Smoke and Hot Air

Steven Goldstone is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. The chairman of tobacco giant RJR Nabisco, after months of trying to placate a Congress finally aroused over the dangers of cigarettes, after months of trying to staunch the damage from documents detailing cigarette makers’ stonewalling and deception about the risks of smoking, wants us to know he’s fed up.

In a televised address Wednesday, Goldstone said he will not go along with tobacco control legislation that has grown tougher than last June’s $368-billion proposed settlement between the industry and 40 state attorneys general. In that deal, the companies would have compensated the states for tobacco-related medical costs in exchange for limited immunity from lawsuits. A week after a Senate committee overwhelmingly approved a version he considers unacceptably harsh on the industry, Goldstone said Wednesday he will no longer cooperate. “We are not . . . a Brinks truck overturned on a highway,” he insisted.

Perhaps not, but a page was turned last June, moving away from the old wink-and-a-nod relationship between the tobacco industry on the one hand and Congress and the public on the other. As part of the settlement with the states, the industry agreed to unprecedented limits on cigarette advertising and sales, to federal regulatory authority and to compensation for sick smokers. Later, it agreed to separate mega-million-dollar payouts to three states and courts ordered the release of secret industry memos richly documenting efforts to manipulate adult smokers and hook children.

Perhaps Goldstone and his counterparts at other cigarette makers assumed that Congress would obediently pass into law the June deal. But the bill now before Congress, pushed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), properly regards that deal as a starting point rather than an end. McCain’s bill would let the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco as a drug and incorporates broad limits on marketing to youths. The bill would also raise the cost of the industry’s payout, set a higher cigarette tax and stiffer penalties if the industry doesn’t meet targets for cutting teenage smoking, and lift the ban on class-action damage suits.

Goldstone and his colleagues are correct that because of constitutionality questions they must consent to some provisions, such as restrictions on advertising, before the provisions can become law. But Congress can--and should--act without industry support on other key parts of this bill. On Thursday, responding to Goldstone, McCain declared, “We won’t be dictated to by the tobacco companies.” That’s definitely a new page in Congress.