Clinton Imposes Wide Crackdown on Tobacco Firms

Reversing more than two centuries of hands-off policy toward the nation’s tobacco industry, President Clinton declared Friday that nicotine is an addictive drug and gave the Food and Drug Administration broad jurisdiction to regulate cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.

In a Rose Garden ceremony under a blistering August sun, the president--joined by more than a dozen teenage anti-smoking activists and the widow of a former tobacco lobbyist who died of throat cancer--said that under its new authority the FDA will enact sweeping new rules designed to keep teenagers from smoking.

“With this historic action that we are taking today,” Clinton proclaimed, “Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man will be out of our children’s reach forever.”

It was a watershed moment in America’s long-running love-hate relationship with cigarettes. Furious tobacco companies vowed to press forward with a pending lawsuit. Public health advocates were giddy. Several described the president’s initiative as the most significant step toward protecting the health of children since Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine more than 40 years ago.

“As the kids would say,” declared Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, “this is awesome.”

“Unprecedented, unauthorized, unrealistic and unlawful,” said Steven Parrish, senior vice president at Philip Morris Cos. Inc., the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer.

The rules--which now face a legal challenge that experts say is almost certain to go to the Supreme Court--call for radical changes in the way cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are marketed and distributed. They are to be implemented during the next six months to two years and are intended to cut teenage smoking in half in the next seven years.

They include requiring that anyone younger than 27 show proof of age before buying cigarettes; banning most vending machine sales; banning tobacco company sponsorship of sporting events; eliminating cigarette logos on baseball caps, T-shirts and other merchandise and--in the most controversial provision of all--restricting nearly all tobacco advertisements, including billboards, to simple black-and-white text.

“We have no choice but to fight these FDA rules,” said Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Institute, the industry’s lobbying arm. “They are illegal and they will not work to reduce youth smoking.”

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In addition, advertising and publishing trade associations are suing to block the rules, which they say would cost them $1 billion a year. Citing a recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned a ban on liquor price advertising, the Freedom to Advertise Coalition contended that the regulations violate the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech.

But administration officials said Friday that they are confident the plan is legal.

“The decision to regulate tobacco is based on solid, even overwhelming evidence,” said FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler, the chief architect of the plan. “We think the rule is very defensible in court. It is eminently reasonable.”

If they are not held up by legal challenges, the rules also could be waylaid by the November presidential election. Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole opposes FDA regulation of tobacco. After Friday’s announcement, Dole’s press secretary called the plan “an election-year gimmick.”

The rules will enable the FDA to insert itself between consumers and a product that the government says kills more than 400,000 Americans each year--more than die from AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murders, suicides and illegal drugs combined.

Studies show that 90% of adults who smoke began before they turned 18. Underage smoking has been rising since 1992, reversing a 16-year decline, even though all 50 states outlaw the sale of cigarettes to minors.

“This epidemic is no accident,” Clinton said Friday. “Children are bombarded daily by massive marketing campaigns that play on their vulnerabilities, their insecurities, their longings to be something in the world. Joe Camel promises that smoking will make you cool. Virginia Slims models whisper that smoking will help you stay thin.”

At the same time, though, the president had a word of comfort for tobacco farmers, who over the long run could be hurt by his proposal: “If that happens, these good people who farm the land and work hard should not be left behind, and all of us who have sought this course have a responsibility to help them if they face difficulties.”

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Friday’s announcement comes slightly more than a year after Clinton, with Kessler by his side, proposed the tobacco regulations. The public comment on that initial proposal--700,000 pieces of mail--set a record for federal rule-making. The largest single comment, by the tobacco industry, was 45,000 pages long.

The final rules, which are to be published in Wednesday’s Federal Register, differ in only a few minor ways from Clinton’s original plan:

* The original plan would have banned all vending machine sales. The final version permits vending machine sales in establishments--such as bars and nightclubs--where children are not permitted.

* The original plan would have banned mail orders of cigarettes. But Shalala said the FDA staff discovered that young people rarely order tobacco through the mail, while adults living in rural areas often depend on mail-order sales. Thus mail-order sales will be permitted under the final rules.

* The original plan would have banned tobacco companies from using brand names--such as Marlboro and Camel--in sponsoring sporting events. The final rules ban brand-name sponsorship of teams as well.

* The original plan called for a $150-million fund, paid for by tobacco companies, to conduct a national campaign to educate young people about the dangers of smoking. The final rule eliminates that provision. Instead, the FDA will require the education campaign under an existing provision by which companies can be compelled to warn consumers of the harm caused by their products.

For Clinton, the Rose Garden ceremony capped a frenetic week of high-profile activity designed to give him a boost going into next week’s Democratic convention in Chicago. In addition to announcing the tobacco rules--which polls show are popular with voters--the president signed major bills on the minimum wage, health insurance and welfare reform.

Clinton was joined at Friday’s ceremony by Vice President Al Gore--who praised the president’s move as an example of Clinton’s “courage and character, leadership and values”--as well as a host of anti-tobacco luminaries, among them former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Koop, who has often spoken of a “smoke-free America” by 2000, said after the ceremony that he believes that the nation is ready for a change after years of resisting tobacco regulation. “There’s been a crack in the evil empire of smoking in the last year,” Koop said.

Tobacco stocks tumbled this week when word of the new regulations leaked out. They had already fallen after a Florida jury issued a $750,000 judgment last week against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., only the second time in history that a jury has awarded damages in a tobacco liability suit.

The Justice Department is conducting five criminal investigations of the industry, including one that examines whether tobacco company executives lied to Congress when they testified that nicotine is not addictive. And just this week, four more states sued tobacco companies to recover Medicaid payments made to smokers who became ill, bringing the total number of state lawsuits to 15.

Said Mississippi Atty. Gen. Mike Moore, who is in the forefront of those state suits: “It’s been a bad week for the tobacco companies.”

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New Battle Over Smoking

President Clinton approved regulations Friday designed to curb smoking by juveniles. Polls say his stand against the tobacco industry is a popular one with voters.

HIGHLIGHTS

* Anyone under age 27 must show photo identification before purchasing cigarettes.

* Vending machines will be banned, except in places such as bars frequented only by adults.

* Free samples will be banned, as will the sale of “kiddie packs” that contain fewer than 20 cigarettes.

* Tobacco billboards will be banned within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. Other billboards will be restricted to black-and-white text. * Advertising in publications that have more than 2 million young readers, or whose readership is more than 15% under age 18, will be restricted to black-and-white text.

* Brand-name sponsorship of sporting events will be prohibited, although companies can sponsor events using their corporate names.

TEEN SMOKING ON THE RISE

Percentage of high school seniors who reported smoking at least one cigarette per day during the previous 30 days:

1995: 21.6

Source: University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.