There are no winners in the upcoming legal battle between tobacco companies that hid the dangers of smoking, and the governments who regulated and once encouraged the use of the cancer causing drug. The losers are clearly the Canadian taxpayers, and everyone who has lost a loved one to the normalization of a deadly addiction. The only people who could possibly come out winners now are the lawyers that stand to have a lot of work arguing cases where ethics and common sense should have arisen long ago.
Talking with a Green Party of Sask. candidate last night, she wondered where the line will be drawn in the future. The vast majority of products made today have cancer causing agents in them. Will those companies be safe from reprisals as culture changes and people lash out at the corporations who injured them and the government that didn’t protect their interests? Will we become a society divided by those at risk of losing their [harm causing] jobs, versus those harmed and without a harm-causing job [or maybe no job at all]?
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
I found the Green Party rep’s comment rather silly. It would be much more correct to say that most products sold today have trace amounts of substances that can sometimes cause cancer if given in massive overdoses to lab rats specially bred for their susceptibility to getting cancer. Not that this information is useless, of course, but it’s a far different case from knowing that a product was a very high cancer risk and then trying to suppress the evidence.
I’m sure evidence can be found that a variety of GMO crops and chemicals added to everyday items like cosmetics and food/drink packaging were known to cause cancer, and knowingly included despite the unmentioned risk to consumers. It’s the sort of disaster that’s slow in building and probably hasn’t crested yet.