Does this mean we can sue universities for teaching our innocent kids socialism, which has ravaged half the planet?

Sorry. Cheap shot.

They called cigarettes "coffin nails" in the 1800s. Graphic warning labels, i.e. THESE WILL KILL YOU, have been on the packages for decades. It is illegal to sell them on TV, but ads telling you how bad they are play constantly. It is illegal to sell them to minors.

At what point does even a tinge of personal responsibility kick in here?

Anyone who says cigarettes aren't bad for your health is a congenitial idiot, or lying as part of a legal case. The current litigation is a blatant shakedown, and everybody knows it.

I don't smoke. None of my friends smoke. And hey, we got exposed to all the same Evil Influences of advertising as the smokers did. When I was a kid, Fred Flintstone sold cigarettes on TV. That didn't work on me either. Does this mean we're unusually resistant? Or maybe we're just using our brains a little?

And I dare say GIs in WWII had other health hazards to worry about than whether a comforting smoke was going to kill them in their old age.

Would we even have teachers' unions if teachers had been paid like professionals in the first place? There's a reason people organize.

There were excellent reasons why most unions were originally founded, as you well know. Unfortunately for most unions today, their primary purpose now is wielding political power, usually from a hard left standpoint. A quick look at the websites of many unions make this pretty obvious.