WASHINGTON - Justice Department lawyers argued Thursday that they had shown that cigarette makers concealed the addictive nature of smoking and targeted kids in advertising, while company lawyers vehemently denied the claims at a civil racketeering trial.

Both sides offered U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler interim summaries in the trial that began in September and is expected to last several more months. In a lawsuit filed under a 1970 racketeering law designed to prosecute mobsters, the government alleges that tobacco companies engaged in a five-decade conspiracy to hide the hazards associated with smoking.

"The United States has shown by the overwhelming amount of evidence ... that there is a reasonable likelihood that the tobacco companies conduct ... will continue," lawyer Renee Brooker argued for the government.

Government lawyers said scientific research had proved that smoking was dangerous by the early 1980s. The tobacco industry continued to deny or question the evidence publicly, even while internal industry documents dating as far back as the early 1960s discussed the addictive nature of smoking, said Justice Department lawyer Frank Marine.

Dan Webb, representing Philip Morris, said that not even federal health officials claimed cigarette smoking was addictive until a surgeon general's report did so in 1988, and debate over the criteria for addiction continued for years after that.

Webb questioned "how it can be that we're involved in a fraud scheme and the others are not."

Tobacco companies say they have reversed their claims in recent years, stating on their Web sites that smoking is addictive.

"After decades of fraud, it is not enough just to say we agree smoking is addictive," Marine said.

Marine also questioned the qualifications that companies attach to such statements. The Brown & Williamson site, for example, states that smoking is addictive, but also say "it is inappropriate to call cigarette smoking addictive in the same sense as heroin, cocaine or other hard drugs."

Though the government accuses tobacco companies of marketing to youths through decades-old symbols, such as the cowboy used in ads for Philip Morris' Marlboro cigarettes, the industry says the ads are aimed at attracting adult smokers.

Tobacco companies say a $206 billion settlement with 46 states in 1998 profoundly changed the marketing landscape by limiting how tobacco companies could advertise their products. Government lawyers said cigarette companies have doubled to more than $12 billion the amount they spent marketing their products since 1997.

The defendants in the lawsuit are: Philip Morris USA Inc. and its parent, Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.; British American Tobacco Ltd.; Lorillard Tobacco Co.; Liggett Group Inc.; Counsel for Tobacco Research-U.S.A.; and the Tobacco Institute.
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