Your points are well-taken, but not totally accurate. During the Waxman interrogation--which virtually everyone mis-remembers because the media has mis-reminded them--the tobacco executives were asked whether they "believed" nicotine was addictive. You cannot call that a lie. I don't believe it is either, particularly since I know how that definition came about. And Big Tobacco began losing lawsuits, not because the jurors were pissed, but because the lawmakers changed the laws making it impossible for them to mount a defense. Lawton Chiles in Florida was the first to do so by adding a rider to a certain-to-be-passed bill in a midnight vote, and after the tobacco companies lost, the law was quietly changed back so it wouldn't affect other, more "reputable" and politically correct industries. Then, of course, the money started to flow and the rest is history. Up until now, at least.
OK. In the first place, what would you have expected them to say?
In the second place, "addiction" is a very individual thing. The number of frequent smokers has dropped from about 50 percent to about 25 percent since I was a boy in the 60's, due almost entirely to education. Half the smokers in the country gave up the habit and walked away on information alone. Getting the rest to quit will not happen short of Carrie Nation prohibitionist tactics.
In the third place, now that smokers have effectively been banned from confined office spaces, most restaurants, all common carriers and -- in certain liberal-crazy counties -- even in their own homes, the smoking-prohibitionists have now run out of facades to mask what they've wanted all along...total prohibition.
Ah, but NOW the matter falls to government, which has been totally two-faced about the whole issue for at least 30 years. Smokers are damn lucrative, and governments salivate over the sin tax they generate. They also die sooner (statistically,) reducing the amount that must be spent on them toward the last. (Leaving money, of course, for million-dollar heart transplants for convicted felons in prison.)
Gubmint will wag its politically-correct finger at you for doing "that awful thing," while, with its other hand, "politically collect" the tax money you generate, because, when it comes down to it, THEY NEED YOU.
My home state of Tennessee funded half its budget last year on its share of the tobacco settlement. Stupid move, using one-time funds to pay for ongoing expenses, but this was the same legislature that adopted socialized medicine in a state that runs on a sales tax. Of course, that was calculated, too, with a RINO governor who now says a state income tax is the only way out.
Well, maybe it'll come to that in Tennessee. But until then, those who have so far bypassed confiscatory state taxes can thank -- at least in their own self-absorbed minds -- every working-stiff who manages to step outside the factory and light up a Marlboro during his five-minute break.
Even if you're reading this from one of the "blue spots" on the map, people like him are helping to pay your way.