IMO, "near death experience" of tobacco was always greatly exaggerated.
Contrary to published opinions (including the one implicit in the article lede, below) there was never really any meaningful chance of the entire industry going bankrupt or disappearing. There certainly wasn't ever a time when the industry wasn't profitable. As I've been putting it for nearly 20 years now the much ballyhooed litigation/regulation risk of tobacco in fact pales in comparison to the normal every-day business/enterprise risk of most industries. You've probably got more real risk owning Merck because its drug patents are going to run out, or Apple because its next phone will be a flop, than you do owning PM whose risk is spread out amongst several dozen markets. .
Against All Odds, the U.S. Tobacco Industry Is Rolling in Money
Well, to put it in gambler's terms betting against the industry was always a suckers bet. In fact in terms of total investor return tobacco has been one of the best performing sectors in the entire US domestic market over the last 50 years.
I can't read the article in question since its behind WSJ's pay wall, but the video up top fails to mention how GOOD the MSA was for the industry.
Cost of the settlement was redistributed to consumers as an effective extra-legal cigarette tax, the various lawyers that signed onto this got obscene amounts of money (in most cases for not much more than replicating already published documents for signature), the States got a windfall, and in return the participating tobacco companies got substantial protection from competition.
Anyway, the interesting thing about the industry (IMO) is how high valuations have been over the past few years. Maybe that's what this article is about. We've been over this again and again on this board. Its probably mostly because tobacco companies have a pretty stable business with consistent earnings growth, and ever-increasing USD-denominated cash dividends. New product models like "IQOS" are probably playing into this at least somewhat, too.