A First, Tobacco Industry Will Run Ads On Smoking's Effects On Health

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- The tobacco industry will start running ads this weekend but it's not advertising their products in the way you would think.

The ads are "corrective statements" that will outline the health risks cigarettes and second-hand smoking pose.

The ads, which will start running Sunday, will show up in newspapers and on television.

They're part of a 2006 ruling after a lawsuit was brought against the tobacco industry by the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted," wrote U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler.

The landmark decision found that tobacco companies had violated racketeering laws and defrauded the American public by lying about smoking's health and addictive effects.

This is reportedly the first time the tobacco companies are being forced to acknowledge the effects of smoking to the general public.

All the statements in the ads draw on evidence-based findings from U.S. Surgeon General Reports on tobacco,  according to Dr. Harold Farber who is the Chair of the American Thoracic Society Tobacco Action Committee.

The court ordered some of the following corrective statements to be included in the ads:

• Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans every day.
• More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide,
  drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined.
• Smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, acute myeloid leukemia, and cancer
  of the mouth, esophagus, larynx, lung, stomach, kidney, bladder, and pancreas.
• Smoking also causes reduced fertility, low birth weight in newborns, and cancer
  of the cervix.

The statements are only being published in the U.S.