A case was brought up in the Massachusetts court on Monday claiming that three smokers have the right to have their medical bills paid by Phillip Morris to have tests done that can show if the smokers have a future risk of lung cancer. The case passed the state court and will now be tried on the national level. The attorneys compared it to a pedestrian getting hit by a car: even if there are no external injuries, the person who may have caused the damage should pay for an inspection to see if there may be internal injuries. This could be bad news for the cigarette industry because if this case is won by the prosecutors, then smokers around the world could possibly get the same treatment, causing the cigarette industries to fork out a lot of money for all of the medical expenses. That would make a very big hit on every manufacturer.
With all of the bans and steady fall in the economy, the demand for cigarettes is dropping greatly. It was estimated on Thursday that the demand has fallen 10% since last year, making the profit margin for the cigarette industry a little thin. The raise in the federal tax price on cigarettes extremely affected the sales of cigarettes in April when the first raise was put into place, but the second raise in price didn't do as much damage. This tells me that those that are planning to be loyal to the cigarette industry are still going to be consumers no matter what the price is. So to make up for the loss in demands, I say that the cigarette companies slowly raise their prices for personal profit, which in turn would make up the difference, if not boosting profit past that of previous years.
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