CNN: “Tobacco companies have been ordered by a federal judge to publicly admit, through advertisements and package warnings, that they deceived American consumers for decades about the dangers of smoking. Federal Judge Gladys Kessler issued her ruling [U.S. v. Philip Morris (99-cv-2496)] Tuesday in one of the last legal steps settling liability in the long-running government prosecution of cigarette makers. “By ensuring that consumers know that [tobacco companies] have misled the public in the past on the issue of secondhand smoke in addition to putting forth the fact that a scientific consensus on this subject exists,” said Kessler, “defendants will be less likely to attempt to argue in the future that such a consensus does not exist.”