> In a 1971 television interview, the president of Philip Morris denied the health risks that pregnant women and their babies face, saying that “It’s true that babies born from women who smoke are smaller, but they are just as healthy as the babies born to women who do not smoke. Some women would prefer to have smaller babies.” [1]
The tobacco industry is well known to have distorted the truth for many years after the 50's, and the above quote is just one of many that are very easy to find. Yours seems a tough position to defend.
It's a fact that they did their best to mislead the public for the longest possible time. Does it truly matter how exactly? You can have more than one gun to shoot with, you know.
The next 30 years to the 1990s were a fight to muddy the science over second hand smoke which was a different issue.