Anti-Tobacco Bill Spirals Into Partisan Purgatory

Prospects for passage of tobacco control legislation dimmed Thursday as partisan divisions in the Senate fractured the fragile coalition of Democrats and Republicans who might support tough anti-smoking legislation.

Democrats, frustrated by conservative Republicans’ delaying tactics, turned from accommodation to confrontation. They backed away from allowing Republicans to festoon the bill with tax cuts and beefed-up drug enforcement and demanded a vote early next week to limit debate on the bill.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in a turnaround from his stance of several weeks ago, when he predicted that the measure would win overwhelming approval.

“It’s death by amputation,” he added, referring to Republican proposals to use funds raised by higher cigarette prices for tax cuts and drug enforcement instead of public health programs designed to reduce smoking.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), the bill’s chief author, lamented the downward spiral into partisanship.

“Either we should sit down and move forward or move to other things,” McCain said. “It doesn’t help anybody to accuse each other.”

At the same time, McCain said he remains hopeful that anti-tobacco sentiment will surmount the obstacles posed by conservative Republicans. “I’m still confident we’ll bring this to conclusion.”

And a high-ranking Senate Republican aide said: “After a week of voting on this, I can see the bill having enough in it that Republicans can feel they got something.”

The only vote taken on the bill Thursday served to blunt its prospects still further.

By 66 to 29, the Senate approved an amendment offered by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to toughen monetary penalties on the tobacco industry if youth smoking fails to drop by 40% in the next five years and by 67% in 10 years. What’s more, penalties would be assessed, brand by brand, rather than according to overall teen smoking rates.

Durbin said the measure is “not to punish the companies or gain revenues but to create the incentives that help achieve actual reductions in underage tobacco use so that the companies never pay a penny.”

Democratic lobbyist John D. Rafaelli, who was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas), disagreed. Rafaelli, who has been lobbying for a measure closer to the proposed settlement reached last year between the tobacco industry and the 40 state attorneys general who sued the companies, branded the Durbin amendment as “pure let’s-punish-the-companies.”

Prospects for passing the tobacco legislation were never rosy. Congress has been historically reluctant to take a tough stand against the cigarette manufacturers.

Still, the industry’s political fortunes appeared to hit rock bottom after the release of thousands of damaging documents about their efforts to market cigarettes to teenagers. And earlier this spring, the public health community seemed poised to steamroll the industry when the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed a sweeping anti-tobacco bill, 19 to 1.

Since then, however, the cigarette manufacturers have run a nationwide advertising and telephone campaign against the legislation, and other business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have added their voices to that of the industry.

The measure would settle the suits brought by state attorneys general against the cigarette manufacturers, raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 over five years and give the Food and Drug Administration broad powers to regulate nicotine as a drug.

The revenue from the price hike would be used to pay for anti-tobacco and smoking cessation programs, to help tobacco farmers whose livelihoods would be hurt by the bill and to reimburse the states for the cost of treating people with tobacco-related diseases.