The settlement stemmed from an October 2019 lawsuit where New York City and the state of California sued the Postal Service, alleging it transmitted packages that the Postal Service knew or had reasonable cause to believe contained cigarettes in violation of the PACT Act

Lawrence believed, she told me when the campaign was under way, was that in the new longer cigarette we had an elegant, classy product, tied in with affluence, appealing to mass buyers between twenty and forty who are slightly higher in education than most, and more sophisticatedpeople whove seen their supermarkets turn in to the Folies-Bergres, people who are used to being entertained, people who are winner-oriented. One of the things that lay behind the Wells, Rich, Greene campaign was an approach in which the advertiser attempted to come to a kind of implicit understanding with the viewer that most advertising was, yes, rather a nuisance, and that in return for deciding to buy Benson & Hedges 100s the viewer would be spared a hard sell for the brand over the tube
[15] Tobacco companies supported civil rights organizations, and advertised their support heavily
In April 2026, the UK passed the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, designed to create a smokefree generation