Tobacco COs ruled to have been racketeering for decades.

Kessler wrote: "Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented, and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke."

"They suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low-tar and light cigarettes so as to discourage smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal -- to make money with little, if any, regard for individual suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system," Kessler wrote.

But, citing constraints imposed by a February 2005 appeals court ruling that disallowed penalties for past conduct, Kessler did not order the companies to pay for smoking-cessation programs that the Justice Department had sought.