ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 11, 1996 TAG: 9601110063
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
TALK ABOUT snow jobs. Last week the tobacco industry dumped 47,000 pages of documents on the Food and Drug Administration opposing federal regulation of cigarettes.
The paper pile was many feet thick. Doubtless the lobbyists for cigarette manufacturers - the sort of people paid to say with a straight face that evidence linking tobacco with cancer is inconclusive - meant their exhibit to serve as an eye-catching display of the industry's ability to marshal weighty forces of clout and impact.
Don't mess with us, the files upon files seemed to warn, much like the standing threat of lawsuits against news organizations tempted to probe an industry whose product kills more than 400,000 Americans a year.
This paper pile, however, isn't the only one the public should take notice of. Another actually better symbolizes the industry's determination to have its way in Washington. That's the pile of campaign checks - $16.7 million over the past decade - that Big Tobacco has given to federal lawmakers.
According to Common Cause, 79 percent of all current members of Congress - 339 representatives and 83 senators - have benefited from the tobacco industry's largess. But $1.5 million went to Republican coffers during just the first six months of 1995. Philip Morris alone contributed nearly $730,000, a record from a single donor during the first six months of a year.
The tobacco industry is by no means the only special interest to lavish funds on federal lawmakers. It's all perfectly legal, anyway. And, besides, we also have doubts about the FDA regulating cigarettes. (What's a safe or efficacious amount of nicotine? Why would prohibition against cigarettes, if we're moving toward that, work any better than it did with alcohol?)
No, we simply hope that the tobacco industry's check-writing habit won't prove so efficacious as to forever kill any prospects of a crackdown on sales to minors or a hefty increase in cigarette taxes.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB