Politics Aside, the War on Smoking Is a Good One : Clinton’s approval of FDA rules bolsters public health

The tobacco industry is now being sued by 14 states that want to recover the public health costs associated with disabling and often fatal diseases linked to cigarette smoking, and more are likely to join the battle. The industry is also girding to legally challenge the finding by the Food and Drug Administration that cigarettes and chewing tobacco are the delivery systems for a powerfully addictive drug, nicotine. President Clinton has now approved new regulations growing out of that finding. They aim at dissuading young people from becoming smokers.

The worth of this effort is indisputable. The government estimates that 3,000 teenagers become first-time smokers every day, meaning more than 1 million a year. Those who continue to smoke face a 1-in-3 chance of dying prematurely.

Clinton plans to start phasing in restrictions in about six months, a broad plan that seeks both to deglamorize smoking by regulating certain kinds of advertising and promotions and to make the purchase of cigarettes for those under 18 more difficult.

No one with any grasp on reality will expect these steps to erect an impenetrable wall between young people and smoking. Indeed, adolescents being the contrarians they so often are, the attractiveness of smoking is almost sure to increase for some. But the hope--and it’s probably a realizable one--is that a substantial percentage of young people will in fact conclude that taking up smoking is an expensive and ultimately self-destructive indulgence, one they can do without.

Clinton, again displaying his profound political faith in the notion that nothing succeeds like excess, announced the new regulations amid typical Rose Garden hoopla and with the expectable cast of supporting players. Politicizing the issue of standing four-square against teenage smoking, while always a temptation, became inevitable when Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, no doubt to his enduring regret, questioned what are by now smoking’s unarguable health dangers.

Democrats can be expected to go on beating the drums over this gaffe until election day, while calling attention to Dole’s acceptance of large campaign contributions from tobacco interests, just as Republicans will miss no opportunity to blame the reported rise in teenage drug use over the last few years on the Clinton White House.

But smoking, and what it leads to, is of course not primarily or even secondarily a political issue. It is urgently and objectively a matter of public health, and it’s in that context that practical efforts to regulate smoking have to be judged. Every year about 400,000 Americans die prematurely of diseases related to tobacco use. Young people who become hooked on nicotine are the replacement cadres for these dead smokers.

The sensible conclusion reached long ago is that the surest way to save lives is to keep people from ever becoming addicted to tobacco. The new rules directed against teenage smoking provide needed support for that goal.