DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709190041

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   57 lines

TOBACCO NO BIG DEAL

In an illustration of the adage that the best may be the enemy of the good, the Clinton White House and Congress appear to be teaming up to demand so much of a tobacco settlement that none will be achieved.

That's unfortunate. The deal struck in June between state attorneys general, tort lawyers and big tobacco wasn't perfect, but it just might have been workable.

Tobacco had to make efforts to curb underage smoking, endure restrictions on advertising and sales and pay monies to help defray health-care costs. It got out from under the threat of constant litigation and could raise prices to cover costs.

That apparently isn't good enough for some politicians and is too much for others. The likely result is the collapse of the entire deal and a return to case-by-case litigation and state-by-state settlements.

Though President Clinton has called the $368 billion arrangement a historic opportunity, his refusal to endorse or to fight for it is thought to doom its chances for passage in this Congress.

Flanked by ferocious tobacco foes Dr. C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general, and Dr. David Kessler, former FDA chief, Clinton outlined ``key elements'' to any acceptable tobacco legislation. They include:

A demand that teen smoking drop by up to 60 percent and that the industry be penalized by uncapped tax hikes if benchmarks aren't achieved. A cap was part of the negotiated deal.

Unrestricted authority for the FDA to regulate tobacco products, a step tobacco sees as a license to kill.

Aid for affected farmers.

Steps toward regulation of secondhand smoke and international control of tobacco.

Enemies of tobacco may feel there's no need for a deal if they can regulate or price the industry out of existence. But the industry and its defenders will see no benefit in a deal that amounts to naming Dr. Kevorkian its personal physician. If you get nothing by quitting, you've got nothing to lose by fighting on.

But after the muscle-flexing and chest-beating die down, some politicians may conclude that no deal is not a very good deal for them. Congress could wind up with the blame for squandering a chance at a settlement that would have cut teen-age smoking and covered some health-care costs.

Gerald Seib, writing in The Wall Street Journal, notes that any chance of breathing new life in the deal may have to come from the really strange bedfellows of the tobacco industry and its opponents in Congress.

That may sound farfetched, but Seib quotes Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, a staunch anti-tobacco politician, who nonetheless says: ``I can say that I would vote for an agreement. My thinking gets down to a basic fact: Today, 3,000 kids in America started smoking. The sooner we do something about that, the better.''

Durbin thinks a deal may be better than decades of continuing litigation. He's probably right. But until a majority of his colleagues agree, expect the political posturing, the litigating and the teen smoking to continue.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu