Nearly Seven In Ten Ontarians Would Support Their Government Undertaking Actions To Sue Tobacco Industry For Healthcare Costs Recovery

Toronto, ON - According to the latest Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of the Ontario Tobacco-free Network, the majority of Ontarians would support the "government of Ontario undertaking actions to sue the tobacco industry for healthcare costs recovery". Initial support for a lawsuit is reported at 63%, but after being read a series of statements portraying four main positive (2 statements) and negative (2 statements) arguments about this potential action, Ontarians' support climbs 4 points to 67% saying they would support such an action. (The full report, including the statements tested for effect on support, is available on the Ipsos website at www.ipsos.ca)

These strong beliefs appear likely driven, in large part, by the fact that seven in ten (68%) of Ontarians believe "cigarette manufacturers have been deceptive about the health risks of smoking" - just 24% feel they have always been honest about these risks.

Healthcare Cost Recovery: In the survey, healthcare costs recovery was described as: "suing the tobacco industry to try and recover the costs of treating smoking related illnesses".

Methodology:

• A telephone survey conducted from October 10-19th, 2006 with a random sample of 1000 adult residents of Ontario.
• The data was weighted by region, gender and age groups suing Census data.
• The results of this study are considered accurate to within +/-3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Ontarian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population.