The way tobacco stocks have been smoking lately, you'd think the Surgeon General had just discovered that it's the paper, not what's wrapped inside, that makes cigarettes deadly. In just five months, shares of the nation's biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris (Marlboro), have risen 47% while shares of No. 2, RJR Nabisco (Winston, Camel), have jumped 39%. Sure, the industry just won a slew of important court cases. But that's hardly news. Big Tobacco has been snuffing out liability claims in the courts for decades. What's new is a persistent buzz that some kind of deal is in the works to...
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