A few years earlier, in 1997, Banzhaf had helped engineer the legal assault that brought the tobacco industry to its knees. Rather than relying on individuals to sue the cigarette manufacturers for damaging their health, the new strategy involved states bringing lawsuits against the manufacturers for wrecking the budgets of the health agencies that had to care for all the sick smokers. This was a stroke of genius that framed the issue in dollars and cents instead of individual moral judgments, and in 1998, the tobacco companies caved.
