Monday, 6/30/97 As smoke clears, war must continue TOBACCO:
Hollow victory makes nation complacent, leads to more danger for
future smokers
By Derrick Z. Jackson Attorneys general for 40 states huffed and
puffed. They blew a few shingles off the roof of Big Tobacco. The
house still stands, and the tobacco wars remain this country’s
biggest act of cowardice in failing to protect the world’s public
health. Getting Big Tobacco to cough up $368.5 billion over the
next 25 years for cigarette damages seems better than nothing,
especially if you listen to the attorneys general. Mississippi’s
Attorney General Michael Moore hailed the pact as "the most
historic public health achievement in history." Florida’s Attorney
General Bob Butterworth boasted, "The Marlboro Man will be riding
into the sunset on Joe Camel." Massachusetts’s Attorney General
Scott Harshbarger said, "Only the discovery of major vaccines could
rival what this proposal promises to accomplish for children and
the public health for generations to come." These big, bad wolves
are merely yapping Chihuahuas. First of all, Big Tobacco is not
paying for a settlement. Addicted smokers will simply pay higher
prices, mainly to Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco. Philip Morris and
RJR will then pay the states, claiming it, incredibly, as a
business deduction. While the $368.5 billion charged pays for
smoking-related health problems, government figures place the 25
years of health costs and lost productivity due to cigarettes at 10
times more: $3.75 trillion. Second, newly-addicted people would
have very limited rights to sue for damages. This reduction of
lawsuits could encourage Big Tobacco’s uncanny ability to repackage
itself in the form of "safer" cigarettes. Third, the agreement
would block the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to ban
nicotine in cigarettes before 2009 and create such a labyrinth of
procedures to alter nicotine levels that former FDA Commissioner
David Kessler said regulating nicotine could be "almost
impossible." Fourth, the proposed fines of up to $2 billion if
youth smoking does not decrease is a small amount next to Big
Tobacco’s $13-billion-a-year earned for hooking smokers for life.
Investors are so confident this agreement did nothing in the long
run to keep Big Tobacco from luring minors that Philip Morris’s
stock has gone up 60 percent from its low over the last year. "We
don’t see any reason to doubt the future of the domestic market,"
said Steven Goldstone, chief executive of RJR Nabisco. This is not
to say that the attorneys general wasted all their time. America
would be more beautiful without cigarette billboards, without
tobacco-sponsored sporting events and concerts, without cigarette
vending machines and without cigarette placements in television and
movies. It is important to get the cigarette companies to agree to
larger warning labels that say for the first time that smoking can
kill you. But getting a company to admit that its product kills
people and then leaving them solvent to keep doing so is hardly a
public health achievement. Connecticut Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal said, "We have shackled and caged the beast, but we
haven’t conquered it." Even that attempt at modesty misses the
truth. The caged animals were the attorneys general, shackled by
Big Tobacco’s alliance with Congress. While public anger sank DDT,
asbestos, chlorofluorocarbons and lead paint, Big Tobacco stayed
solvent by making $25 million in political contributions over the
last 10 years. In one example of Big Tobacco’s clout, the House
last year narrowly voted down a bill that would have transferred
$25 million of taxpayer money from tobacco crop insurance to rural
health programs. Big Tobacco is happy to pay a mere $368.5 billion
to erase lawsuits that it was in increasing danger of losing and to
sucker America into thinking locally while the Marlboro Man thinks
globally. Smoking rates are rising so fast in developing countries
that annual deaths will rise from its current 1 million to 7
million by 2025, according to the World Health Organization. Last
Friday, Goldstone said, "The agreement secures the tobacco
industry’s rightful place in the mainstream of legitimate U.S.
commerce." If that is true, this agreement does more harm than good
for generations to come. Big Tobacco, at home and abroad, should
face marketing curbs and taxes that cut so deeply into their
profits that its stocks crash rather than soar. It should face
stiff penalties for luring youth to smoke that if caught, it
becomes unprofitable to make cigarettes at all. Harshbarger, eyeing
the Massachusetts governorship, likened the agreement to a great
vaccine. Maybe, but not in the way he had in mind. In their
volatile mix of do-gooderism and political expediency, the state
attorneys general may have done more to inoculate Big Tobacco from
scrutiny, scorn and harm than protecting children from tobacco. It
was a nice try, but no cigarette. Big Tobacco still awaits the wolf
that will truly blow its house down. Previous Daily Bruin Story Big
tobacco lights up for lawsuit immunity, April 23, 1997