Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403270058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Just after Hillary Rodham Clinton moved into the White House last year, she announced a smoking ban in the executive mansion.
That proved to be an opening volley in what has become an aggressive effort by the Clinton administration and its congressional allies to curb public smoking and toughen regulation of tobacco products.
Where once the tobacco lobby could focus on protecting its federal crop subsidies and fending off pesky surgeons general - and their annual reports on the health risks of smoking - the $50 billion-a-year industry now is in an all-out struggle for its political life.
Last week alone, the Labor Department announced its intention to seek a sweeping ban on smoking in the workplace; a House subcommittee voted to help finance health care reforms by raising the federal tax on cigarettes by $1.25 a pack; and the head of the Food and Drug Administration told a House hearing that his agency may eventually decide to regulate cigarettes as a drug, perhaps ordering reductions in the amount of nicotine allowed in the product.
"This concerted assault on one industry hasn't been accidental," said Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, an industry group. "The White House is predisposed toward disliking the tobacco industry."
"There is no formal task force [within the administration] to fight against the smoking lobby that I know of," said an Environmental Protection Agency official. But, he said, "Cabinet members talk among themselves all the time."
The Defense Department earlier this month banned smoking in military workplaces, an action that anti-smoking activists described as the most comprehensive ban yet imposed by a federal agency or business. The ban affects 2.6 million uniformed and civilian personnel in hundreds of installations worldwide.
In another federal action, the Justice Department's antitrust division is investigating whether tobacco companies conspired to keep off the market cigarettes that are less likely to cause fires.
And Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders has mounted a campaign against tobacco advertising she says is aimed at the young, notably the Joe Camel cartoon ads of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
The EPA helped trigger the tougher scrutiny of tobacco when it issued a report last year that declared secondhand tobacco smoke to be a cancer-causing agent, producing as many as 300,000 respiratory illnesses in children and 3,000 lung-cancer deaths each year. The tobacco industry has strongly disputed the EPA's findings and sought to block release of the damaging report.
The report, drafted during the Bush administration, helped "raise issues of significant public health interest for which there had to be a federal government policy response," said Scott Ballin of the Coalition on Smoking or Health, an umbrella group of health organizations. "I think we are starting to see that response."
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a tobacco industry supporter, said the view is becoming more common on Capitol Hill that "the tobacco industry and all who make up that industry can be bashed and battered with impunity, and that the consequences for all those whose livelihoods depend on this industry do not matter because the anti-smoking cause is just."
That cause, which has gained momentum for years through smoking bans and restrictions in local communities, now has become a ripe political factor in Washington as well. The patchwork of local legislation on smoking may soon be overtaken by more sweeping federal rules or laws that reach into every hamlet in the land.
While the Labor Department proposal to ban workplace smoking could take two years or more to work its way through the regulatory maze, pending bills in Congress might accomplish essentially the same goals more quickly.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is pushing a "smoke-free environment" bill that would make virtually all commercial buildings smoke-free, including restaurants, bars and work sites. Waxman had intended to take up the bill last week in his subcommittee on health and the environment. But Waxman canceled the session when it became clear he might not have enough votes to get his bill out of committee. Waxman said Friday that he is talking to subcommittee members about some changes to the bill, which he declined to discuss.
One of the members Waxman must woo is Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., who, with $20,000 in tobacco industry campaign donations in the last election cycle, was one of its biggest beneficiaries and who is said by congressional staffers to be leaning against the bill. Towns could not be reached for comment.
While the tobacco industry can be expected to mount a major effort to block Waxman's bill and a companion measure in the Senate sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., Democratic congressional aides and anti-smoking advocates are predicting eventual passage, perhaps even this year.
"I think there is a reasonable likelihood this year" that the bill will pass Congress, said John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking group. Banzhaf's group brought suit against the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration to spur action on the proposed workplace smoking rule.
While tobacco state lawmakers, including Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., still have considerable power, the balance may be shifting. "The tobacco growers have far less clout than they used to," Banzhaf said.
by CNB