 percent - than know who served as the first president of the United States - 89 percent."

　Philip Morris vowed to "vigorously defend this lawsuit and ... firmly believes it will ultimately prevail."

　"Maryland's attorney general has cast his lot with an unusual assortment of plaintiffs' lawyers and politicians from other states who believe they can ignore established product liability law and use courts to legislate public policy on tobacco."

Maryland became the eighth state to sue cigarette makers for the costs of treating Medicaid patients' smoking-related illnesses

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