Anti-Tobacco Drive Targets Churches, Doctors’ Offices

Anti-smoking activists are headed for the nation’s churches, schools and doctors’ offices, hoping to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions urging the government to regulate tobacco.

The petition drive, announced Tuesday by the Coalition on Smoking Or Health and 75 health, religious and legal groups, is the latest skirmish in the battle over tobacco regulation.

“The tobacco industry is deliberately trying to convince politicians and the public that nothing should be done,” Coalition chairman Scott Ballin said. “They will continue to control the issue . . . unless we get out our message that Americans want tobacco regulated.”

The industry scoffed at the petition drive.

“The federal regulatory process isn’t a popularity contest,” said Tobacco Institute spokesman Thomas Lauria. “Congressmen know their constituents better than the anti-smoking lobby does.”

Contending that 400,000 Americans die every year from tobacco-related illnesses, the Food and Drug Administration is considering regulating nicotine as a drug.

FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler insists that he is not out to ban tobacco and has asked Congress for the authority to regulate it without a ban. Options include capping the amount of nicotine in cigarettes or ending tobacco advertising, but Kessler has not decided his next step, spokesman Jim O’Hara said Tuesday.

The tobacco industry is fiercely fighting the FDA, spending millions of dollars on full-page newspaper ads saying Kessler secretly wants tobacco prohibited. The latest ad on Tuesday warned that organized crime rings would smuggle cigarettes if they were banned or too highly taxed.

Legislation authorizing Kessler to regulate tobacco has stalled in the House and the bill’s author, Oklahoma Democrat Mike Synar, last month lost his reelection bid.

Ballin insisted the regulation push has not died, saying the petitions will tell a new Congress in January what Americans really want.