Tobacco Industry Strikes Back to Curb Anti-Smoking Onslaught : Public relations: New strategy includes portraying restrictions as affronts to individual choice. Discrediting research is also a tactic.

Reeling from an unprecedented assault on smoking, the tobacco industry has revamped its lobbying and public relations strategy in recent months and is aggressively striking back with campaigns that include attempts to portray Big Government as the enemy of individual choice.

The changes reflect a new reality in Washington, where the tobacco lobby has lost a lot of clout in the last year, and in state capitals, where proposed anti-smoking regulations and class-action lawsuits on behalf of smokers have proliferated.

“The intensity of the attacks the industry is faced with have clearly gone up, and clearly, we have to do something different to get our message out,” said Brennan Dawson, a vice president of the Washington-based Tobacco Institute, the long-established voice of the industry.

The industry is under fire on many fronts. The Food and Drug Administration is considering a proposal to regulate the nicotine content of cigarettes, Congress is weighing a big tax increase on tobacco products and a ban on smoking in virtually every public building, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed a ban on smoking in any workplace, including bars and restaurants.

The attacks started coming at a time when tobacco companies, who were reducing their own payrolls, began to cut back sharply on funds for the big-spending Tobacco Institute. The institute’s budget was chopped from $40 million last year to $15 million in 1994 and its staff was cut in half, from 80 to 40.

To respond to the attacks, companies are now individually aiming at trying to discredit government findings on the dangers of secondhand smoke. Other new tobacco tactics include appearances by tobacco company scientists on radio talk shows, presentations before newspaper editorial boards and even school educational programs. RJR Nabisco said it is conducting a campaign to win public approval by urging middle-school students not to start smoking before they reach legal smoking age.

At the same time, tobacco farmers and tobacco workers are being enlisted for grass-roots lobbying efforts to promote the product. Also, while Congress and federal government actions remain a major concern, tobacco companies are focusing more on state legislatures and local governing bodies in an attempt to stave off regulations they oppose.

In the 1991-92 election cycle, for example, California’s state lawmakers got an average $10,000 each from tobacco interests. Total contributions to congressional candidates totaled $2.3 million over the same period.

As the Tobacco Institute’s role diminished, tobacco giants Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco led the counteroffensive with separate advertising blitzes to advocate “peaceful coexistence” between smokers and nonsmokers as part of a campaign to avert more government controls.

“The idea is to let smokers and nonsmokers work out their differences without government coming in,” said Thomas C. Griscom, executive vice president for external relations of RJR Nabisco. “Accommodation clearly has broad appeal and broad support . . . . The question is at what point does government become intrusive in making choices for people.”

In addition, industry leaders have mounted a concerted, although belated, attack on a 1993 report by the Environmental Protection Agency concerning the dangers of secondhand smoke. The report said secondhand smoke can cause cancer and estimated that 3,000 nonsmokers die each year because of it.

That report got wide attention and gave impetus to those who wanted to ban smoking in public places, such as restaurants, office buildings and factories. It led the Pentagon, for example, to sharply curtail smoking at military bases around the world.

Philip Morris recently placed ads in eight major newspapers to reprint a magazine article critical of the EPA report, challenging the scientific basis for the findings by the federal agency.

The article was written by the former managing editor of Reason magazine, published by the Reason Foundation, a Santa Monica-based think tank. It said, in effect, that the federal agency juggled statistics to make its case and lowered its standards for judging the harmful impact of secondhand smoke.

The criticism of EPA’s science in the article, however, relied heavily on researchers who have received significant tobacco industry funds in the past, such as Alvan Feinstein, a Yale epidemiologist.

Further, both Philip Morris and its subsidiary, Kraft General Foods, were listed as “major donors” in the Foundation’s 1993 annual report. Ellen Merlo, vice president for corporate affairs at Phillip Morris, said there was no connection between the donations and the article.

Noting that her company is a major advertiser, spending far larger sums with other publications, Merlo said: “I don’t believe a small grant to the Reason Foundation is going to influence them.”

The article did include a conclusion that was contrary to the tobacco industry’s view--that scientific evidence has clearly demonstrated that smoking causes lung cancer and heart disease.

Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a leading anti-smoking advocate in Congress, doubted that the advertising campaign would have much impact, saying: “They are grasping for respectability . . . . When you buy full-page ads that read like Pravda, people are not going to rally to your side.”

Regardless of the effect of the public relations effort, the tobacco lobby still shows its muscle on Capitol Hill. A group of 20 House members from tobacco-growing areas have managed to reduce a proposed tax increase on tobacco products by warning they would not support any health care legislation with a larger tax hike.

Tobacco state lawmakers also remain entrenched on key committees where bills to regulate tobacco must originate and, by getting cooperation from House members concerned with other specialty crops such as rice and sugar, often prevail in committees.

But congressional views are changing. A recent survey by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, showed that only six of 100 senators and 37 of 435 House members listed themselves as smokers.

Tobacco company officials said they are still evaluating the results of their more aggressive strategy.