单选题 .  For years, the Tobacco Institute has tried unsuccessfully to refute (反驳) the charge by health experts that cigarette smoking can be dangerous to your health. Now the institute has taken a new tack (行动方针). In an advertising campaign last fall, the industry trade association ignored health questions and stressed that not smoking could be dangerous to the local economy. "Tobacco means $1,193,000,000 to Virginia," trumpeted one advertisement, "Virginia tobacco helps pave Virginia social programs. Tobacco means 90,000 Virginia jobs." The message was repeated with the appropriate dollar figures in six other tobacco states.
    The statistics are based on a study by the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, which calculates that, overall, the U. S. tobacco industry generates $30 million in wages and earnings, $15.5 billion in capital investment and $22 billion in tax revenue each year. "If you look at the economic contribution tobacco makes to America," says Edward Horrigan, Jr., Chairman of R. J Reynolds Tobacco Co., "there is no reason for us to be ashamed of the business we are in."
    The American Cancer Society disagrees. While Virginia is collecting its $1.2 billion in tobacco revenue this year, the Society said 2,900 of its citizens will be victims of lung cancer. Thousands more, the society could have added, will be victims of other diseases strongly associated with smoking. And the U. S. Surgeon General estimates the direct dollar costs of treating smoking-related illnesses nationally at more than $13 billion a year—not to mention another $25 billion in lost wages and productivity.1.  On what ground did the Tobacco Institute argue with health experts? ______