Like penitents baring their souls at a revival, 11 men and women advanced to the microphone Saturday afternoon at a New Orleans hotel to tell tales of tobacco-related agony.
Their stories were laced with details of bad health, friends' and loved ones' deaths and, most of all, frustration at their inability to keep from lighting up.
The 11, from across the United States and almost all of them smokers, were plaintiffs in the litigation that helped bring about Friday's landmark $368 billion settlement with the tobacco industry.
A few blinked back tears at a news conference as they spoke of suffering multiple heart attacks, losing lung function and passing on smoking-related diseases to family members, including fetuses.
Patricia Ann Hansen of Rosebud, Ark., spoke of the shame she felt because her craving is so intense that she has sneaked into closets to smoke and even lighted a butt she found on the sidewalk.
"After I get the next cigarette, I feel satisfied until the next craving comes along," said Hansen, 52, a two-pack-a-day smoker for 37 years. "1 can do without a meal. I can't do without a cigarette."
Hansen, her fellow plaintiffs and their attorneys were in New Orleans to celebrate because it is the home base of Wendell Gauthier, the lawyer who helped mastermind the legal attack on the tobacco industry.
The suit, which eventually included lawyers from 65 firms, along with suits filed by the attorneys general of 40 states, resulted in a settlement that includes curbs on cigarette advertising, stronger warning labels on packs, massive education efforts, free smoking-cessation programs arid health care for uninsured children.
"It's about time," James Ellis, 58, a California plaintiff, said to loud applause. He spoke with the help of an amplifier because he has lost hit vocal cords to cancer.
The settlement still needs the approval of Congress and President Clinton before it can take effect.
Even though many members of Congress are friendly to the tobacco industry, which has poured millions of dollars into lawmakers' campaigns, Gauthier said he is optimistic. "The tobacco companies want the settlement ... because the stockholders want it," he said.
Because of increasing curbs on smoking, a continuing stream of discoveries about the harm it can do and a declining number of smokers in this country, Gauthier said, "I firmly believe that the tobacco companies are giving up on the United States as a market" and relying increasingly on foreign sales.
In taking on tobacco, Gauthier and the other firms sought damages for the effects of nicotine addiction, focusing on the difficulty smokers have in trying to quit and the expenses they incur.
He started the litigation on be-half of Dianne Castano, the widow of Peter Castano, a lawyer and friend of Gauthier's who died of lung cancer at 47.
She asked Gauthier to act because, she said, "I had to come forward and do something. This could not continue."
Nicotine's grip was a topic addressed by every speaker, including Ramsey and Linda Jeffries, both 73, of Knoxville, Tenn. He smoked until he lost his larynx to cancer two years ago. His wife, who never smoked, has developed emphysema and blames secondhand smoke from her husband and children.
"If I had known then what I know now, I'd have never picked up a cigarette," said Ramsey Jeffries, who also has emphysema and must use an amplifier to speak.
No one knows how much money may flow from the settlement to the plaintiffs and their attorneys. But Brian Walls, 38, of Drumright, Okla., who is still smoking after three heart attacks and bypass surgery, said money isn't the issue.
"Nicotine addiction has made me very, very sick," he said. "I am here today to see that it never happens to anybody else again.
...We want everyone to know that cigarettes are addictive. Friends say, 'Just quit.' I can't. I've tried and tried to quit, and I just can't."