Tobacco Settlement News on the Web Archive from the RJR Dropout, April 8, 1998
SETTLEMENT Talks News on the Web
Archive from the RJR Dropout, April 8, 1998
Previous archives:- Settlement News, June, 1997 From the June 20, 1997
- Settlement News, July-September, 1997 From July to Clinton's September 17, 1997 Announcement that the proposed June 20 settlement is a good start.
- Settlement News, September 17 - December 31, 1997
- Settlement News, Jan-March, 1998
Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.
- The tobacco companies want to pay as little as possible and still be granted limits on liability payments. By contrast, the hard-liners in Congress want the bill to be as tough as possible against the industry. The rhetoric, especially from the tobacco companies, has given the debate an Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Senators say they can't be sure if the industry is truly unhappy or if it is posturing. "Every time there is a proposal, the tobacco industry says they can't live with it," said McCain, which makes him doubt their credibility.
- One of the tobacco industry's most staunch supporters in Congress said today that the Senate's tobacco bill is all but dead and that four House committees will soon begin work on their own version of the measure. House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.), speaking at an impromptu news conference here, said of the Senate bill: "Well, if it's not dead, it's on life support.".
- Asked about RJR's stance that it will not cooperate with McCain's bill, President Bill CLINTON said, "I hope RJR will reconsider." "I don't think there is much in it for RJR or anybody else to walk away," Clinton said told reporters in Chicago.
- STEVEN GOLDSTONE, chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco Holdings Inc., was preparing to deliver a speech in Washington today saying that "politically, the June 20th agreement is dead," a R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company lobbyist wrote in a memo yesterday.
- STEVEN F. GOLDSTONE, the chief executive of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., will say today that the proposed $368.5 billion tobacco deal is dead and that the company cannot support a stricter proposal being considered by Congress, according to a company memo. Goldstone "will say that politically the June 20th agreement is dead and the process has become so unreasonable and expensive for manufacturers, growers and the thousands of Americans involved in the tobacco industry that we cannot continue to actively support its adoption," said Tommy J. Payne in a memo to leaders on Capital Hill yesterday. Payne is a senior vice president for external relations for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the domestic tobacco subsidiary of RJR Nabisco. Goldstone is scheduled to speak at noon today at a National Press Club meeting in Washington about the company's opposition to a tougher tobacco-control bill put forward by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairman of the Senate commerce committee.
- "Today it is very clear to me that we have failed in our effort to achieve a comprehensive resolution of the contentious issues surrounding tobacco in our country," RJ Reynolds chief executive officer STEVEN GOLDSTONE told the National Press Club. Further, in prepared remarks for the press club, Goldstone said, "I have told my colleagues in the industry that effective today I no longer see any purpose in working toward the June 20th national settlement." He said he stands behind the agreement negotiated last year, "but I see no possibility in this environment to achieve it.".
- What this means is that suits against the tobacco companies will really be only 20% against Big Tobacco and 80% against the governmental and public health agencies that will divvy up the revenue from the tax increase. . . We believe the appropriate policy on tobacco would be to adopt what we call a modified European plan: Give the companies immunity from all class-action and punitive damage claims based on past actions. . . And if the public policy goal is to curtail smoking sharply, raise the tax by $1.50 a pack or more.
- That's why it's important that any tobacco bill includes some measures to limit tobacco's predatory behavior overseas. . . Some of these provisions [in McCain's bill] are modeled on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a precedent for U.S. regulation of companies' overseas behavior. But it's not clear whether they could apply to foreign subsidiaries, and even in their present form they're under attack from some senators and the tobacco industry. The Clinton administration should work with Congress in passing the strongest legally defensible provisions possible.
- Even a scolding from the tobacco industry's most influential executives won't prevent the bill they denounced from winding through the legislative process, industry observers said. "If this is baseball, we're in the fifth inning," said John Coale, a Washington lawyer involved with anti-tobacco lawsuits, implying the process is only half-way through.
- Senate Commerce Committee chairman John McCain said on Wednesday Congress must pass tobacco legislation with or without the support of the industry and that lawmakers had alternatives available to them.
- House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, a key player in tobacco legislation, on Wednesday said he would work for a "strong bill to reduce teen smoking" even without industry cooperation. After the tobacco industry declared the June 20 agreement they had endorsed "dead" in Congress, the Virginia Republican said, "Efforts in Congress to reduce teen-age smoking are not dead."
- "[W]hat are they going to do, start marketing to children?".
- U.S. President Bill Clinton on Wednesday said the position taken by major tobacco firms on tobacco legislation was a "huge mistake" and that he was determined to push forward with the issue. "We're going to get this done," Clinton told reporters. "They can be part of it or they can fight it," he said..
- "I've been working for two years on this and I don't intend to stop now," Clinton said. "I think we've got an excellent chance of passing a good piece of legislation to dramatically reduce smoking by young people and save lives. I don't there is very much in it for RJR or anybody else to walk away, so I hope they will reconsider that." (288K wav sound).
- In an interview with CNN . . . Moore said: "I don't think its time for anybody to panic." "The only way to get this thing done is the president of the United States himself needs to call a meeting of leaders in the Senate, the leaders in the House, the public health advocates that they trust and believe in, the tobacco industry and the attorneys general and bring them all together and work this final settlement deal out..
- 'I think what you heard today is more of a bargaining ploy than anything else. I think they are trying to influence the shape of the final legislation that passes,' Gore said.
- As the proposed national tobacco settlement wilts on the vine in Washington, the nation's tobacco growers are looking to salvage what they can from the deal before it is plowed under, farmers said Wednesday.
- "The president needs to stand up to Congress and to the public health community and to the country, and do what is right," Goldstone, chief executive of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., said in a speech at the National Press Club.
- Steven Goldstone, president of RJR Nabisco, parent company of R.J. Reynolds, today said his company is walking away from Capitol Hill negotiations because the Clinton administration has neglected the process, while Congress has "dissolved into a taxing frenzy." He told reporters at a National Press Club luncheon that the company will plead its case directly to the American public, in a series of town forums. He says the American people will bring "wisdom and common sense back to these issues.".
- "The only piece of legislation to come out of committee, Sen. McCain's bill is a good start. But we must do better. We should look toward raising the tax on tobacco to $2 per pack and making the 'look back' penalties much stronger for them to be effective in reducing childhood smoking.
- ROY BURRY, tobacco analyst at CIBC Oppenheimer, said if any investors were thinking about buying tobacco stocks, "Now is the time." "The stocks have performed very poorly over the last six to nine months and now we have the realization that if nothing comes out of Congress, it's back to litigation. That's fine. The industry was doing just fine with that.".
- The head of the nation's second-biggest tobacco maker said Wednesday he stopped smoking because he worried about his health. "I keep thinking of the juror who I once heard say after a trial, 'Yes, it's addictive, but you can quit,"' said Steven Goldstone . . . Goldstone answered reporters' questions after announcing that his company will fight proposed tobacco legislation in Congress.
- Tobacco stocks rose sharply on Wednesday as Wall Street eagerly awaited a speech by Nabisco Holdings Corp. (RN - news) Chairman Steven Goldstone, who was expected to reiterate his rejection of Congress's proposed tobacco settlement.
- "It has always been understood by all the parties that Congress needed to review and strengthen the June 20th agreement between the tobacco companies and the state attorneys general. That agreement was the first, not the final step in our fight to stop our kids from smoking. "RJ Reynolds' complete rejection of the McCain bill -- which in my opinion, fails to do enough to keep cigarettes out of kids' hands -- is an outrage.
- Good riddance! The sheer arrogance of the tobacco industry is amazing! . . Congress can enact strong legislation, like the Healthy Kids Act, introduced by Senator Kent Conrad (D- ND) and Representative Vic Fazio (D-CA), without the participation or permission of the tobacco industry.
- Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Allan Kaplan said if the McCain tobacco bill becomes law, retail prices of cigarettes could go up as much $1.60 a pack. In an interview with on CNBC Wednesday, Kaplan said, "Congress has the power to raise taxes on cigarettes, and it looks like $1.10 will be added in excise taxes, which will cause cigarette prices at retail to go up something like $1.60 a pack."
- But at a news conference in New York today, McCain said: "This was never intended to be a deal with the industry. Our intention was to pass a bill to stop kids from smoking, and I would have hoped that all companies would stay engaged.".
- Sen. JOHN CHAFEE, one of the authors of an anti-smoking bill in the Senate, said on Wednesday Congress should look at imposing a direct tax on cigarettes if the tobacco industry refuses a deal proposed by Congress. . . "The industry will take some 'hits' for their announcements today. But no one ever claimed that the tobacco industry would win the 'charm' contest," Chafee said..
- Nobody can say for sure how much cigarettes will cost when the dust finally settles in Congress. Upward of $3 a pack? Quite likely. As much as $4 or even more? Even that is possible. And that's not all.
- What brought down Big Tobacco? For one, more adults have been exposed to research detailing the harmful effects of smoking, Mr. Wallace says. But more dramatically, industry documents made public by Representative Bliley and a Minnesota judge have sparked a round of rethinking. "As litigation has forced the industry to open its vaults on information concerning [the industry's] science ... and its own marketing, members of Congress and the American public have been appalled," Wallace says.
- "We have always expected to bring our case to the jury in order to get the truth out about this rogue industry and, by God, we are prepared to see it through," Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III said. But Humphrey didn't totally rule out settlement. "I think that people of good will who have sincere interests in resolving differences can always find a basis for doing that," he said.
- Clinton has repeatedly cited a need to help farmers in any national tobacco legislation. But in an area where pickup trucks bear bumper stickers claiming "Tobacco Pays My Bills," the president's pledge to fight teen smoking and increase taxes on tobacco products has some saying attacks on manufacturers could hurt many small farmers.
- In Carrollton, the president will meet with a group of tobacco farmers and local officials at the Kentuckiana Tobacco Warehouse. From there, the president will go to Carroll County High School, where he will talk to students about the dangers of smoking and national efforts to reduce teen tobacco use. Gov. Paul Patton will accompany Clinton at both stops.
- Thursday, the 17-year-old senior honors student and shortstop at Carroll County High School will see his first president up close and personal. . . "I'm very excited about his visit. I get butterflies just talking about it." Coombs doesn't smoke but has friends who do. So the president, who has been against teen smoking, should expect some students will want his explanation on why they shouldn't smoke, Coombs said.
- The upcoming legislation is a huge defeat for individual freedom. . . One is tempted to say the cigarette companies got what they deserved. They failed to fight on principle and thought they could enter into good-faith negotiations with the least trustworthy people in the country. Unfortunately, the rest of us will be the real losers. The politicians now have a precedent allowing them unlimited ability to restrict our freedom and control our lives.
- But what Clinton ought to tell the Kentucky tobacco farmers he'll speak to in Carrollton is that it's time for them to get unhooked from tobacco. Clinton should give them some straight talk - tell them the truth about tobacco. . . If he wants to help, maybe Clinton could find some money to ease that transition but not to support tobacco farming. We know those are hard words. We know that for farmers no longer depending on tobacco will be even harder.
- It is truly unfortunate that what was supposed to be crusade to improve public health has turned into a symbol of greed. And, that Florida has joined Texas in sending the message that, at least for a handful of lawyers, bigger fees are better, no matter the eventual cost to consumers, taxpayers and all of society.
- The irony is that MCCAIN has championed campaign finance reform, and the smoking debate shows -- if nothing else -- that contributions do not corrupt Congress on major issues. . . In drafting his bill, McCain allowed interest groups to view and influence the product. These consisted of public health advocates and state attorneys general. Had the industry received similar access, a huge outcry would have been heard about the tobacco companies buying "access" with political donations. But the companies were excluded. The point is that people -- not money -- ultimately corrupt political debate. What defeats reasoned discussion is conformity, ignorance and ambition.
- The White House is keeping plans to use tobacco-settlement money for 1999 budget programs, despite a top tobacco executive's declaration there was "no hope" for a settlement bill, officials said Thursday. The White House also said officials had not addressed calls for President Clinton to convene a "summit" to forge a viable tobacco bill.
- "I think we're closer than ever to getting comprehensive bipartisan tobacco legislation done," Bruce Reed, assistant to the president for domestic policy, said in an interview on CNN Thursday. "I think what troubles the tobacco companies is that the president and so many members in Congress and in both parties have shown such leadership and we're on the verge of getting it done," Reed said.
- "I'm sure we may be looking at it," McCain, who drafted the Senate's tough tobacco legislation, told Reuters when asked if the legislation might be modified. "We've just gone through the first steps, but one thing is, we won't be dictated to by the tobacco companies."
- DAVID ADELMAN: The industry is going to obviously argue against a punitive increase in taxes, that it's--you're putting a tax on the working--the hardest working, the lowest socioeconomic sector to provide whether it's a Republican tax break or Democratic spending programs, and I think they're going to aggressively attack that with an effective grassroots campaign.
- "Very frankly, I think Congress will act with or without the acquiescence of the tobacco companies," McCain said this morning on NBC's "Today."
- With or without the industry's cooperation, President Clinton and members of Congress say they will fight for legislation to force tobacco companies to pay billions of dollars to make up for practices that encourage teen-agers to smoke.
- His effort to blame the president and Congress for the breakdown was also foreshadowed. In January, the industry's public relations firm, the Bozell Sawyer Miller Group, recommended in a memorandum that if the June deal stalled, the industry take the position that "politicians played politics and made a mess" of the situation.
- "Poor babies," needled Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who heads the Senate Democratic working group on tobacco issues. "We don't need their blessing to pass tough tobacco legislation. In many ways this is liberating -- do it right, and not try to dance around their approval. They weren't going to approve of anything that was any good anyway." . . Now, he said, the industry would devote its energies and money to fighting the McCain bill, by taking its case to the American public. The industry's public relations campaign begins today with advertisements in leading newspapers reading, "We Agreed To Change The Way We Do Business . . . Not To Go Out Of Business." . . A Republican lobbyist speaking on background said: "Now we have to mobilize and try to stop the bill. This changes the nature of the assignment." He said he would rather be part of a drive to win approval of a comprehensive settlement agreed to by all the principals, but he acknowledged that killing the pending legislation may well be an easier task than trying to pass a comprehensive solution.
- Failure of a national tobacco settlement would be an unwelcomed setback in efforts to reduce teen smoking, Mississippi's top health official warns. Dr. Ed Thompson, state health officer, said Wednesday that the proposed settlement included advertising limits that would serve as a powerful deterrent to teenage smoking. 'If we lose the marketing controls, we've lost everything that money could have bought,' he said.
- "It's a neo-prohibitionists bill cobbled together by elements bent on putting the cigarette industry out of business," said Emmanuel Goldman, an analyst with PaineWebber.
- New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco said the collapse of the deal means the state will push ahead with its suit against major tobacco companies, holding them liable for the millions of dollars the state spends caring for ailing smokers. "They made a mistake. They raised the stakes," he said of the tobacco companies' pullout.
- "I think we're a long way from, quote, falling apart," said McCain, chief author of the Senate bill. "I am convinced that if the tobacco companies are not willing to go along with this agreement we will still act in the best interests of the American people." Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va., the House Commerce Committee chairman who also is working on a bill, said the industry's position was "unfortunate, but not a reason for inaction."
- "The bar kept being raised on them (the companies), and it was just an impossible situation, so I'm not surprised," said U.S. REP. RON LEWIS, a Republican who represents Kentucky's tobacco-rich 2nd District.
- U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in a phone interview Tuesday that tobacco growers and their farm landlords "are hard-working Americans who deserve to be compensated" if federal anti-cigarette legislation takes away some of their income.
- Just who "outlawed" the industry isn't clear. Like it or not, tobacco is still a legal product. Still, there is no question that the industry has been demonized to the point that anything goes: stolen documents, rigged courts, bogus second-hand-smoke studies, confiscatory taxes, anything. The man who once dismissed Bob Dole as the tax collector for the welfare state, NEWT GINGRICH, reportedly said of the tobacco industry, "Let's just tax the hell out of them." . . . The point is that even if the deal could have done everything proponents said it would -- reduce teen smoking, recover tax monies for states, fund good intentions -- the cost to liberty, the Constitution and principles of individual responsibility was too high. That it has been reduced to ashes is cause for celebration, not mourning.
- The industry's decision to walk away from the legislation does not hamper Congress's ability to go forward. Congress can force the price of cigarettes up through a new tobacco tax. It can give the Food and Drug Administration ample power to regulate tobacco and nicotine. It can write into law many of the advertising controls included in the attorneys general settlement, though the industry will fight those in court. . . Fatigue and the threat of financial instability drove the industry toward a settlement last year. Those conditions remain unchanged. Mr. Goldstone and his allies are probably hoping that threats and scare tactics will drive Congress to do their bidding, but their defiant posture is a mark of desperation.
- It is time to forget comprehensive legislation and pass a simple and clean bill that advances public health without giving the tobacco industry anything. Such a bill should include three simple provisions: * Increase the federal tobacco tax. * Impose significant penalties on the tobacco companies to provide an economic incentive to stop selling tobacco to kids. * Finance federal tobacco control efforts. . . It is, after all, the states and localities that have made real progress on tobacco. . . The proper role for Congress and the federal government is to facilitate state and local action, not preempt it.
- The man from RJR Nabisco, sullen STEVE GOLDSTONE, delivered a thunderbolt: Scratch the tobacco deal with Congress. "I'm not kidding," said Goldstone with a dark scowl. . . No, it's good news that tobacco CEOs packed their billions and stalked off in a pout. Who needs the prevaricating bozos? Never made sense to write a tobacco law with Joe Camel in the tent.
- "You can take this bill and defeat it 100 to nothing because it is very complicated and not very pleasing to everybody. But, be that as it may, the money is spent," Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) told reporters last week in discussing a compromise proposed by the Senate Commerce Committee. "I've been up in the Budget Committee and whether it's the Republican plan, the White House plan, the Democratic plan or what have you, this money is spent," he said.
- Tactics being contemplated, people in the tobacco camp say, include television and radio ads, discussions with important constituencies such as tobacco farmers and retailers, and perhaps even speeches in small towns across America. The companies are also expected to take advantage of their huge mailing lists of millions of smokers. People in the industry camp said the industry plans to firm up details of its strategy next week. "There will be broad senior-executive involvement and broad employee involvement," one executive said. "Whatever resources are required will be put behind it."
- Competing with President Clinton for the loyalties of tobacco farmers, Phil Carlton said that Sen. John McCain's bill could bankrupt the companies or force them overseas, crushing the domestic market for tobacco. "For the first time, I am now genuinely worried about growers," said Carlton, a North Carolina lawyer who represents R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and the four other companies. "I think the growers are threatened."
- U.S. Sen. John McCain on Friday assured South Carolina farmers that his $506 billion tobacco bill protects growers who want to stay in the business while helping those who want to get out. Speaking to more than 500 tobacco farmers at a town hall gathering in Florence, South Carolina, McCain acknowledged that since the legislation aims to reduce the number of U.S. smokers over time, it would, by default, reduce the number of tobacco growers as well.
Clinton in Kentucky
- 04/09/98 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH FARMERS, COMMUNITY LEADERS, AND HEALTH EXPERTS White House
- 04/09/98 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO STUDENTS AND PARENTS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS White House
- 04/09/98 PRESS BRIEFING BY DAN GLICKMAN, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE, BRUCE REED, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR DOMESTIC POLICY AND MIKE MCCURRY White House
- MR. MCCURRY: I wanted both Bruce Reed, the President's principal domestic policy adviser, assistant to the President, and Secretary of Agriculture Glickman to be here and take any questions you have related to some of the issues surrounding the assistance programs for tobacco or anything else about the legislation.
- 04/08/98 STATEMENT BY VICE PRESIDENT GORE ON RJ REYNOLDS TOBACCO ANNOUNCEMENT White House
- Of course, even if RJ Reynolds does not come back to the table, we will continue our efforts to reduce youth smoking, and to pass a comprehensive, bipartisan bill this year. I hope the tobacco industry will remain a strong and central part of that effort.
- 04/10/98 Farmers Caught In Middle Richmond Times-Dispatch
- The tobacco industry, scrambling back to hardball politics, vied with President Clinton yesterday to win important political support from leaf growers. . . "I am now worried that the growers are not going to have a market for their products," [Phil Carlton] told reporters from tobacco-state newspapers minutes before Clinton was scheduled to talk to tobacco growers in Kentucky. As for any Clinton pledges of reassurance to farmers, "God knows," Carlton exclaimed, "I hope they won't fall for that!"
- 04/10/98 Clinton Reassures Growers / In Ky. Tobacco Land, Message Is Protection Richmond Times-Dispatch
- 04/10/98 Officials Pitch To The President Cincinnati Enquirer
- Mr. MCKEE, a state lawmaker and tobacco farmer from Cynthiana, lobbied the president to make sure farmers are taken care of in any tobacco settlement or legislation. "I asked him to support (Sen.) WENDELL FORD's bill on tobacco," said Mr. McKee. . . . "He said straight up to me, "I think Wendell's got the right idea.' That was his quote," said an excited Mr. McKee
- 04/10/98 Big Visit Rivets Students Cincinnati Enquirer
- 04/10/98 "He Said All The Right Things,' Teen Says Of Clinton Kentucky Post
- When Carroll County High School senior Jacqueline Jones rose to introduce President Clinton to a gymnasium full of students Thursday, she gently chided him about how the University of Kentucky basketball team had beaten his beloved Arkansas Razorbacks three times in the most recent season. So at the end of his speech, in which he urged the students not to smoke, Clinton recalled UK's championship season. "I don't think," he said with a smile, "that the Wildcats could have left all of their opponents gasping for breath, could have come from behind repeatedly, if their lungs were polluted with cigarettes."
- 04/10/98 Clinton Promises Growers Help Cincinnati Enquirer
- 04/10/98 Clinton Does Ky. Balancing Act Cincinnati Enquirer
- Thursday in Carroll County, deep in the heart of Kentucky's burley tobacco belt, and deep in the midst of the unraveling of the multibillion-dollar tobacco litigation settlement, Mr. Clinton walked a tightrope between two seemingly intractable interests.
- 04/10/98 Farmers Give Clinton Lesson In Economics Cincinnati Post
- 04/10/98 Clinton Pledges To Look Out For Tobacco Growers Washington Times
- At a sometimes contentious round-table discussion at the corrugated steel Kentuckiana Tobacco Warehouse here, Mr. Clinton sympathized with the worried farmers and tobacco distributors. Nonetheless he expressed resolve to pass legislation settling smoking-related lawsuits.
- 04/10/98 Prez Finds Farmers Fuming New York Post
- 04/10/98 Tobacco Farmers Tell Clinton They're Fuming LA Times
- 04/10/98 Clinton Assures Tobacco Farmers He Won't Sell Them Out The New York Times
- "We don't have to wreck the fabric of life in your community," he declared in a speech in the Carroll County High School gymnasium. "But even in tobacco country, we can't deny what the scientists have told us or what has been done to market tobacco to children." . . Despite such emotions, Clinton was in the kind of setting where he thrives. He looked the skeptics in the eye and seemed to have won many of them over when he offered what has become one of his favorite lines: "We have no interest whatever in putting the tobacco companies out of business. I just want to get them out of the business of selling tobacco to children."
- 04/10/98 'At War' With Tobacco, Clinton Woos Farmers Washington Post
- "You grow a legal crop, you're not doing the marketing of the tobacco to children, and you're doing your part as citizens," he said. "It seems to me that you have a big interest in actually seeing legislation enacted as soon as possible . . . where you'll actually know what is going to happen and you'll feel some level of security."
- 04/10/98 President Pledges Aid To Farmers Dallas Morning News
- In the heart of tobacco country, President Clinton pledged Thursday to "do right by the families that grow tobacco" as he pressed his battle against teenage smoking. Tobacco companies scoffed at his promise.
- 04/10/98 Clinton Tries To Reassure Tobacco Farmers Houston Chronicle
- And one tobacco giant, Brown and Williamson, bused in several hundred people to stand along the route taken by the president and his entourage into Carrollton on Thursday and wave signs proclaiming such things as "Protect our Jobs." However, a large number of locals also turned out in a more friendly manner in this rural region to greet the president. One person held up a sign saying "We don't inhale either."
- 04/10/98 Tobacco Farmers Not At Fault, Clinton Says In Kentucky Boston Globe
- President Clinton, facing threats that the nation's major tobacco companies will abandon a historic settlement, brought his case to the heart of tobacco country yesterday, to a barn on a country road filled with farmers anxious that their way of life is about to change forever. Speaking with soft words wrapped in a conciliatory tone, Clinton told a gathering of farmers and residents in this tiny town that the government would protect their interests either through generous buyouts or job retraining. "I think every American recognizes that the tobacco farmers have not done anything wrong," Clinton said at a roundtable discussion in a dingy aluminum tobacco barn. "You grow a legal crop, you're not doing the marketing of the tobacco to children, and you're doing your part as citizens."
- 04/10/98 Clinton Meets People Whose Lives Are Tied Directly To Tobacco Knight Ridder/Arizona Daily Star
- Of those who met Clinton, the most compelling was [Mattie] Mack, who left the usually talkative Clinton without a response. "We paid for our farm off the tobacco, we educated our kids off of tobacco, we paved our old driveway with blacktop on tobacco, we pay our property taxes, we pay the preacher on Sunday morning. Now, we raise hogs . . . and they don't bring nothing. And that's a stinky, smelly job. And we have cattle. Well, they're not up to par. They ain't bringing nothing. And the only thing that we look forward to is tobacco, end of the year, so we can have a little Christmas, have the grandkids come down and play Santa Claus.
- 04/10/98 Clinton Pushes Tobacco Plan in Ky AP
- Workers at Southern States farm crowded into an office and listened as President Clinton pledged to "do right by families that grow tobacco" even as he pressed his message against teen-age smoking in the heart of tobacco country.
- 04/10/98 Clinton, in Tobacco Territory, Chastises Cigarette Firms for Resisting Legislation
- 04/10/98 Clinton: "We Can Do It" Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
- "If you want to do this, and do it right, we can do it," Clinton told a packed audience in the Carroll County High School gym. "We don't have to wreck the fabric of life in your community. We don't have to rob honest people of their way of life." In particular, the president talked about the importance of the crop's federal price-support program and pointed to a plan by U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford as a good way to protect growers' livelihood.
- 04/10/98 Clinton Tries To Calm Farmers On Tobacco Deal Times of London
- 04/09/98 Tobacco Farmers Oppose Clinton Plan AP
- President Clinton got a lecture from farm wife Mattie Mack of Brandenburg that pretty much summed up local feelings: smoking is bad for children, but cracking down could be disastrous for tobacco farmers. All over town on the day Clinton visited tobacco country that ambiguous message came through. Farmers and others whose livelihood comes from tobacco expressed uncertainty about their futures, powerlessness, a sense of being pawns in a war between big government and big tobacco companies.
- 04/09/98 Clinton Tries to Reassure Tobacco Farmers Reuters
- "My four children do not smoke. I don't smoke. My husband don't smoke and we're against children smoking, Mr. President, but we shouldn't be penalized on account of children smoking," Mattie Mack, the owner of a 100-acre farm, told Clinton in a roundtable discussion at the Kentuckiana Tobacco Warehouse. "It's very easy to talk about punishing the big tobacco companies for their evil doings," added Bill Sprague, a fifth generation farmer. "What we want to show you is that this gets back to the people."
- 04/09/98 How To Host A President? Kentucky Post
- Early today, signs were up along Ky. 227 saying "Welcome, President Clinton" and "Save our tobacco." Several hundred people gathered near the high school, some with signs that read: "My tobacco job pays my bills," and, "Taxes will kill me long before tobacco does."
- 04/09/98 Clinton Goes to Ky. to Talk Tobacco AP
- "Tobacco farmers have not done anything wrong. You're growing a legal crop, you're not doing the marketing of the tobacco to children," the president told a meeting of growers, health advocates and community leaders in Carroll County.
- 04/09/98 The Comeback Kid Returns Cincinnati Post
- 04/09/98 CARROLLTON Prepares For The Big Visit Cincinnati Post
- Post staff report Carrollton, Ky., city workers went out of their way - literally - to be accommodating for the presidential visit today. "We're just trying to make sure that we spruce up," said Carrollton City Clerk Becky Pyles
- 04/09/98 Farmers Ask: Why Pick On Us? USA Today
- When President Clinton campaigned in tobacco country on the eve of the 1996 election, REP. SCOTTY BAESLER, D-Ky., stayed 50 miles from the presidential podium. . . Today, when Clinton heads for this Ohio River community, Baesler will ride with him on Air Force One, escort him to a tobacco warehouse and join him for a talk with high school students about smoking risks.
- 04/09/98 Politics Playing Pivotal Role In Today's Visit Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
- The last time he was in Kentucky, President Clinton avoided talking tobacco, and the state's tobacco farmers plainly avoided him. What a difference a year and a half can make.
- 04/09/98 Clinton Goes to Ky. to Talk Tobacco AP
- There's been a lot of lighting up lately in UTAH REP. JIM HANSEN's office, but it mostly has to do with extinguishing tobacco. The reception-desk phone has been aglow with calls from people eager to see Hansen, chairman of the House Task Force on Tobacco and Health, take up the national fight against cigarettes and the tobacco industry. The Utah Republican plans to respond later this month with a bill to broaden tobacco controls nationwide. ``We have the public behind us,'' said Hansen aide Brian Williams, who is drafting the bill with aides of other Republican House members.
- With the nation's cigarette makers now revolting, the uncertain prospects of a sweeping tobacco settlement could hand Democrats a golden political opportunity to attack a "do-nothing" Republican Congress beholden to special interests. . . Mr. Lott is a closet pipe smoker. "I never do it in public," he said, but he does enjoy smoking "three or four bowls of tobacco a night.
- Last week was filled with tobacco news: on Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee approved a preliminary, $500 billion version of the much-touted legal settlement with tobacco manufacturers, and on Thursday the White House released data showing a steady rise in teen smoking. The only newspaper in America I'm aware of that didn't find either of these developments worthy of any coverage at all was the NEW YORK POST. Could the paper's allergy to tobacco-hostile news stem from the fact that Post owner RUPERT MURDOCH sits on the board of directors of PHILIP MORRIS.
- THE TOBACCO settlement is dead. Don't shed a tear. If it has an ounce of fortitude, Congress will pass a tobacco regulation bill that makes the industry choke.
- Just a year ago, Joe Camel was dead and buried. Today he thinks he owns the U.S. government. He may be right. Tobacco's challenge promises a clear-cut test of who controls your government, a bi-partisan majority of Republicans and Democrats or a well-heeled special interest working behind the scenes. If tobacco wins, McCain has another piece of legislation that will look far more urgent: campaign finance reform to sap the political power of big money.
- The historic pact Congress is trying to negotiate with the tobacco industry should be about reasonable regulation plus fair compensation for smoking-related health costs. Instead, it became a political feeding frenzy with Big Tobacco playing the role of cash cow. . . The reality, however, is that the legal challenge the tobacco companies now threaten could tie the legislation up in court for years. The obviously preferable alternative is a workable compromise acceptable to government and the industry.
- What the politicians who have sought to forge deals with the tobacco companies have been saying is that they lack the guts to take on big corporations in America. That's hardly a surprise since, over the past two decades, government has regularly failed in its duty to serve as a pro-citizen, pro-consumer counterbalance to industrial monopoly and corporate wrongdoing. . . There is no need to try to restore the tobacco deal. Rather than try to climb back into bed with the corporate purveyors of disease and death, it is time, finally, for government to begin to aggressively, fairly and independently regulate and tax this and every industry.
- Even though 25 percent of the population continues to smoke, the morally obtuse demonization of tobacco has crippled the industry that produces it. That's show business. But just because tobacco has become unfashionable doesn't give Washington the right to do outrageous violence to the Constitution or to the American free-enterprise system.
- The tobacco boys can pick their poison: A Senate bill costing them more than $500 billion over 25 years, or uncapped liability in the nation's courts, where they will risk bankruptcy-size jury verdicts. It's not the best time to be in the tobacco business, as Sara Lee will tell you.
- 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.
- Let the courts decide if protecting the health of children is a violation of the First Amendment. Leave the liability sword hanging where it is. The companies have said at every stage of this process that they have no more to give, and then they've given it. The problem is not that the legislative process has suddenly turned hostile and unfair. It's that the law has been too tepid in the past. It's a different world now. The companies say they don't want to live in it. They threaten to resist; they'll go to court, they say. What else is new?
- For decades, tobacco has had a hold on Congress. That has made it all but impossible to garner enough votes for actions that would adversely affect the industry--such as higher taxes. That may have changed. The release of millions of pages of once-secret industry papers documenting decades of deceit and lies may have fundamentally altered the political climate for tough action against Big Tobacco. It's time to find out if that's true.
- Tobacco's free ride is over. A tough-on- tobacco bill is needed as a matter of prudent public-health policy and a way to contain the cost of treating eminently preventable diseases.
- There is much the states can do on their own. But national legislation to force reductions in smoking by teenagers through price increases and marketing regulations is still preferable to 40 separate lawsuits. Congress should heed the industry's challenge - and call the bluff.
- Goldstone also stressed the economic suffering that a big cigarette tax increase would cause tobacco farmers and their communities. Pardon our cynicism, but such concern is rather suspect coming from RJR, a company that lately has shown far more enthusiasm for buying tobacco in South America than Kentucky.
- Outright (though not forthright) prohibitionists were at the center of the debate. Many congressmen, President Clinton, former FDA chief David Kessler and others wanted power to eliminate nicotine from cigarettes -- in other words, to outlaw smoking. The anti-tobacco zealots on the Senate Commerce Committee -- and Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan is certainly one of them -- kept upping the ante on the tobacco industry: Boosting cigarette taxes by almost $7 a carton (as called for under last year's proposed universal tobacco settlement) wasn't good enough. Mr. Clinton, Sen. Bryan and others wanted to slap American smokers with new taxes of $15 a carton -- say, a $1,000-a-year tax hit on a family whose breadwinner earns $24,000 a year and smokes.
- After all, tobacco companies are experts at marketing cigarettes to our kids. They know more about how to get teenagers to do things (or stop doing things) than almost anyone else. It's only fitting that they be charged with getting our kids to stop smoking. . . Let's give the tobacco companies a challenge they can't refuse. Let's give them a huge financial incentive to do what's right. And why wouldn't they agree? If they succeed, they're off the hook--and so are our kids.
- But a walkout deprives Big Tobacco of the one thing it craves most: some protection against lawsuits. Indeed, if it's serious about abandoning the legislative process, the industry would break one of the cardinal rules of Washington: Never take yourself out of the ball game. . . Goldstone readily admits, "I know precious little about the way this city works." What he does know is that with the cost of the tobacco bill rising, investors have been dumping his company's shares. In the end, his walkout may do little to change that, either.
- Making Big Tobacco seem like a sympathetic victim takes some doing, but Congress has managed it. . . The companies' duty, however, is to their shareholders and customers. The Government and the anti- smoking lobby must recognize that fundamental fact, and make reasonable demands. In its zeal to reduce smoking -- and, not at all incidentally, to raise billions of dollars in new tax money -- Congress has overreached. . . . First, there will be no tobacco deal unless the industry can live with it. Second, the anti-smoking movement risks its moral capital if it gets too self-righteous. In California, a ban on smoking in bars has sparked something of a grass-roots rebellion. Now, in Washington, the anti-smoking movement is putting vindictiveness ahead of results.
- So it would serve all of them right if what they ended up with was also nothing. The tobacco companies thought they could buy protection from lawsuits after years of duplicity. The Washington pols had a windfall handed to them but have since proved they can be as greedy as Big Tobacco. If Congress fails to pass anything, then everyone will have to return to the product-liability battlefield in court. This is where longtime tobacco critic and sensible public-health advocate Elizabeth Whelan has said the issue properly belongs anyway. Juries can hardly behave worse than the politicians have. If we're lucky it'll be another Hundred Years War.
- The flagging sanity of the CEOs was evidenced by how, in spitting at the courtiers, they feigned a deep bond with the serfs, otherwise known as the "customers" and "consumers." . . That is because the country that is watching, the serfs, the customers, are no longer naive about Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, and the skinny women of Virginia Slims. Big Tobacco had to come to the table in the first place because it knew it had forever lost its image as the responsible corporate citizen. Its bombast this week was merely an attempt to see one last time if their congressional courtiers will bow and kiss their feet.
- The tide has turned so swiftly and unalterably that many may forget the dirty hands both parties have in protecting tobacco subsidies for farmers and profits for companies. Even if it does generate $15 billion a year now in tax revenues and sustains more than 650,000 jobs, it also kills 400,000 Americans a year. Maybe the politicians think they will have cleaner hands if they stop taking the money altogether and if they force the industry to stop marketing to kids. And maybe they will. But there is something sick about them counting the billions tobacco will pony up for social programs while hundreds of thousands continue to die. It's a cheap grace.
- Most important, new smokers (and there will be new ones every day) would not be so easily hooked. When they realize they should quit, they would have the ability to do so. We owe this to the children who will always try new things but don't have the wisdom or experience to avoid such a strong chemical addiction.
- President Clinton wants to hire more teachers and provide more day care. Minority lawmakers want black newspapers compensated for lost tobacco ads. Asbestos workers and veterans want some money, too, for their smoke-scarred lungs. How about paying for strapped Social Security or Medicare as well? The only thing the Senate tobacco bill says about how to spend $516 billion over 25 years is: "To Be Determined On The Floor." Translation: open season.
- The date was Jan. 15, and another batch of tobacco industry documents had just been made public. . . That evening, Bruce Reed, President Clinton's domestic policy adviser, appeared along with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer" to discuss youth smoking. When McCain assailed the administration for playing politics and dragging its feet on a tough cigarette bill, Reed angrily parried those charges. But he called the senator the next day to offer the administration's help in writing legislation. "That was a watershed," McCain recalled last week, "when the White House really shifted into gear."
- The cigarette industry's assault on a federal tobacco deal jeopardizes President Clinton's plan to spend billions of dollars from the proposed settlement on his prized social and health initiatives, including research programs that are vital to New England schools and businesses.
- At first glance, the tobacco industry's decision to fight Congress by mounting a public-relations campaign looks like a sure loser. It's not. Everything depends on how the issue is framed in the emerging public debate. President Clinton and both parties in Congress say this fight is about how to curb teen smoking, an issue many would find it hard to oppose. But the nation's big cigarette companies say it's really about a massive tax increase and expansion of big government. That kind of argument made Ronald Reagan president and Newt Gingrich speaker of the House. If the nation's cigarette companies persuade enough people it's true, they stand a chance of changing the political dynamic that is now pushing anti-tobacco legislation through Congress.
- When top executives of the nation's biggest tobacco companies gathered in the 26th-floor boardroom of Philip Morris's Manhattan headquarters last Monday, RJR Nabisco chief executive officer Steven F. Goldstone soon took control of the discussion over what do about what was happening in Washington. . . Along with a direct lobbying effort, industry's announced goal of reaching out to the American public to fight the McCain bill is already underway, with newspaper ads that began Thursday. The National Journal has reported that the industry plans to spend as much as $50 million on an advertising and grass-roots campaign to "bury the bill." Industry figures refused to say how much the campaign would cost, however. "It would be premature to assign a number to this," said industry spokesman Scott Williams.
- Tobacco companies are now the good guys. They are the victims of a zealous Congress. They really want kids to stop smoking. At least that's the message the companies are about to disseminate far and wide now that they've abandoned negotiations for a national tobacco deal.
- "Steve Goldstone spoke for 40 minutes yesterday," Morgan said . . . "How many of those words got to the American people? Very few. . . . The point [of the advertising] is to explain the fundamental failure of Washington, D.C." James B. Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida and the author of books about advertising and popular culture, said he isn't sure Americans will be listening. "I don't think they can spin their way out of this," Twitchell said. "They've spent too much time being naughty to have people believe that now they're nice, that they're heroes."
- First came Goldstone's speech to the National Press Club. This was followed within a few hours by declarations from the other companies that they were joining the walkout. The next morning came the advertisements in the national newspapers. All of this was carefully planned in advance dating back three months or more when the Goldstone speech was booked. The Commerce Committee's role has been to withhold from anyone a copy of the bill that was marked up in this committee. This has had the effect of preventing groups such as our coalition, public health, grass roots organizations and others opposed to the bill from seeing what it says and analyzing it. . . Tobacco lobbyists are working hard to persuade the Senate Majority Leader to quickly bring the bill up for a vote once the recess is over. The drumbeat of complaints from the tobacco industry about the bill is expected to provide political "cover" to those senators who wish to vote for a bill the industry favors.
- Pennsylvania SEN. ARLEN SPECTER thinks tobacco executives are blowing smoke with their angry public rejection of legislative efforts to reshape the regulation and legal liabilities of their industry.
- Under the skeptical eye of South Carolina's tobacco community, the primary sponsor of anti-cigarette legislation arrived in the Pee Dee Friday to explain himself. Farmers and their families wanted answers from U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Some of his responses were coolly received by the crowd . . .
- New York Comptroller H. CARL MCCALL said Friday he will try to use the state pension system's huge stock holdings to prevent tobacco companies from abandoning settlement talks with Congress. . . "I am particularly concerned that the unsettled nature of the public dialogue about tobacco will result in continued economic uncertainty and volatile stock prices," McCall wrote in a letter to chief executive officers for the three companies. "While any settlement must promote the long-term economic health of the company, it is equally important to shareholders that you reach a prompt settlement that effectively reduces youth smoking and ends the lingering controversy."
- State governments said Thursday a pullback by U.S. cigarette makers from a negotiated settlement of anti-tobacco lawsuits added up to a battle cry likely to yield years of courtroom fights. "... If the industry wants to play hardball, we'll play hardball back," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who helped shape last June's $368.5 billion pact to end state lawsuits against tobacco companies.
- But the industry has for 50 years successfully managed to kill almost every bill unfriendly to its interests, says John Coale, a Washington anti-tobacco attorney who helped to negotiate last summer's deal. And the industry has a long record of winning court cases. . . "If the industry wants to play hardball, we'll play hardball," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. . . Meanwhile, look for "a state-by-state battle," said Massachusetts' Harshbarger
- One lobbyist who has worked for the tobacco companies said, "If the industry can figure out how to get the message right and show a level of popular support for the idea that this bill represents taxes out of control, I've got to believe Republicans will scare first." But the tobacco companies have previously misgauged their diminished levels of political support in Congress, and the risk for them now is that their decision will only boomerang.
- Rep. Brian Bilbray has reason to be troubled by tobacco use. . . So why, then, has the tobacco-loathing Bilbray accepted $17,500 in campaign contributions from tobacco interests -- more than any other member of the San Diego congressional delegation -- during just three years in Washington? There are a number of reasons, explains the congressman. For openers, tobacco money is easy money. Bilbray sits on the House Commerce Committee
- The industry may rail but the course ahead is clear: Congress must stick to its goal of reducing future death and disease by reducing the number of young smokers.
- In the land where smoke rings filled the skies and nicotine raindrops dripped from every cloud, there once stood a vast and mighty fortress, and inside this fortress lived the Lords of the Leaf. . . But those they summoned had other ideas. . . The Lords of the Leaf were outraged. Never had anyone spoken to them in such a manner. "This agreement," they declared, "is dead." And no one knew more about dead than the Lords of the Leaf.
- So the tobacco lobby is going to the mattresses against the people elected to run the country. But this tactic could be as dangerous as smoking in bed for the purveyors of cancer-sticks. . . "For years the tobacco manufacturers have waged war on kids; now they're declaring war against the public health," fumed C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, and David Kessler, the former Food and Drug commissioner, in a joint blast. . . There seems to have been a seismic shift in the voting public's antipathy toward corporate barons who conspire to target kid smokers, then lie about it to Congress, then buy their way out of trouble with payoff-contributions to legislators who hide behind the smoke. The old racket is no longer in the shadows.
- The words were spoken by an evil man--Steven F. Goldstone, the merchant of death and illness who heads RJR Nabisco, one of the nation's leading tobacco companies. . . The intent of the words was duplicitous . . . Even so, the words are worth repeating, not only with regard to smoking, but much, much else. Goldstone talked about the "basic notions of personal responsibility and the consequences of free choice." . . But the slickest marketing campaigns bankrolled by the richest industries won't work if their target audiences refuse to be suckered. And this is what we must remind ourselves and teach our children: Don't be a sucker. . . Your choices have consequences and they are your responsibility.
- My, how I had missed them. Their sheer nerve, their unabridged bluster, their unparalleled corporate villainy. There was a tobacco mogul once again on the podium, whining about how Congress had betrayed him, declaring that the deal they struck last June was dead. And all I could think of was: YESSSSS, THEY`RE BACK! . . Much as I love to see a real good villain back up on the stage, their safest place is at the table. Somewhere in all that familiar bluster, I hear the tinny sound of a bluff.
- What never changes, though, is that Louise Hinson keeps losing people to cigarettes. She is 84, lives alone in a basement apartment in Raleigh, and is legally blind. But she hears things. The coughing. The stretchers being rolled past her door every once in a while. . . But nothing changes. In Washington, they'll dicker. And somewhere a 12-year-old boy will light up to feel like a man, a man who couldn't foresee what this blind mother saw.
- If a foreign nation -- Iran, Iraq, Libya -- had been caught launching a terrorist attack on this country, targeting our children with chemical or biological warfare, it would not take us long to start dropping bombs. . . While I'm jumping on the companies, it should be clear that the U.S. government, and specifically members of Congress, share the blame. Our leaders act statesman- like and tough now, but my friend suggests that many of them ought to be charged with "gross negligence" for not outlawing tobacco, for subsidizing the deadly product and for continuing to take large sums from the people they now want to regulate. It is a sad state all around, and I'm angry with everyone involved.
- Trailing along behind the hostess leading us to a table in an Atlantic Beach restaurant, I said, "Nonsmoking, please." "You must be from Raleigh!" she snapped over her shoulder. "We don't have a nonsmoking section." I said nothing, but thought to myself, "Some day, lady, you will!"
- History is in the making because Congress may ignore the tobacco companies and actually pass a regulatory bill without the industry's permission. What a concept! . . . And to the long and turbulent history of tobacco, we may add a new chapter -- Chapter 11.
- It is vital that any plan find a way to soften the blow from declining tobacco use to farmers and tobacco-dependent communities, but it does not take industry approval to do that. For its part, the industry has never shown much concern for tobacco farmers, and it is hypocritical for it to raise the specter of suffering farmers and dying small towns in an effort to protect its own bottom line. The tobacco industry, with its sly marketing campaigns, did much to create the problem of teenage smoking and made billions of dollars in the process. It is time for Congress to stand on its hind legs and prove that those days are over.
- This isn't about tobacco; the industry, which has lied about its practices, probably deserves whatever it gets. This is about greedy government shaking down private business and trampling on freedom.
- "Cocaine has been good. We paid for our mansion off cocaine. We educated our kids off cocaine. We paved our old driveway with blacktop off cocaine. We pay our property taxes. We pay the preacher on Sunday morning. We overhaul our vehicles, and we buy tires. We pay our insurance. And we pay our mules and runners, and give them Social Security and Medicare. And we just try to live right and do right off cocaine." Replace the word "cocaine" with "tobacco" and you pretty much have the emotional speech that tobacco farmer Mattie Mack gave to President Clinton in Brandenburg, Ky., Thursday. . . I know that there will be no solution to the curse of tobacco in this society until it is banned just like marijuana and cocaine are, and there probably won't be a solution even then.
- Anti-smoking activists have taken their eyes off the prize. . . You don't need the agreement of the tobacco industry to pass a law and a lot of things can be accomplished, like closer regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. But activists are dreaming if they think they can stifle the industry's First Amendment rights without some sort of tacit agreement. . . But anti-smoking activists are convinced they're finally getting their pound of flesh, which apparently is more important to them than the real prize. They shouldn't be surprised if it tastes like crow.
- He cast the sole vote in the Commerce Committee against bipartisan legislation . . . He proposed amendments that would add similar restrictions on the legal liability for companies that make medical devices and for charitable organizations. . . . "If limiting liability is OK for merchants of death, it is better for merchants of life," Ashcroft said.
- "Without the tobacco companies, we on the farms don't have anything," the farmer, George Abbott, informed the out-of-town visitor. "I agree," replied Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the architect of a far-reaching plan to reduce smoking drastically. "But we have a right to expect them to behave like responsible citizens." The debate over whether and how to regulate smoking is shaping up as this year's biggest legislative fight. And as the combatants prepare for the next phase of this bitter conflict, farmers find themselves -- finally -- in the middle. The question is: Will they come to Big Tobacco's aid?
- McCain, who may make a run for his party's presidential nomination, is totally dismissive of likely candidate Speaker Newt Gingrich and the rest of the House of Reps. "The House doesn't matter" in the political process, McCain tells the May issue of Esquire magazine.
- Sen. John McCain, the former Vietnam War prisoner spearheading the push for tobacco legislation, would rather be recognized for his work in Congress than for being a war hero, according to a magazine interview released Monday.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. last week said plans are under way to launch individual-company consumer ad campaigns on their positions relating to teen smoking and the economic danger of potential legislation against the industry. The ads would complement the industrywide advertising already in progress, handled by Bozell/Eskew, Washington and Malibu, Calif.
- Hear more about the industry's new resistance to the deal on Weekend Edition Saturday, as NPR's Dan Schorr speaks to Richard Daynard, head of the Tobacco Products Liability Project, and Martin Feldman, a tobacco analyst with Soloman Smith Barney in New York.
- This may mean that the government will be unable to impose restrictions on cigarette advertising. But Congress can still raise cigarette taxes and regulate nicotine as a drug. President Clinton and congressional leaders suggested that they were headed in that direction.
- It is hard to think of two native classes held in lower esteem than Washington politicians and tobacco company executives . . . Nonetheless, how the cigarette fight plays out here in the coming months could affect a lot more than the tobacco industry. It could set the scene for what other industries can expect to encounter when government, for one reason or another, is drawn into their affairs. . . Other industries now may be watching the destruction of the tobacco settlement as a sign there is not much future in offering concessions in negotiations with government, [Bill] McInturff says.
- "The president has chosen the battlefield of ideas," said Clinton's senior policy and political strategist, Rahm Emanuel, in a telephone interview. "The other side has chosen the battlefield of insult and innuendo. I don't expect Ken Starr to stop."
- Big Tobacco loves the McCain bill. In addition to the benefits it confers through tax deductibility, antitrust immunity and bankruptcy protections, it caps the industry's annual liability -- the tobacco companies' most cherished goal -- and grants substantial preemption of state and local laws.
- Amid sweat, shouts and half-eaten slices of pizza, key U.S. senators gathered behind closed doors last month to forge a sweeping tobacco control bill. Health advocates sat in, as did lawyers who had sued the industry. . . The affair marks a dramatic fall from political grace for the once-almighty tobacco industry, analysts say. How that came to pass, they add, is a tale of legal persistence, political bungling and long-buried sins from the industry's past, which emerged just in time to haunt them in Congress.
- As runaway antitobacco sentiment keeps pushing higher the cost of a tobacco deal, some Republicans are growing more sympathetic to industry complaints, and they worry about giving their dispirited conservative base another reason to stay home during the November elections. No matter how unpopular the tobacco industry is, says Georgia Rep. JOHN LINDER, chairman of the House Republican campaign committee, "to pass any tax increase is a mistake for us." . . If tobacco strategists really want to "burn the house down," notes GOP campaign consultant Bill McInturff, they'll fund independent "issue ads" blasting selected lawmakers for having supported other tax increases, without mentioning tobacco. Using similar discretion, he notes, tobacco companies quietly helped finance efforts to kill Mr. Clinton's big health-care plan four years ago without making themselves an issue in the debate. For that matter, Mr. Linder cites the GOP's 1994 success after blocking the health-care overhaul as evidence that opposing a seemingly popular Clinton initiative may not be as risky as some Republicans fear.
- President Clinton will take the lead in confronting a hostile tobacco industry and pushing tough anti-smoking legislation through Congress this year, administration officials say. "The important thing is that the president will be there, he will be the leader that pulls the final piece of legislation together," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
- But JEFFREY HARRIS, an MIT professor who studies the economics of the tobacco industry, disagreed. "So far I haven't been able to find a substantiation of why it would go bankrupt," Harris said in an inter view. "Any penalty imposed on the industry is going to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices."
- Children will be buying cigarettes from drug dealers in coming years if Congress approves a bill that raises cigarette taxes and restricts tobacco advertising, tobacco executives warned Sunday. "It would create the most massive black market this country has seen since the Prohibition days of the 1920s," chief tobacco industry negotiator J. Philip Carlton said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.
- "Big Tobacco has one of the highest profit margins of any American industry. . . . Their claims that a $1.10 or a $1.50 price increase will drive them into bankruptcy are crocodile tears," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. . . "A $1.10 per pack excise tax by itself will not bankrupt the industry -- it is the thousands of new claims that McCain's $6.5 billion liability fund will spawn, as lawyers line up to get their share of the proceeds," [Gary] Black wrote.
- Taking their complaint to the people, tobacco executives went on TV talk shows to argue that the bill pending in Congress would impose a huge, unfair, regressive tax on millions of people least able to afford it.
- Battle lines hardened Sunday in the fight over U.S. tobacco legislation, with the Clinton administration and Congress vowing to push their anti- smoking initiative and the industry promising an all-out effort to kill it unless changes are made. . . "We are out," Steven Parish, a senior vice president with Philip Morris Cos. Inc. told "Meet the Press." "We have to spend our time working with others who are adversely impacted by the proposals that are out there -- retailers, tobacco growers, smokers and others -- to try to make sure that no unreasonable legislation passes this year.
- Brushing off an industry boycott and threats of lawsuits, both Clinton administration officials and members of Congress say they are confident they'll pass tough anti-tobacco legislation by the end of this year. "We will get bipartisan legislation this year," Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala declared on Sunday. "There's no question about it because it's about public health."
- The teen tobacco problem will not be solved by punishing America's 47 million smokers. They have been punished enough. It's time for the Congress and the president to get over the greed that drives them and approve the agreement hammered out by a few attorneys general brave enough to go after smoking-related health costs and teen-age smoking in the first place.
- If Congress refuses to act, the only course is for the states to continue with their own lawsuits against tobacco. . . Pending legislation in the House Judiciary Committee would increase the state's authority to recover up to $5 billion in Medicaid costs . . . The House committee should bring this to a vote and put every lawmaker on record. Voters need to find out who is for the tobacco lobby.
- This is all an invitation to a real shoot-out. Congress has in hand liability exposure, taxes on tobacco, and plopping the whole business into the hands of the FDA with appropriate instructions. The tobacco people's heaviest weapon is the smokers. . . So what are the tobacco companies left with? A lot of money to wage a public fight, plus also the rather general impression that it is reasonable for them to do so. They aren't ready to call for Dr. Kevorkian.
- You see, pressured by legislative nannies . . . the state has embarked on a massive advertising campaign to warn us about the newest tobacco sin. . . This is a colossal waste of time, resources and creative energy. . . Smoking cigars is a pleasant and relaxing social custom. Period. . . Worse, and much more serious, social services agencies in California just reported that in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone there were roughly 150,000 cases of serious child abuse in a single year. . . How about an ad campaign about governmental priorities?
- It's time to redirect anger with the tobacco companies to the bill the Senate Commerce Committee passed 12 days ago. In its rush to punish the tobacco industry, the panel has thumbed its nose at the Constitution - and at individual liberty. . . The government has all but declared a group of legal businesses an enemy of the state. . . For that, comrade, a high price will be paid. It starts with firms signing away their constitutional rights in consent decrees inked with the states.
- If its latest scheme to snatch a half-trillion dollars in new cigarette taxes becomes law, Uncle Sam -- raking in a huge national sales tax -- will have a vested interest in the continuation of smoking. . . The tax-'em-to-death notion is a huge hoax designed to raise regressive sales taxes painlessly. Such taxing is no good for you just as smoking is no good for you. . . How, then, to help others kick the habit without making Government a smoking -tax addict? Control nicotine as the drug it is. Take the big marketing concessions squeezed out of the chastened industry before the deal-breakers waded in. And set an example for your own kids.
- My experience proves to me and to my pediatrician colleagues that the more serious the respiratory problem, the more likely the children affected are growing up with one or more smokers. I guarantee you that the majority of the 53,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics not only trust the science that proves the respiratory dangers of secondhand smoke, but that each one has had experiences like mine which prove those dangers beyond a shadow of doubt.
- To think a business that admits it has engaged in illegal and immoral acts would actually fret about a black market is absurd. . . Many cynics -- count us among them -- believe that Big Tobacco has never really bargained in good faith. Its purpose all along has been to hedge its bets and hope for the best. But as McCain has warned, the federal government can act either with or without the cooperation of the tobacco industry. Let the feds prove it.
- Congress seems finally to be realizing it doesn't need big tobacco's permission to pass tough tobacco legislation . . . It should pass stringent tobacco legislation this year with or without the blessing of Steven Gladstone, Philip Morris Companies and Lorillard Tobacco . . . Then it should retain the lesson that reform rarely comes willingly, and that action is always its prerogative.
- Week 265: A Spork of genius The Mogar -- A combination modem and cigar, this device can instantaneously and anonymously transport cigar smoke amazing distances, for use in guerrilla warfare against those tiresome tyrants who whine about secondhand smoke.
- If the goal is to keep children from smoking, the tax increase is necessary, some agreed-to advertising cutbacks may help, and some penalty for not cutting teen smoking would get the industry's attention. But punitive payments and liability protections have little to do with teen smoking. That is why it is necessary to define what the nation is seeking, and soon. It might lead Congress to a bill that will work and won't lead to interminable court challenges.
- The industry that says a tobacco deal will put it out of business is the same industry that said cigarettes don't hurt you. That's why it's lost even those of us who would once have walked a mile for a Camel.
- The tobacco companies say they fear bankruptcy. In the very Washington that Goldstone so unfairly characterized as anti-tobacco (why, just yesterday it swooned for the industry), this is taken as a real issue. In much of America, though, it would be considered tough noogies: The industry made a killing and now it ought to be killed. Fair's fair. That, though, will not happen. Goldstone is a lawyer, professionally trained to argue any cause. He and others in his industry have the nerve to argue for smokers' rights and to characterize an effort to price cigarettes out of the reach of kids as Big Government run amok. With allies like Majority Leader RICHARD ARMEY (R-Tex.) loathing taxes more than they love kids, they will fight on. It's clear they have no case. What's worse, they have no shame.
- Strip away the rhetoric from both sides - from Goldstone, shareholders, and from President Clinton, worried about polls - and what remains is the eternal American challenge, the balance between freedom and responsibility. . . Now tobacco is on the defensive, and so is Winston-Salem, where 500 businesses, accounting for $500 million in sales last year, were tied to tobacco. . . All this is a dagger to the heart of a community where people order bank checks printed with the slogan "Paid for by Tobacco"
- IF YOU WANT to support the National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act being crafted in Washington these days, try not to think too hard. . . Don't question whether an increased tax burden actually will reduce consumption, or if it will simply pinch smokers. Don't think of countries like France, where the average tax per pack is $2.61 . . . The important thing is that D.C. pols can look good by supporting as big a tax -- on the evil tobacco companies -- as possible. It doesn't matter if the tax reduces teen smoking, as advertised. The important thing is that the measure purports to to help kids. Therefore, it would be wrong to question any aspect of it.
- I asked, "Why do young people smoke?" Someone responded, "For the same reason older people smoke -- to stick something in our mouths besides our feet." "Suppose it will cost you $300 a carton for cigarettes? Would you still spend the money?" The boy looked up with a smile and said, "Try me."
- The farmer-related language, sponsored by Sen. Wendell Ford (D-Ky.) and dubbed the LEAF Act, was designed to protect growers and to thwart other congressional proposals that would have done away with the tobacco program.
- Fearing that inaction on tobacco could cost the party dearly in the November elections, some Republicans are grumbling that House Commerce Chairman Tom Bliley (R-Va) has been conspicuously silent on the issue that is dominating the Congressional agenda. "Had he made his intentions clear, perhaps the tobacco industry would not have pulled up stakes," said a senior aide to a Republican on the Commerce panel. "We have no idea what he is doing. None of us on the [committee] do."
- There's a great bit of advice for poker players: Look around the table. If you don't see the sucker, get up, because you're it. RJR Nabisco CEO Steven F. Goldstone just figured out that in one of the highest stakes games ever played in Washington, Big Tobacco is the sucker. . . Actually, tobacco has been hustled twice in this game. First time around was in the campaign-money chase. In 1997, 4 of the top 10 soft-money contributors to the GOP were cigarette makers. RJR alone gave almost $500,000, and Philip Morris gave $1 million. That bought Goldstone and friends a seat at the table. But little more. Tobacco has ended up in the worst place any industry can be. In an election year, pols are looking for money to spend. And whose money is it? Big Tobacco's.
- To put this headache behind them, they should offer to sell their domestic cigarette businesses to the federal government. A fair price would take account of the uncertainty hanging over tobacco today, and the benefit to their stocks if relieved of that uncertainty. Washington would take over the quandary of whether to settle the lawsuits and compensate sick smokers. The government seems bent on grabbing all the profits of smoking anyway. Let Washington take the blame for the millions of new teenage addicts who will be joining the ranks of regret in their wiser years. Let Washington finally decide whether it cares more about padding federal revenues--in which case it would keep promoting the cigarette brands it would now own--or about public health.
- This will represent a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the middle class, who will get the lion's share of the benefits. . . Most serious studies show that tobacco taxes fully cover the extra healthcare costs that smokers impose on society. So there is no economic justification to characterize the tobacco tax hike as a "user fee." Rather, Congress is taxing a personal choice that happens to be unpopular - except among the poor.
- I nodded. ``Remember how turned on we were when Humphrey Bogart lit a cigarette for Lauren Bacall?'' I said nostalgically. ``Before he died of lung cancer?'' R.J. frowned. ``Yes, but for some reason the people have turned against us,'' he said. . . . ``Disgusting,'' I said. ``Have you written your congressman?'' R.J. snorted. ``Talk about dishonest politicians." . . . ``Cigarettes don't kill people,'' he said proudly. ``Smoking kills people.''
- Tobacco farmers' pickup trucks suddenly are full of clout. . . Both Mr. McCain's visit and his cordial reception by about 1,000 farmers here mark a dramatic turnaround in the role the growers are playing in the latest efforts to reduce youth smoking and restrict cigarette advertising.
- Saying they fear for their corporate lives, the nation's largest cigarette companies are reverting to a time-honored tactic: divide and conquer. Lobbyists say they are pulling out the stops, in public and in private, to derail what they see as runaway proposals to tax or regulate the nation's $50 billion-a-year tobacco industry.
- "They tended to believe the caricature that money is the only thing that matters," says Vin Weber, a former House GOP leader who now consults for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. "Just money in the absence of any grass-roots constituency ... is a pretty dangerous path to go down." But an overemphasis on political contributions is just one mistake. In retrospect, a series of steps led to tobacco's break with the party that it had assumed would be its last line of defense.
- "Everybody, including the President and the Congress, is ignoring the fact that the Clinton-McCain tax bill would saddle 25% of adult Americans with the largest consumer tax increase in the history of the country," said Mike Hambrick, senior vice president of the National Smokers Alliance, a national grassroots group representing the interests of America's 50 million adult smokers. "Politicians say they want to punish the tobacco industry, but it's adult smokers who will pay the $500 billion price tag," said Hambrick.
- The U.S. Treasury Department estimates the cost of tobacco use to American society is about $130 billion a year -- $80 billion in lost wages and $50 billion in health costs. The $6.5 billion annual cap on tobacco liability awards translates into about 5-cents on the dollar each year for existing damage claims against the tobacco companies. The $6.5 billion annual cap works out to about 30-cents a pack of cigarettes.
- Excluded were: union sponsored health funds; cities; counties; many elements of the federal government such as the Veterans Administration, government employee health care funds, Medicare and Medicaid, the military; the labor movement; single employers; Blue Cross and Blue Shield; other insurance companies; second-hand smoke inhalers; the asbestos workers and the mine workers, among others. In addition to the above, also excluded was the public health community (the real public health community, not the ersatz version called Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, a public policy advertising and public relations lashup that would have benefited financially from the proposed deal).
- This raises the question: To what extent are the politicians actually proposing to treat grown-ups like kids? Even assuming the taxes deter teen smokers as promised, this means that the government would rely on a dwindling band of aging hard-core addicts for more and more of its revenue. Do we really want that? Which brings me to the second problem in the current debate: The normal rules of cost-benefit analysis seem to have been completely suspended. . . Actually, it will be sponsored in part by the millions of middle-class Americans who own stock in the tobacco companies through mutual funds. But no one likes to talk about that.
- As he stopped by the bank to pick up more much-needed cash, Joe explained that Big Tobacco's attacks on the Commerce bill were "just part of our little game, playing hard to get. Really, we love the bill, but we've been in bed with Congress so long, sometimes you have to shake things up to put some romance back in a relationship."
- The plain fact is that the tobacco companies will have almost no influence over their fate before Congress. If the left is united, the right will have to go along. . . Only if the Democrats decide to kill the bill - preferring the issue to the achievement - by voting for an unacceptably tough alternative to Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) proposal will the legislation fail to pass. . . If Republicans and Democrats and tobacco companies all move in the orbit dictated by their own self-interests, the McCain bill will pass and the tobacco companies will be forced to accept its provisions. There is only one unknown: Never, never, never underestimate the capacity of the Republican Party to commit suicide.
- Sen. John Ashcroft says unless Republicans substantially cut taxes, Democrats could take control of the House and Senate this year. Appearing on CNN's "Evans and Novak," the Missouri Republican said the American people "gave us the majority expecting us to relieve some of this onerous tax burden". . .Ashcroft cast the only dissenting vote in the Commerce Committee's 19-1 passage of a tobacco control bill earlier this month.
- GUESTS: STEVEN PARRISH Senior Vice President Philip Morris, DONNA SHALALA, Senator BILL FRIST, (R-Tenn.), Representative HENRY WAXMAN, (D-Ca.)
- One idea is to adopt limited ad restrictions that were in a 1996 FDA rule. The Commerce Committee staff believes that unlike limits now in the bill, the FDA limits could withstand court challenges. The staff also looks for ways to impose penalties for failing to reduce underage smoking without violating the industry's due-process rights.
- While the tobacco bill being considered in the Senate would indeed force companies to raise cigarette prices sharply, economists think it is unlikely that the increases would lead the market to crater. After all, cigarettes would still be a bargain in the U.S. compared with what they go for in most developed nations. In addition, while bankruptcy-court protection offers benefits, it has so many drawbacks for most of the tobacco companies that many legal experts consider it only a remote possibility -- unless the industry is hit with catastrophic damage awards in litigation. Another major drawback is that companies in Chapter 11 cede control over many major business decisions to a bankruptcy judge and committees of warring creditors. That effectively gives a judge power over many executive compensation and marketing decisions. A judge could even decide to disclose sensitive documents that might exacerbate legal or regulatory problems. Some legal authorities believe a bankruptcy judge could even require the cigarette industry to fundamentally change the way it does business to minimize future liability.
- "But that's where the Clinton factor comes in," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "President Clinton has made tobacco such a major part of his agenda this year that Democrats are clearly identified, whether they want to be or not, as anti-tobacco. "So even though Baesler's a tobacco farmer, for example, he's going to have to work hard to counter the impression that he agrees with Clinton's tobacco stance. And that will be hard. I'll bet you on Election Day that most tobacco farmers will vote Republican."
- "They are back to square one," said John Fithian, an attorney for the Freedom to Advertise Coalition, a group of seven national advertising and publishing groups. "The government is going to have a hard time forcing restrictions on the industry without the industry's cooperation." Steven F. Goldstone, RJR Nabisco's chief executive, said that the company will go back to business as usual, being responsible but also competitive. What does that mean?
- In defiantly deciding to fight tobacco legislation this year, the tobacco industry has worsened its pariah status - it's now the apartheid South Africa of industries - and has increased chances that a punitive law will pass. . . Big Tobacco now has few supporters besides Rush Limbaugh and Patrick Buchanan - the same people who supported South Africa.
- TOBACCO For-79/Against-19 The Senate voiced opposition to granting tobacco companies immunity against lawsuits as part of any settlement approved by Congress.
- Then there is JERRY KLEPNER, who recently moved from being a senior vice president at Ketchum Public Relations to being a director at BLACK, KELLY. Klepner, the former assistant secretary of health and human services for legislative affairs, took some tobacco business with him. Specifically: the COALITION FOR THE NATIONAL TOBACCO SETTLEMENT, which is the state attorneys general who negotiated last year's tobacco pact with the industry. But Black, Kelly also represents UST Inc., parent of UNITED STATES TOBACCO CO., one of the big tobacco manufacturers. No problem, says Klepner. "There are other clients with other people" at the firm. CHARLES BLACK, a veteran Republican operative, is one of those working for UST, along with MARK DISLER, former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- The National Smokers Alliance today challenged Arizona Senator John McCain to explain why Arizona's adult smokers should bear the financial burden of any federal tobacco legislation.
- The National Smokers Alliance today challenged Senator Fritz Hollings to justify legislation he has introduced that would rip apart the underpinnings of South Carolina's traditional tobacco economy and, at the same time, place a huge financial burden on South Carolina smokers.
- John R. Garrison Congress can enact strong legislation, like the Healthy Kids Act, introduced by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., without the permission of the tobacco industry. So let's hope Clinton and Congress don't blink. Let's call Big Tobacco's big bluff.
- By trashing Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) tobacco legislation, the tobacco industry has effectively deflected attention from even harsher proposals, according to Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). "They're trying to make the McCain bill the ceiling rather than the floor," he said in an interview on CNBC Monday.
- Health directors from King, Pierce, Spokane, Snohomish, Clark and Skagit counties met with U.S. Sen. PATTY MURRAY and former Congressman JAY INSLEE, now Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, today to respond to the tobacco industry's decision to walk out on settlement talks with Congress.
- Health directors from King, Pierce, Spokane, Clark, Snohomish and Skagit counties will meet with U.S. SEN. PATTY MURRAY and former Congressman JAY INSLEE, Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 20 to respond to the tobacco industry's walk-out of settlement talks with Congress.
- GOP aides said the developments over the recess on the tobacco front will force Members to pick up the pace on anti-smoking legislation. "We can't sit around and watch anymore," said one leadership source. "This will consume a lot of leadership's time in coming weeks." . . House Speaker NEWT GINGRICH (R-Ga) and CONFERENCE SECRETARY PRYCE, head of the GOP's tobacco task force, are nowhere near the stage of writing a comprehensive anti-smoking bill.
- House Republican leaders are discussing tobacco legislation that would impose an excise tax on cigarettes and that may withhold from cigarette makers the liability protections they have been seeking. The provisions under discussion would be narrower than either the June 20 agreement negotiated by the cigarette makers or the Senate's tobacco legislation proposed by Sen. John McCain. Also being discussed is granting the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products and the possibility of settling lawsuits filed by individual states against the tobacco industry.
- "It's the damnedest situation I've ever seen in my life," said one lobbyist for Philip Morris. "I love Philip Morris. It's a well-run company. They're fantastic to work for. But the bottom line is it's the fourth quarter with one minute left and we have to drive 99 yards three times."
- Constituencies as diverse as button-down Chamber of Commerce types and fast food junkies are preparing an aggressive campaign to revise or kill a national tobacco policy crafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). In most cases, objections have little to do with the dangers of smoking. But the alliances signal a new, and potentially deadly, phase for this year's biggest legislative initiative.
- The answer lies in one of the universal truths of the influence business: The higher-profile the issue, the less lobbyists can do about it. Tobacco has become what James Thurber, a political scientist at American University in Washington, calls "a macro-political issue. Someone can get elected or defeated based on what they do with it."
- What all this means is that the course of tobacco legislation is at an early stage. Many twists and turns lie ahead. The outcome is unclear. What is certain is that there will be plenty of grist for the television talk shows over the next several months.
- Attorney General Carla Stovall remains optimistic that Congress and the nation's tobacco companies will settle their differences and reach a settlement.
- U.S. Sen. Larry Craig said he would support a bill to increase cigarette prices by $1.21 per pack by the year 2003 and restrict advertising to reduce the appeal of tobacco products to youth if it is "the final product." But the Idaho Republican says Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain's bill is only the starting point for a final measure.
- Deep in the heart of Virginia's flue-cured tobacco belt, many farmers are holding out hope that the struggle in Washington over national tobacco policy will leave their livelihoods intact. And they're getting a sudden education about Washington politics as their leaders dash back and forth to the nation's capital to lobby, and as their U.S. representatives come calling at home.
- Bath County's economy is hooked on tobacco, members of the Bethel Homemakers Club say. "We'd be complete paupers without it," said Jean Rawlings, 75. So on Election Day, tobacco will be the top issue on voters' minds around this small town, where all eyes are on Congress and pending legislation to raise cigarette prices. "Right now, they're deciding our fate," says Lillian Church, 76, a tobacco farmer.
- The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. BILL ARCHER of Texas, has proposed spending billions on tax breaks to help people who receive no medical benefits from employers to buy health insurance. GINGRICH and House Republican leaders like Archer agree that the money must be "returned to the taxpayers with a strong emphasis on health-care tax cuts," said ARI FLEISCHER, the spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee. House Republicans may pass their own tobacco bill this year, and try to resolve their differences with the Senate in conference, Fleischer said Saturday. "The Senate will do as it sees fit, the House will do as it sees fit, and we will meet and resolve it," he said.
- "It's going to be very hard to get through the Congress," Gingrich said of the McCain proposal, which would levy penalties of more than a half-trillion dollars on the tobacco industry. "That bill is a very liberal, big government, big bureaucracy bill, and those people who say that's not a Republican bill, they're right."
- "It's going to be very hard to get through the Congress, a bill which gives big government more money for more bureaucrats," Gingrich said in an interview to be broadcast Saturday on CNBC's "Tim Russert" show.
- Amid mounting criticism of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) tobacco proposal, the House Republican leadership is considering a wholly different alternative that would fold an anti-teenage smoking initiative into a broader anti-drug package. Though House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and other lawmakers have raised this prospect in the past, recent support for the plan appears to have grown as key Republicans are focusing on the tax and spending aspects of the McCain bill.
- "The president has to lead, just as he is leading this issue in talking to the American people. The president of the United States is the only one with his size megaphone," McCain said. . . "They never said definitively what they wanted the final package to look like," McCain said. "They're still saying, `Good package, good legislation, but not good enough.' Well, what's good enough? What is it that they specifically want that would make it good enough? It's time to say that."
- Legislation raising cigarette prices and imposing advertising and marketing restrictions on tobacco products could reduce smoking in the United States by 45 percent but would also create a black market for cigarettes, the Congressional Budget Office has concluded. A $1.50 increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes, coupled with advertising and marketing restrictions, would reduce smoking by 32 percent to 45 percent over 25 years, the budget office said.
- It's about greed, and greedy politicians will never be mistaken for angels. Government not only seeks to enrich itself at the expense of tobacco consumers, but also sees its war against tobacco as an opportunity to expand police-state powers.
- Higher taxes -- as long as they don't amount to a back-door Prohibition -- and an end to subsidies should be the focus of a bill. The provision of liability protection for manufacturers in exchange for industry payments to settle victims' claims and promote curbs on teen smoking is also a defensible idea. Nothing has ever stopped Congress from taking measures to deter teen smoking, except political will. Now we'll find out if Congress has the will.
- When a modern pro athlete jumps to a new team and says, "It's not about the money," everyone instantly knows it's about the money. This is also the way to understand the political frenzy to shaft the rich mine of Big Tobacco.
- I fear the precedent of the anti-smoking remedies now before the Congress. What will they be used for next? Perhaps fat. Excuse me, Big Fat. . . How about a fat tax? . . . You think I'm going too far? Read the wording of some of the anti-tobacco bills and you'll appreciate that going too far is the name of their game. Defenders of today's anti-tobacco tactics can argue that the problem is so serious, the enemy so powerful, that extreme action is surely justified in response. But that old refrain -- extremism in pursuit of vice -- is still crazy, after all these years.
- Tobacco spokesmen insist that this time they are telling the truth. But some of the industry's statements, while true, still sound preposterous. For instance, in his speech this month announcing the industry's walkout, RJR Nabisco chairman STEVEN GOLDSTONE emphasized that only 2 percent of cigarette sales are made to children under 18. Granted. But almost all smokers start when they are underage. His point is comparable to arguing that no one need worry about sixth-graders who cannot read because only a small percentage of illiterate people are sixth-graders. . . But the bill would spare the companies from having to fight lawsuits from dozens of different state governments. And it would limit the damages the industry would have to pay in private legal claims to $6.5 billion a year. That may be better than nothing. Even if the industry agrees, it cannot say so publicly. To do so would bury the legislation.
- House Speaker Newt Gingrich said President Clinton's push for a tobacco bill is motivated not by a desire to save children from smoking-related diseases but by a liberal agenda to raise taxes and create bigger government. For their part, the president and Vice President Al Gore said Mr. Gingrich and other congressional Republicans were simply toeing the line for the tobacco companies and would not dare do anything to hurt their standing with the GOP's biggest political contributors.
- Without specifying what such legislation would entail, Speaker Newt Gingrich said at a news conference, "I think that we should look seriously at including an anti-teen-smoking provision in an omnibus bill designed to bring down illegal drug addiction." At a separate news conference, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, said he agreed with the Gingrich approach. But the White House rejected it out of hand
- President Clinton led a Democratic barrage yesterday accusing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) of being a mouthpiece for the cigarette industry in remarks that highlighted the White House's readiness to sharpen partisan lines over tobacco. While professing eagerness to work with Republicans on comprehensive legislation to curb youth smoking, Clinton, Vice President Gore, and congressional Democratic leaders pounced on remarks Gingrich made at a fund-raiser Monday night to question the speaker's and other House Republicans' sincerity.
- President Clinton and House Republican leaders lobbed verbal grenades across Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday on the issues of tobacco and needle exchange.
- Clinton, along side Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., gave the GOP a taste of the sort of politics they can expect if it doesn't get behind the tobacco bill.
- Appearing in the White House Rose Garden Tuesday after meeting with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, the president took aim at the Joe Camel character, which he said was designed to "hook our children early to the deadly habit of smoking."
- Sweeping anti-tobacco legislation endorsed by President Clinton received a cold shoulder Tuesday from Senate Republican leaders, who said they pefer a narrow bill proposed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich focusing only on teen smoking and drug use. Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles of Oklahoma said he wants to put teen anti-smoking and legislation calling for stiffer sentences for drug crimes together in the same bill as a way of addressing tobacco policy this election year.
- The continued accusations by the President that we market cigarettes to children are wrong and irresponsible. . . We invite the President to Winston-Salem to learn for himself how we conduct our business.
- "Just as the insurance industry's opposition to reforming managed care accounts for the lack of movement on a Patient Bill of Rights, the tobacco companies who oppose an anti-teen smoking bill have turned Speaker Gingrich from a cautious supporter to an outright crusader to stop any meaningful tobacco legislation."
- Partisan bickering over comments made by Gingrich at a fund-raiser erupted as White House officials met with Republican Sen. John McCain, the sponsor of a bipartisan anti-smoking bill now before Congress. . . The president accused Gingrich of letting the tobacco companies off the hook, asserting that the Joe Camel cartoon character was the "star" of tobacco executives' efforts to entice teenagers to the smoking habit. "Even as the executives denied they were targeting children, Joe Camel became as recognizable to them as Mickey Mouse," Clinton said in a Rose Garden appearance. "Medical science and common sense make it plain: Teen smoking has everything to do with Joe Camel."
- His outburst had an aide scurrying to explain to reporters that Gingrich had not meant to suggest that the Joe Camel ads, which have become the symbol for tobacco industry efforts to market cigarettes to children, were benign. The fact is, Gingrich probably did not intend to say that and his timing was unfortunate, coming the same day that a tobacco executive was defending Joe Camel in court in a case brought by the state of Minnesota.
- "He's adopted the industry line," White House spokesman MIKE MCCURRY told reporters. "It's becoming clearer and clearer that the speaker is speaking on behalf of the tobacco industry."
- "In order to understand what's happened with teen smoking, this is not complicated. It has nothing to do with JOE CAMEL." Gingrich said Monday that a much greater cause of teen smoking was the example of Hollywood stars smoking on screen and he cited the example of "TITANIC" and its male lead LEONARDO DICAPRIO.
- A new social scourge will soon appear on America's doorstep. Along with illegal narcotics and endangered wildlife, US border agents will have to search for bootleg tobacco. On city streets and in mall parking lots, contraband smokes will be surreptitiously sold to teenagers out of car trunks. At least that's the way the tobacco companies paint the future if Congress goes ahead with its plans to add a $1.10-per-pack tax on cigarettes. Such a large fee, they say, will spawn smuggling reminiscent of Prohibition days.
- A defiant President Clinton vowed yesterday to fight for sweeping legislation to limit smoking as evidence mounted that a tough tobacco regulatory proposal may be in trouble on Capitol Hill. Faced with grumblings from key Republicans and an all-out offensive by the tobacco industry, Clinton positioned himself squarely as a champion of America's children who face the dangerous lure of smoking.
- Seizing on a political opening given him by Speaker NEWT GINGRICH, President Clinton went before television cameras yesterday to implore Congress once more to pass a strong anti-smoking bill. In response, Gingrich's press secretary issued a statement saying that "landmark legislation" on tobacco would be approved this year. But there was no indication that Clinton and Gingrich agreed on what such legislation would entail. And the Senate Republican leader, TRENT LOTT of Mississippi, seemed less than enthusiastic about the prospects for tobacco legislation.
- "In the days to come, the tobacco industry will doubtless raise objection after objection and will work behind closed doors to persuade Congress to pass half measures that will not reduce teen smoking," Clinton said. "But I believe the majority of the American people and, indeed, the majority of Congress, members of both parties in Congress, will see this for what it is -- a tobacco industry smoke screen."
- All these children have been targeted by a massive, multimillion-dollar media campaign that preys on their insecurities and their dreams," Clinton said. "We have an opportunity and an obligation now to put aside politics, to turn aside the pleas of special interests, to act in the interest of the health of generations of our children." The legislation, proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would codify a settlement reached last year.
- President Bill Clinton Monday accused the U.S. tobacco industry of trying to derail comprehensive anti-smoking legislation and urged Congress to resist the pressure. "We are fighting for lives of our children. We are fighting for the public health, and we are fighting against predatory practices by tobacco companies that have targeted our children," Clinton said in an appearance in the White House Rose Garden.
- "There is a growing understanding across the country that Washington's real agenda is to fund a huge tax-and-spend program while saying it wants to pass comprehensive legislation. The industry has been open and honest about what it can and will do to transform the way tobacco products are manufactured, marketed, and sold in this country. Instead of seeking a comprehensive solution that will work, Washington has decided that politics is more profitable for government. The industry does not expect to win a popularity contest, but the country does not like big brother government run amok. The tobacco plan the Administration supports will raise over half a trillion dollars in new taxes to fund a host of programs and special interests unrelated to smoking and public health. It will create 17 new federal bureaucracies, and force the price of a pack of cigarettes over $5 in five years, which will in turn create a huge black market that will have unregulated access to kids."
- Calling legislation sponsored by Senator John McCain "totally unreasonable," Philip Morris Cos. Inc. chief executive officer GEOFFREY BIBLE said the company will apply its energies to oppose the legislation because of the devasting impact it would have on the company.
- Philip Morris will now apply its energies to oppose the McCain Bill because of the devastating impact it would have on our company, our stockholders, our employees, customers, retailers, consumers, suppliers, growers, and others. . . If you agree with me that the McCain Bill, or similarly punitive legislation, should be rejected, I urge you to communicate your views to the President, your Senators, and your House Representative. If you would like information as to the address or telephone number of your elected representatives, please call 1-888-609-9300.
- Hypocrisy is seldom in short supply in Washington . . . The bill is about money and what politicians want to do with it, and the kids are mostly an excuse. . . And what about kids smoking? The best estimate is that only 3 to 5 percent of all cigarettes are sold to teenagers, and, as a Cornell University study said earlier this month, "Higher taxes will have a statistically insignificant impact on youth decisions to start smoking." Congress should back away from the anti-tobacco bill, and McCain should come home where he belongs.
- The ads roaring out of newspaper pages and TV sets are scary enough to cower women and children under kitchen tables: "$500 Billion In New Taxes!" . . . These nightmares are brought to you by Big Tobacco, an industry that peddled cigarettes for 80 years portraying sexy, healthy, youthful smokers cavorting on beaches, ski slopes and yachts. . . Know what? They're going to win. . . What or who changed Newt's mind? Will the House pass another war-on-drugs bill, ignoring nicotine as poison in a class with heroin and cocaine? Will voters care in November? Stand back for Big Tobacco's thunder. John McCain, Saint of Lost Causes, will be stampeded by the big-dollar blitz. The tobacco bill is dead as an ashtray of yesterday's burned-out butts.
- The beauty part, as Washington reckons it, is that the least desirable and most expendable people in the population -- poor blacks and poor whites who are the most addicted -- will pay for this tawdry scheme with their health and many with their lives. They'll pay the taxes that pay for a lot of government goodies for the middle class, where the votes are.
- Tobacco growers should weigh the benefits of being at the table when the anti-smoking deal is cut, holding the cards of assurances of their golden parachute, against the prospect of going over that cliff with the cigarette makers.
- Enforcement will not be easy, but restricting the behavior of American corporations abroad is not new. Federal law, for example, makes it illegal for American companies to bribe foreign governments. Tobacco legislation would be incomplete if the industry was allowed simply to redirect its pernicious practices to lucrative new foreign markets.
- Yes, the tobacco companies may challenge some of these provisions in court, and they may win some battles. That's how the law ought to work in this country -- a Congress expressing the people's will, courts deciding the limits of their Constitution, enforcement agencies applying the result. Last time we looked, there were only three branches of government, and tobacco wasn't among them.
- Leader Trent Lott raised questions on Wednesday about the cost of the Senate tobacco bill but denied he had decided to kill it in favor of a narrower anti-smoking initiative. Lott said the fate of tobacco legislation is an "open question" but that the "odds are that the Senate would go with something bigger" than the smaller scale approach that House leaders and a few Senate conservatives have discussed.
- "My last contact with Trent -- he would like to see everybody in agreement and he wants to know the White House position, but he still intends to bring the bill up as previously scheduled," McCain said.
- Lott denied reports that he had decided to back away from the bill drafted by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, which has bipartisan support, and instead support a scaled-back approach favored by Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate. "The starting point at this point is McCain," Lott said. But he added that if there really are 17 new federal agencies in that bill, as the tobacco industry contends, "it has to be taken out."
- President Clinton and top White House officials presented a key Republican senator with their requirements for tobacco legislation, including bigger penalties for industry failures to curb underage smoking and broader secondhand-smoke restrictions.
- Listen as NPR's Brian Naylor reports on the day's events for All Things Considered. . . Listen to more on the story in this Morning Edition report from Minnesota Public Radio's Elizabeth Stawicki in St. Paul.
- House Speaker Newt Gingrich said President Clinton's push for a tobacco bill is motivated not by a desire to save children from smoking-related diseases but by a liberal agenda to raise taxes and create bigger government. For their part, the president and Vice President Al Gore said Mr. Gingrich and other congressional Republicans were simply toeing the line for the tobacco companies and would not dare do anything to hurt their standing with the GOP's biggest political contributors.
- Without specifying what such legislation would entail, Speaker Newt Gingrich said at a news conference, "I think that we should look seriously at including an anti-teen-smoking provision in an omnibus bill designed to bring down illegal drug addiction." At a separate news conference, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, said he agreed with the Gingrich approach. But the White House rejected it out of hand
- President Clinton led a Democratic barrage yesterday accusing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) of being a mouthpiece for the cigarette industry in remarks that highlighted the White House's readiness to sharpen partisan lines over tobacco. While professing eagerness to work with Republicans on comprehensive legislation to curb youth smoking, Clinton, Vice President Gore, and congressional Democratic leaders pounced on remarks Gingrich made at a fund-raiser Monday night to question the speaker's and other House Republicans' sincerity.
- President Clinton and House Republican leaders lobbed verbal grenades across Pennsylvania Avenue on Tuesday on the issues of tobacco and needle exchange.
- BURNED by embarrassing documents, abandoned by its political supporters, its executives accused of lying under oath -- apparently that's still frowned on in some circles -- the feckless tobacco industry finds itself vilified as never before. That is the backdrop for the appalling bill that has emerged from the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain. His proposed legislation is harmful policy and unconstitutional to boot. But Congress seems willing to overlook such details when the spoils amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.
- THE TOBACCO companies are trying to change the subject in Congress. They don't want to have a debate about tobacco, which they can't win. They are trying to make intrusive regulation the issue instead. The ads turn the subject upside down, dwell not on the harm tobacco does but on the harm that would be done by the amount of government intervention in people's lives that would be employed to curb its use. . . This isn't and ought not be converted into either a political or ideological issue, and not a budget issue, either. Tobacco is a unique product. Its disastrous effect on public health and the duplicitous history of the industry both make it so. What happens to it is not a threat to other industries.
- Gingrich echoes the rhetoric of the tobacco industry . . . And labeling the measure "liberal" -- really an outrageous stretcher -- is habitual Republican-speak for stomp it, squash it, destroy it forever. The tobacco bill still has its advocates. But given the public outrage at the tobacco companies, it's surprising that tough legislation is encountering opposition. One can only hope that outrage may yet triumph over campaign contributions.
- But that doesn't mean we should use this as an excuse to increase taxes on hardworking Americans. I believe we should do everything we can to stop children from smoking. We should increase penalties on those who sell to minors. We should remove cigarette vending machines from areas accessible to children. We should launch a public education campaign urging children to stop both smoking and drug abuse. But we shouldn't increase taxes. The American people are taxed enough as it is.
- With President Clinton and House Republicans engaged in a bitter partisan fight, chances of a comprehensive tobacco bill passing Congress have suddenly faded. After losing the first round, Big Tobacco has won the second. The question now is whether more fighting over the next few months will change the outcome.
- Democrats have a new political weapon in the tobacco wars: "Smokin' Newt and the Hard Pack," a red-lettered poster of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's smiling face replacing that of Joe Camel as the cigarette icon offers up an open pack of cigarettes. The attack poster, unveiled Wednesday on Capitol Hill, underscores how both parties are jockeying to position themselves for fall elections that could tip control of the House
- But underlying this struggle over modern America's cultural icons is the traditional battle between Right and Left, with the former accused of flinty-hearted support of business against the public welfare and the latter depicted as cynically tugging at social consciences to take more money from taxpayers' wallets.
- A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans are suspicious of the motives of President Bill Clinton and members of Congress who want to impose new taxes on smokers. Increasing tax revenues, rather than deterring teen smoking, is the main motive of the bill, say 70 percent of poll respondents.
- As the federal government, Congress and the tobacco industry face off for a potentially long battle, more war talk is coming from Black America. Politicians, health experts, and organizations want to forge a massive movement and force the tobacco industry to compensate Blacks for the havoc cigarette addiction and tobacco marketing have wreaked on the community's health.
- From campaign finance reform to the tobacco legislation, Jim Lehrer talks with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott about the major issues facing Congress and the nation.
- Senate Republicans have criticized the sweeping tobacco legislation proposed by Sen. John McCain. In a Newsmaker interview, Sen. McCain, chair of the Commerce Committee, discusses his troubled bill.
- In a Newsmaker interview with Jim Lehrer, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) discusses issues before Congress, from campaign finance reform to tobacco legislation to NATO expansion.
- The very same lawmakers who until recently could not put enough distance between themselves and the cigarette manufacturers now are making the case for why the only tobacco bill with bipartisan support is too onerous for the companies. As a result, Congress' drive to pass legislation aimed at curbing smoking is in danger of stalling out.
- Despite a week of partisan sniping and an expensive media assault by the tobacco industry, Republican senators still were committed to passing a new national tobacco policy and to using the bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to get them to their goal.
- Tobacco companies are ready to fight states' lawsuits for billions of dollars for Medicaid spending on smokers all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a top executive said yesterday. Steven F. Goldstone, chairman and chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., took the industry's aggressive, 2-week-old campaign against federal tobacco control initiatives to Wall Street yesterday.
- "If Washington wants a monopoly, I can tell you right now, they can take the keys to our factories," said Steven Goldstone, chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco, the maker of Camel and Winston cigarettes. "But they cannot have it both ways. They want to preserve private enterprise to fulfil the role of scapegoat for all the tobacco controversies, and they also want to take all of our revenues to pay for new bureaucracies and spending programmes. "Washington's plan for Wall Street is for Wall Street to invest the capital and take the risk, but for only the government to get the returns."
- Louisville-based Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. has commissioned prominent Lexington lawyer LARRY FORGY to help spread the word that the proposed half-trillion dollar national tobacco settlement is unacceptable. Forgy, a leading figure in Republican politics in Kentucky for 30 years and two-time candidate for governor, said yesterday he'll speak at club and community meetings in the coming weeks.
- The tobacco industry is arguing in a hard-sell ad campaign that passage of anti-smoking legislation would lead to a cigarette black market and a huge new federal bureaucracy to monitor tobacco sales. Rebuffed even by their allies in Congress, the tobacco companies have turned for support outside the Capital Beltway.
- "I'm done making a point to these people in Washington," [Goldstone] said. "They want taxes, they want taxes, they want taxes. They want to grow that federal government as big as they can get and they really don't care about the merits of these issues. . . Washington needs to be challenged to face up to these choices," he said. "They can't have private enterprise make tobacco products if the government is going to take all the financial return from these enterprises."
- "My discussions now are going to be with the American people." . . "What amazes me, all of this from a Republican Senate," Goldstone said in a speech heard by reporters via telephone.
- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Steven Goldstone launched a scathing polemic against Washington politicians Friday, insisting the government has failed to properly address current concerns about smoking. Goldstone, whose address to analysts in New York highlighted the pressure tobacco industry leaders have felt in recent months, said a host of alternatives existed: prohibition of tobacco, government takeover of the industry - which he said was a "real possibility" - and the current system: corporate control of the industry.
- House Speaker Newt Gingrich detailed a framework for possible action on tobacco legislation, warning he would resist a price increase so big that it might create a black market.
- President Clinton urged Democrats Friday to "bear down" and help pass a national tobacco settlement, increase spending for education and child care and expand the Medicare program.
- This week, with the tobacco industry battling new antismoking legislation in Washington, top cigarette company executives met with growers behind closed doors in a tobacco-state hotel to enlist their support. But some Virginia growers who attended were skeptical. The companies didn't talk about the levels of domestic tobacco they might intend to buy in the future because an attorney expert on antitrust issues who was present warned them not to do so, he said. The officials included Michael E. Szymanczyk, chief executive of Philip Morris USA, and executives from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Lorillard and Brown & Williamson. Many growers have complained that they're operating in a climate of political and economic uncertainty, and they'd like to have commitments from the companies about their future tobacco purchase intentions.
- Top tobacco executives -- seeking farm community support to fight a $506 billion anti-smoking bill -- slipped quietly into Charlotte Thursday for a four-hour, closed-door meeting with Southeastern tobacco farm leaders. "The generals were here today, and we were pleased," said Robert Caldwell, president of the N.C. State Grange. "This is a life-or-death issue for tobacco."
- There was so much tobacco power in the room that the cigarette companies brought an antitrust lawyer to make sure the discussions didn't violate fair trade laws. "This was a family meeting," said Robert H. Caldwell, president of the N.C. State Grange in Greensboro.
- The chief-executive officers of Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard met with about 90 growers and farm group representatives from seven Southeastern states at a Charlotte airport hotel. The meeting was private and was not publicized. "We just wanted to be certain that they understood that if this McCain bill passes, these companies wouldn't be in business to buy their tobacco anymore," said attorney J. Phil Carlton, who represents the cigarette-makers.
- The cigarette companies brought an antitrust lawyer to make sure the discussions didn't violate fair trade laws, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported today.
- "If you destroy them (the tobacco companies), how are you going to get the money to pay for the campaign to stop teenage smoking or Medicare costs."
- The tobacco tax fight in which Congress is embroiled has little to do with the health of teen-agers. The issue really represents a political "two-fer" for President Bill Clinton and fellow Democrats: The opportunity both to generate $500 billion with which to expand government and demonize reluctant Republicans as tools of the tobacco lobby. . . Most Americans may not like smoking, but that doesn't necessarily mean they favor a big-spending nanny state. Yet if President Clinton and his supporters are allowed to succeed with this tobacco pact, the same extortionist tactics will undoubtedly be applied to other "sins." Just imagine how much government could "do" by slapping a health tax on Big Macs and Budweiser.
- As the process moves forward, several critical improvements must be made to the McCain bill to provide stronger public health protections: The per-pack price of cigarettes must be increased by $1.50 rather than the $1.10 in the bill to further the goal of reducing youth tobacco use. Penalties against tobacco companies that do not meet youth-smoking reduction goals ought to be toughened. The bill's protections against secondhand smoke need to be strengthened. Finally, adequate funding for public education, research, smoking cessation and other anti-tobacco programs must be ensured.
- In raising the ante on taxes and capping the liability to lawsuits, McCain may have overreached and his bill may not pass in its original form. But the tobacco industry is acting as though it is in dire danger that something will pass and that massive lobbying no longer makes it invulnerable.
- Here are some examples of taxes that could be applied to practically every man, woman and child in the country, and, over a very short time, would increase state and federal coffers and allow us all to become a better society. . . Smokers' offenses/fines: . . * Spitting tobacco in a ballpark: $200. . . Ex-smokers offenses/fines: . . * Nagging a friend to stop smoking: $1. * Nagging a spouse to stop smoking: 50 cents
- Sen. Wendell Ford, D-Ky., is warning that Congress might record a "hollow victory" against tobacco companies this year by enacting a bill that drives them into bankruptcy.
- The tobacco settlement legislation making its way through Congress is not going to produce anywhere near the revenues many are expecting, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, chairman of the National Governors' Association, said Friday. "The numbers they have been using have been so off the wall," Mr. Voinovich said of $516 billion associated with Senate tobacco legislation. He based his remarks on a new briefing that NGA staff received from the Congressional Budget Office.
- However, the main senate tobacco bill, S.1415, The Tobacco Products Control Act (the McCain bill) would give the tobacco company lawyers complete immunity from civil suits. Commenting on the bill, consumer advocate Ralph Nader said, "This is an immunity bill for culpable individuals, ranging from tobacco executives and directors to lawyers and other individuals involved in their historic cabal to addict youngsters and severely damage the health of millions of people."
- The health community is ready to support these communities in planning for the future and have said so in a set of core principles which more than 40 grower organizations and health organizations agreed to and released on March 16. The tobacco farmers I have met are good, honest, hard working people who only want to see their families, children and communities prosper. And so do we. And the farmers I have met don't want to see the tobacco industry continue to callously target children and deceive and lie to the American people. . . The unfortunate alternative is for the tobacco farmers to remain pawns of the tobacco industry, being temporarily "saved by the companies" when it serves the companies political interests, being "used" as political pawns and disregarded when the companies have no use for them.
- Air bags. Bottle bills. Cigarette bans. What do they have in common, other than being good for your face, your planet, or your lungs? They all came about because they were pushed up from below, from the people, from what the lefties used to call "the masses," . . . All three of those advances came from below, not from above. . . When it comes to campaign finance or tobacco legislation, Noot and Loot, the Bobbsey Twins of Sunbelt Conservatism, pretend to be Dr. Spock, but behind the curtain they morph into Dr. Kevorkian.
- The give-and-take highlights how the quest for comprehensive tobacco legislation has become enmeshed in election year politics, with no one sure whether the political warfare will propel comprehensive legislation crafted by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or help kill it.
- Fueled in part by tobacco industry dollars being spent on an advertising and lobbying campaign against the comprehensive anti-smoking legislation, the emerging Republican strategy -- this is a fight about taxes, not teenage smoking -- is an attempt by officials such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to energize two key constituencies: rank-and-file House members and GOP voters.
- Today, Symington is out of the political spotlight, and Woods and McCain again have found themselves brothers-in-arms, this time in the battle against Big Tobacco.
- But in 1992, the high-powered friendship began to unravel when Woods took one of many high-profile stances against another Arizona Republican, then-Gov. Fife Symington. Almost overnight, the duo split. "I haven't lost too many friends in my life, and it has continually bothered me that I would lose him," Woods said. "It's been very odd just to wipe that out, especially over politics." Today, Symington is out of the political spotlight, and Woods and McCain again have found themselves brothers-in-arms, this time in the battle against Big Tobacco. . . Can the fight over cigarettes reunite two of Arizona's most prominent, and most colorful, politicians? "The irony is that maybe this is the issue that will bring our relationship full circle. I think that's possible given that the primary impediment . . . is also not in the picture," Woods said, referring to Symington, who was ousted from the governor's chair upon his federal fraud conviction.
- With the time approaching for final decisions, senior Republicans are openly quarreling over how far they can go in penalizing the tobacco industry for teen-age smoking and cigarette-related health problems.
- The problem is that both Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided among themselves over what to do, and political pressures are pushing them further apart rather than narrowing their differences.
- SEN. ORRIN HATCH said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that sweeping anti-tobacco legislation written by his Republican colleague SEN. JOHN MCCAIN is fatally flawed because it would bankrupt tobacco companies. McCain predicted it will pass and gave two reasons why: Senators are patriotic, and they can't resist the money the law will bring in from the tobacco industry.
- Three of Georgia's largest associations, whose members sell tobacco products, formally announced their opposition to US Senate Bill 1415, a bill at the center of the national tobacco debate. Georgia association executives representing the GEORGIA ASSOCIATION OF CONVENIENCE STORES, the GEORGIA FOOD INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION and the GEORGIA RETAIL ASSOCIATION, whose members include retailers, grocery and convenience store owners and operators, said the legislation would put undue burden on the backs of business owners and operators throughout the state.
- A week after warning that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was parroting the company line of Big Tobacco, President Clinton markedly softened his approach yesterday. Praising Republicans in the audience on the White House South Lawn, Clinton pledged that he has no interest in quarreling over details as long as both sides agree on the larger goal of curbing youth smoking. "Every step along the way, we have been able to reach across party lines, we've been able to put aside rhetoric, we've been able to try to look to the health issue of our children," Clinton said as he accepted a surgeon general's report showing smoking by young people continuing to rise, especially among blacks and Hispanics.
- The president urged his fellow Democrats to capitalize on the healthy U.S. economy and concentrate on solving long-term problems such as Social Security, Medicare reform, global warming, tobacco and child care for working families. "When times are good you should bear down and deal with these problems, not relax and walk away from them, and no political party should let itself ... disintegrate into petty bickering and small-minded politics," Clinton told the dinner guests.
- THE biggest winner in the proposed tobacco settlement . . . are butt-leggers, a law-enforcement expert predicts. Smugglers are already doing quite well moving truckloads of cigarettes from low-tax Southern states to high-tax New England, to be sold with counterfeit tax stamps. Imagine, he says, how well they'll do bringing cigarettes in from Mexico and the Caribbean, along the same routes the cocaine and marijuna traffickers use. "This will bring about a new golden age for organized crime," the expert fears, "just like Prohibition jump-started the Mafia."
- A group of Senate Democrats and Republicans say they will work together to pass comprehensive tobacco legislation, despite the industry's objections and a recent "divide and conquer" advertising blitz.
- While he does not "underestimate the power of paid advertising," McCain said, "I believe the American people know better." "I believe the American people know this is an industry that enticed our children to use tobacco, that lied to the American people, and the American Congress," he said. "I for my part will be neither intimidated nor afraid of this battle that is obviously looming." McCain said his bill is about money but not about taxpayer's money. "It's about the tobacco industry's money and the lengths they will go to make more, including lying to Congress, manipulating nicotine to hook customers and marketing to kids," he said.
- In a floor speech, the Arizona Republican also attacked tobacco-industry opposition to his legislation, which would cost the industry an estimated $516 billion over 25 years. "The industry wants to change the subject with tried and true tactics of diversion," McCain said. . . "We should lower the rhetoric and work together," McCain told reporters off the Senate floor, referring both to critical remarks from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and the Clinton administration on the tobacco bill.
- On his centerpiece priority of the year, anti-smoking legislation, Clinton left some room for compromise on how to spend money tobacco companies would have to pay under proposals to increase the price of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 over five years. . . Asked if he would veto legislation aimed at reducing teen smoking if it included a tax cut, Clinton said: "If they disagree with me, then we can argue about that. But I would never stand in the way of a tobacco bill that actually reduced childhood smoking because they disagreed with me about how to invest the money. But I would expect a bill to actually help our kids," he said.
- Asked at a White House news conference today about predictions in Congress that a tobacco deal will not be reached, and the settlement will instead become a major political issue in this year's campaigns, Clinton answered, "I think that's a terrible way to look at this." The president made repeated appeals to take partisan politics out of the tobacco negotiations, saying, "The worst thing in the world would be to play politics with our children's health." Clinton said: "I do not want this to be an issue in the November election. Let me say again: I do not want this to be an issue in the November election."
- In their battle to kill anti-smoking legislation, cigarette makers are about to launch a new advertising blitz and activate a national network of well-connected political operatives. The industry plans to roll out a television commercial and a newspaper ad this week warning that legislation aimed at curtailing smoking will result in bigger government, bigger taxes and a widespread black market.
- The House leadership wants to remain flexible to deal with the tobacco issue on its own terms. Rejecting the bipartisan approach, however, could lead lawmakers to take a much tougher stance against the tobacco industry than House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others would like, making it harder to win agreement on any legislative package. The rejected compromise, negotiated by House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley of Virginia and one of his panel's most senior Democrats, California Rep. Henry Waxman, called for no tobacco tax increase, but provided much tougher penalties for industry failures to reduce underage smoking than those prescribed in a Senate bill devised by Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain of Arizona.
- JOE RATCLIFF, president of the TEXAS ASSOCIATION OF WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTORS, commended the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for holding hearings today addressing the issue of increased criminal traffic in cigarettes posed by S.1415, the Tobacco Products Control Act.
- "The bill is about our kids, it's about accountability and it's about solving a national problem. The industry wants to change the subject with the tried and true tactics of diversion. I understand they now intend to spend $100 million for print and broadcast media to maintain the status quo. Perhaps if the industry had spent some of their resources on legitimate anti-youth smoking activities, we wouldn't have the problem we do today. "The industry diversion play book consists of four themes: Diversion One -- Solving the problem of youth smoking is really about tax and spend government. . . Diversion Two--The effort to stop youth smoking is about big government. . . Diversion Three -- The industry will go bankrupt . . Diversion Four -- Price Increases will create a black market
- Shareholders at Philip Morris Cos. Inc.'s annual meeting Thursday applauded the company's decision to battle proposed tobacco legislation in Congress and soundly rejected proposals to restrict cigarette marketing overseas. Packing an auditorium at its largest cigarette plant in Richmond, Va., shareholders gave Chairman Geoffrey Bible a standing ovation as he opened a meeting that drew protests over the industry's failure to stem underage smoking worldwide.
- Chairman Criticizes Senate Tobacco Bill, Reaffirms Commitments to Reducing Underage Use of Tobacco Products and to Building Shareholder Value
- The head of tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. Inc. gave no sign Thursday of backing down in a standoff with Congress over Sen. John McCain' s sweeping anti-tobacco legislation. Urging shareholders to " spring into action and make these jokers in Washington ... do the right thing, " chairman and chief executive Geoffrey C. Bible said McCain' s proposal would have " a draconian impact on the industry." The bill, if enacted, would cut cigarette marketing by 40 percent to 60 percent in the United States alone, Bible told an annual stockholders' meeting at the company' s cigarette-making complex in Richmond.
- Philip Morris Cos. (MO) Chairman and Chief Executive Geoffrey C. Bible told shareholders at the company's annual meeting that the Senate Commerce Committee's tobacco bill is "fundamentally flawed." In a press release Thursday, Philip Morris reported that Bible called the bill, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "a punitive and unrealistic assault on the industry." Bible also said the bill was unfair to the people who work in tobacco and the American adults who use tobacco products.
- Packing an auditorium at its largest cigarette plant in Richmond, Va., shareholders gave Chairman Geoffrey Bible a standing ovation as he opened a meeting that drew protests over the industry's failure to stem underage smoking worldwide. . . A few people will honk and wave. A few people will wave the birdie," INFACT campaign director Kelle Louaillier said as a grey-haired shareholder in a white Cadillac flashed the protesters an all-too familiar finger gesture.
- INFACT's 200-foot-long Human Toll of Tobacco Banner showing photographs of people suffering from or killed by tobacco-related illnesses will be displayed, along with large photos of young Cambodian girls dressed in Marlboro outfits handing out cigarettes, and other graphic examples of international tobacco promotion.
- Instead of bickering among themselves, lawmakers should be seeking a much smaller measure to offset smoking-related medical costs and deter teen smoking. This, after all, was the objective of last summer's agreement. Granted, such an accord would not be a cure-all. But it would be preferable to seeing a partial solution to tobacco-related problems go up in smoke.
- The arguments against any comprehensive legislation--that it won't work; will create a black market; bankrupt the industry; or that smokers save society money by dying early--are all specious. Most serious experts acknowledge that the combination of sharply higher prices, strong regulation and a tough antitobacco public campaign is the only effective way to curb youth smoking; nine out of ten smokers start as teenagers. Reducing the number of teenage smokers by at least two-thirds over the next decade ought to be a minimal requirement of any legislation. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and company and their Big Tobacco lobbyist pals may think they can fool the American people, but they're only deluding themselves.
- Listen to streaming audio which contains comments from Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee and Ron Martelle, former mayor of Cornwall, Ontario at http://www.newstream.com/r98-119.shtml
- A strict regulatory system like the one that tracks U.S. alcohol sales could contain any cigarette smuggling that stems from tobacco-control legislation, a top Clinton administration official recommended Thursday.
- "The creation of a sound regulatory system -- one that will close the distribution chain for tobacco products -- will ensure that the diversion and smuggling of tobacco can be effectively controlled," Lawrence Summers, deputy secretary of the Treasury, told a Senate panel Thursday.
- "Haven't the tobacco companies been shown to be complicitous in some of the smuggling efforts?" Sen. RICHARD DURBIN, D-Ill., asked during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday. He held up news reports saying U.S. tobacco companies and employees were involved in smuggling. "In some cases, there was complicity," replied Lawrence Summers, deputy secretary of the Treasury. "There is no way in our judgment that substantial smuggling of tobacco products could take place without the complicity of those in the industry."
- Mr. Emanuel has a better case on what has become the Bill Clinton-John McCain Co-Dependency. Without the Arizona GOP senator's help on tobacco and campaign finance "reform," Mr. Clinton might have no agenda left at all. But campaign reform is still likely to die in the Senate, to no great national outcry. A big new tobacco tax has a better chance, though even here Mr. Gingrich has begun to circumscribe the triumph. He's said any tax hike on smokers must be offset by comparably sized tax cuts. This dims liberal enthusiasm for any bill, since it removes its main political moti vation--cash for the feds to spend. Republicans say that apart from tobacco, they're getting little public pressure for the Clinton agenda. Thus their strategy of "benign neglect" toward Clinton ideas is paying off.
- "I do not want this [tobacco] to be an issue in the November election," Mr. Clinton said at one point, repeating the remark slowly for emphasis. Then, alluding to rising opposition to tobacco legislation from the industry and congressional Republicans, he said: "If it is an issue in the November elections, it will only be because those people who have a political or financial interest in seeing that this matter is not resolved between now and November prevent it from being resolved.
- [ELENA] KAGAN, though virtually unknown outside the White House, has become the administration's lead negotiator on tobacco, crafting much of Senator John McCain's tobacco legislation. The story of Kagan's involvement in hammering out a deal with Senate Republicans illustrates just how active the administration has been in shaping tobacco legislation behind the scenes.
- Chairman Lord Cairns said in a statement attached to the group's first quarter financial results, "politics got in the way of common sense." "The proposals suggested by the Senate combine huge taxes with a mammoth bureaucracy and would result in an inevitable black market which, perversely, would make cigarettes more accessible to teenagers," said Cairns.
- Rick Johnson, president of the Texas Food Industry Association, called on members of the Texas Congressional delegation to oppose the harmful economic measures included in the current version of S.1415, also known as the McCain bill. . . "Most of our retailers do not smoke, and many do not even support the tobacco companies . . . None of our members want to see teenagers gain illegal access to cigarettes, but the effects of increased smuggling -- which will be a direct result of $5 packs of cigarettes -- will devastate our businesses and actually make it more likely that teens will smoke."
- A tobacco compromise rejected by House GOP leaders this week was negotiated by House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr. in part to protect jobs in Richmond and aid displaced factory workers.
- Underscoring the tension inside the Republican Conference about anti-smoking legislation, Speaker Newt GINGRICH (R-Ga) and House GOP leaders on Tuesday ripped apart portions of a bipartisan, anti-smoking bill written by Commerce Chairman Tom BLILEY (R-Va) and liberal Democrat Henry WAXMAN (Calif). At Tuesday's closed-door leadership meeting in Gingrich's office, Bliley was roundly criticized for working too closely with Waxman and Commerce ranking member John Dingell (D-Mich) to produce a bill that ignores Republican priorities, according to Members and staff inside the room. "I don't think Bliley liked how he was treated," said one source at the meeting. "And I know leadership didn't like the bill." Specifically, GOP leadership objected to Bliley's ban on smoking in restaurants and an automatic tax hike if specified goals are not met.
- With the stakes escalating in the national tobacco debate, the Gilmore administration yesterday affirmed its support of the state's cigarette industry, pledging to battle "any plan that adversely affects the Virginia economy." Refusing to join attacks on pending U.S. Senate legislation opposed by tobacco firms and their congressional allies, Gov. Jim Gilmore -- through a spokesman -- nonetheless again signaled he would protect tobacco as "integral part" of the state's economy.
- Philip Morris Cos Inc. has no plans to move offshore to avoid operating restrictions that could be placed on the domestic tobacco industry by proposed legislation in Congress, Chairman GEOFFREY BIBLE said Thursday. "It's a very inviting prospect, I have to tell you, but it's not our plan," Bible said at the company's annual meeting in Richmond, Va. "We take our hits, but we seem to survive and come out in pretty good shape on the other end. ... We plan to stay here."
- So yes, let's get busy and try to prevent smoking. Let's continue to support the social, environmental and corporate-culture pressures that have already cut smoking considerably. Let's stop owning stock in tobacco companies and profiting, however indirectly, from the damage they cause. Let's try to educate young people about smoking's insidious harm and to counter peer pressures and adolescent rebellions. And let's welcome a tobacco "settlement" if the final draft makes sense. But let's not assume it will solve the problem.
- In the same week 65-year-old Robinson starts planting seedlings in his riverside fields, Congress - an hour's drive away in Washington - is debating the toughest anti-tobacco laws in American history. The political harvest, expected before November's mid-term elections, could produce legislation unequalled since the first commercial tobacco sale in the United States 360 years ago. Or it could be an already-doomed failure by a society screaming about the leading cause of preventable deaths while still savouring the profits - $15 billion (U.S.) in taxes alone - and pleasures of a product consumed by about 40 million adults.
- So far, it hasn't been an easy sell. The legislation that the companies oppose includes one key provision that farmers like -- $28.5 billion in aid for tobacco growers and rural communities who would be hurt if fewer and fewer Americans smoke. And beyond that economic help, some farmers say that they have grown more wary of the cigarette makers they were quick to support in the past. The split traces to last summer, when farmers learned that the tobacco companies had negotiated a $368.5 billion legal settlement with state lawyers and public health groups, without involving the growers.
- Democratic Party of Virginia leaders yesterday adopted a resolution calling on Gov. Jim Gilmore and Virginia's congressional delegation to seek protection for the state's tobacco workers in any national tobacco legislation, but not before some objected that the resolution did not recognize the health consequences of smoking. "We need to get Virginia out of the industry of killing people," said acting Third District chairman Jeff Kelso of Richmond. Many of the state's tobacco workers live in the Third District.
- U.S. Sen. CHARLES S. ROBB (D-Va.) and state Democratic Chairman KENNETH R. PLUM, seeking to head off a debate over a tobacco settlement that might further divide their state party, embraced a labor resolution that said federal legislation potentially could be "devastating" for tobacco workers in the Old Dominion. The Democrats' statement coincided with a labor news conference on the grounds of the Philip Morris Cos. cigarette plant here a day after the tobacco giant's annual shareholders meeting. It reflected the evolving consensus against President Clinton's anti-smoking efforts among politicians in Virginia, the country's largest producer of flue-cured tobacco.
- Union leaders called on the state's political and business leaders to stand up for tobacco workers, who fear their jobs could be lost and communities damaged by efforts to impose stringent controls on the manufacture of cigarettes in the United States andabroad. "We want and the nation needs an end to the tobacco wars," declared BARRY BAKER, international representative of the BAKERY, CONFECTIONERY, AND TOBACCO WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION in a May Day rally in front of Philip Morris USA's giant cigarette factory in South Richmond.
- BAT Industries, the tobacco and insurance group, has abandoned hopes of reviving last year's proposed deal between the US tobacco industry and state attorneys-general to settle tobacco litigation. Speaking at the company's annual meeting, Martin Broughton, chief executive, accused Congress of wrecking the deal.
- WHEN Steven Goldstone got up to address the National Press Club in Washington, it was like a heavyweight, bruised boxer staggering back to his feet just before the count of 10. It meant the big tobacco fight was suddenly back on.
- Senate leaders are edging toward a debate on broad tobacco legislation even though there are sharp divisions among top Republicans over the scope of the measure. A tobacco bill is expected to be on the Senate floor before the end of this month and Senate leaders reiterated that they expect this debate to occur despite some efforts to delay action on a tobacco bill.
- With Republicans split behind at least five different bills to crack down on the tobacco industry, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is growing tired of trying to describe a moving target. "Any question on any subject but tobacco," he said Tuesday, wagging his finger at reporters. No such luck.
- At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, held up a blue pack of Chinese cigarettes and declared, "The real concern I have is that we're going to be flooded with this stuff." But other senators agree with Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., who characterizes the black-market argument as a "red herring." At a hearing Monday, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., called the cigarette makers' specter of a black market "as false and misleading as the industry's past assertions about addiction, health effects and marketing to kids."
- McCain in a statement said it was "my understanding" that his bill, approved by the Commerce Committee by a 19-1 vote, would be brought to the full Senate this month. "I believe it would be a serious mistake for the Senate to fail to consider or to delay considering comprehensive tobacco legislation," he said, adding that if the bill is postponed past Memorial Day "the prospects for adopting any tobacco legislation (this year) would be remote."
- On one side are Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain of Arizona and Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, both of whom favor broad antismoking legislation that would substantially raise cigarette prices and expand government oversight of tobacco. The other side, led by Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma, wants a more-moderate approach and appears to be shocked that a bill written by Mr. McCain has come as far as it has.
- Senate Majority Leader TRENT LOTT on Monday said starting the Senate tobacco debate by May 18 was "a goal we should try to work for," even though he said he was not sure that the Senate would have time to deal with the thorny issue at all this year. Lott also said it was not certain the Senate would take up the bill drafted by Senate Commerce Committee John McCain, an Arizona Republican, or an alternative.
- Using the conclusion of Florida's legislative session as a rallying point, business and trade groups called for the members of their congressional delegation to oppose US Senate bill 1415, the McCain bill which is at the heart of the national tobacco debate.
- Tobacco legislation is now at the stage where the various sides are staking out positions, and no consensus is in sight.
- The sources couldn't say what tack Bliley, now rebuffed by his party leadership, will take next. Other House Republicans might be handed more responsibility on tobacco. But whatever his direction, Bliley may have signaled his bearings in a 1995 remark. "John Marshall represented this district in the Second Congress. He supported tobacco," Bliley said then. "Every congressman who has represented Richmond has supported tobacco. When the congressman from Richmond ceases to support tobacco, he probably will cease to be the congressman."
- Top White House officials are meeting (Wednesday) with a group of state attorneys general to step up efforts to reach agreement on tobacco legislation.
- A bipartisan group of lawmakers attempting to get tobacco legislation moving in the House plan to introduce a bill Wednesday that would raise cigarette prices by $1.50 a pack but avoid new government spending programs, their aides said Tuesday. Co-authors Utah Republican James Hansen and Massachusetts Democrat Martin Meehan hope to have 15-20 initial co-sponsors from across the political spectrum, their aides said.
- Representative MARTIN T. MEEHAN, the Democrat from Lowell, will join a handful of House Republicans and a key Democrat in introducing legislation today designed to break the congressional stalemate over tobacco. In search of the same kind of bipartisan coalition that he recently helped assemble for campaign finance reform, Meehan has joined with Representatives JAMES V. HANSEN, a Republican from Utah, and HENRY WAXMAN, a Democrat from California, as sponsors of a "BIPARTISAN TOBACCO CONTROL ACT."
- Wondering why President Clinton seems doubtful that Congress will pass any meaningful tobacco legislation this session? Consider this: The tobacco industry is proving once again it has some of the deepest pockets in the Washington money game, and it isn't afraid to keep its checkbook open.
- People such as C. Everett Koop and David Kessler and advocacy groups ranging from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to the American Cancer Society have praised the KIDS Act as the best attempt yet to save the more than 3,000 children and teenagers who become regular smokers each day. . . . But where some would use the money collected for election-year goodies, we invest every penny in anti-smoking initiatives. With 400,000 Americans dead each year from tobacco-related illnesses, 35% of high-school students smoking cigarettes, and the U.S. shelling out nearly $50 billion in annual tobacco-related health costs, the price of doing nothing is much greater than that of any action Congress will take in 1998.
- Senate Democratic leader Thomas Daschle said Thursday he has assurances from the Republican majority that the Senate tobacco debate will start the week of May 18 as anticipated.
- Now, openly challenging the U.S. House GOP leadership, he is seeking to narrow the gap by sharply raising cigarette prices. Mr. Hansen Thursday plans to introduce a comprehensive, bipartisan tobacco bill even tougher than the Senate version that House Speaker Newt Gingrich has blasted as a "very liberal, big government" proposal. The new effort comes as political winds within the GOP leadership are shifting to the right. There is a growing sense among Republican leaders that they don't need to pass a comprehensive tobacco bill with a stiff tax increase and broad expansion of regulatory authority to avoid being hurt by the issue in the fall elections. The Hansen bill aims to put that strategy to the test.
- The bill, by Utah Republican James Hansen and Massachusetts Democrat Martin Meehan, would give the industry no legal protections from lawsuits and would increase cigarette prices $1.50 a pack over three years, raising more than $500 billion over 25 years.
- President Clinton (Wednesday) gave an immediate warm welcome to a new tobacco control bill introduced by a bipartisan pairing of House members. Clinton said the bill by Reps. James Hansen, R-Utah, and Marty Meehan, D-Mass., contains a series of favorable provisions, including tough financial penalties on the tobacco industry, but said he wanted to make sure it "adequately protects tobacco farmers."
- "I'm just not so sure we're ready to carry their water -- all the water they've got to carry," said Tim Cansler, national affairs director for the Kentucky Farm Bureau. The schism traces to last summer, when farmers learned that the tobacco companies had negotiated a $368.5 billion legal settlement with state lawyers and public health groups, without involving the growers.
- "Every public health group in America, every Attorney General since 1973, every uh . . . Dr. Koop, Dr. Kessler, everyone agrees we have to have a comprehensive bill if we're going to achieve our goal, and that is to reduce teenage smoking."--Sen. McCain
- The $6 billion settlement of Minnesota's landmark tobacco lawsuit Friday buoyed anti-tobacco lawmakers who hope to pass tough legislation strongly opposed by cigarette makers. "The fact the tobacco companies chose to settle with the state rather than risk the fate of a jury's decision against an industry that deliberately marketed to kids brightens the outlook for a comprehensive Senate bill," said Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
- "They've been saying a settlement in this range would bankrupt them," said SEN. KENT CONRAD OF NORTH DAKOTA, author of one of the Democratic bills. "It's hard to make the argument now that it's not somehow appropriate." . . In a statement, PRESIDENT CLINTON said, "This action provides still further momentum to our effort to pass bipartisan, comprehensive tobacco legislation this year." . . "The fact that tobacco companies chose to settle with the state rather than risk the fate of a jury's decision ... brightens the outlook for a comprehensive Senate bill," said Commerce Committee Chairman JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz.
- Criticism by Republican leaders that McCain's bill is too onerous and will lead to a black market, combined with Senator Nickles intent to offer a "skinny" youth drug/tobacco bill with modest tax increase and no liability protections, will likely cause Senator McCain to water down his tobacco bill. Potential changes: Payments that are volume-adjusted; elimination of international provisions; partial credit for $6.5 billion liability fund; and explicit language that liability be contained within domestic tobacco.
- A Senate Republican analysis of the tobacco bill puts the 25-year cost to the industry in the neighborhood of $700 billion, far more than bill sponsor Sen. John McCain estimates, according to Senate sources who expect the report to be released late Friday.
- in-your-face newspaper ads, which will begin running today in six states and in other states next week, target senators who have not yet taken a stand on the legislation. They also put Republicans on the spot, underscoring the party's long alliance with tobacco interests.
- "The tobacco industry's counting on representatives in Congress to kill legislation that would protect kids from tobacco addictions," reads one of the ads sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The ads will appear in Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware newspapers.
- Fueled by millions of dollars in tobacco advertising, lobbying and special interest politics, tobacco companies and their allies inside and outside of Congress have been attacking Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) tobacco control bill with a strategy that is clearly "4D" -- delay and deceive in order to destroy or disable the legislation.
- One tobacco executive said candidates have started asking companies to be stealthier about their giving, directing checks to state parties or the House and Senate campaign committees -- organizations that deprive the politicians of direct control over the funds, but that can work to their benefit while providing deniability. Some candidates vow not to take tobacco money, but then accept checks from the political action committees of tobacco subsidiaries -- even though almost all that money comes directly from the tobacco parent's PAC. Others swear off tobacco money but solicit it for their state parties or pet projects. And some who refuse contributions supplied by company executives through a tobacco PAC nevertheless accept private checks from the very same individuals. . . Yet when Pryce and Dunn were hosts to 700 people for the Republican Women's Leadership Forum here last week, they relied on tobacco to help foot the bill. KRAFT donated $25,000, UST Inc. -- which owns the U.S. Tobacco Co. -- gave $5,000 and its subsidiary CHATEAU STE. MICHELE, a Washington state winery, donated $5,000 worth of wine.
- Politicians call it "soft money" but they count in hard cash. Although soft money contributions to political parties must be reported under federal law, the checks may arrive in unlimited amounts‹sometimes well over $100,000 at a time. . . A review of soft money contributions from the tobacco industry shows most of it going to Republicans.
- Those hoping for congressional approval of comprehensive anti-smoking legislation this year have one mighty obstacle in their way: the influence of money in politics.
- In addition to campaign contributions and soft money, industries can try to buy their agendas in Congress by giving money to "leadership Political Action Committees." . . This chart shows tobacco industry contributions to the leadership PACs of current members of Congress from Jan. 1, 1987 through Dec. 31, 1997.
- Wondering why President Clinton seems doubtful that Congress will pass any meaningful tobacco legislation this session? Consider this: The tobacco industry is proving once again it has some of the deepest pockets in the Washington money game, and it isn't afraid to keep its checkbook open.
- Under the bill, the only "permissible defendants" in a civil suit are tobacco company subsidiaries selling into the domestic market. The bill specifically states that "any person that at any time was or is an affiliate, officer, director, employee, attorney or agent of a participating tobacco product manufacturer" cannot be a defendant. Some of these people are already defendants in existing lawsuits against the industry. This proposed grant of amnesty is shocking, especially, to take one example, in light of the newly released industry documents showing substantial lawyer involvement in the fraud perpetrated on the public by the tobacco companies
- All democracies need zealots. They sometimes bring us to terms with realities we would sooner ignore. But the combination of zealotry and power -- a confederacy of zealots -- is another matter. Extreme measures, once legitimized in law, can be used by others, for other purposes. . . I fear the precedent of the anti-smoking remedies now before the Congress. What will they be used for next? Defenders of today's anti-tobacco tactics can argue that the problem is so serious, the enemy so powerful, that extreme action is surely justified in response. But that old refrain -- extremism in pursuit of vice -- is still crazy, after all these years.
- When this bill reaches the Senate floor in late May, Senator Frank Lautenberg, joined by Drs. Koop and Kessler and public health groups from around the country, will be reminding the Senate that they need not grant any sweetheart deals to the tobacco industry. . . Will big tobacco's brier [sic] patch strategy work? Not if the Senate follows Lautenberg's lead and refuses to grant any special protections to the tobacco industry.
- Cigarette makers sent Congress a smoke signal when they settled Minnesota damage claims for $6.6 billion. The message: Big Tobacco is ready to try again for a national resolution of its legal problems. Making deals or chancing jury verdicts in 41 suing states "does nothing to help establish a national, uniform program to combat underage use of tobacco products," industry spokesman Scott Williams said after Friday's court settlement here.
- Republicans are seen by the public as more interested in shielding the tobacco industry than in protecting young people from smoking, according to a poll taken for the GOP. It also found the opposite is true for Democrats. At the same time, the survey suggested that Republicans can scuttle the comprehensive tobacco bill pending in the Senate in favor of a less-sweeping measure without additional loss of public support. The conclusions were contained in a nationwide survey completed within the last two weeks for the Republican National Committee and shared with lawmakers in recent days.
- Senate Republicans opposed to a $516 billion tobacco bill pending in the Senate, for instance, asserted over the weekend that the cost to the industry would be far higher over 25 years than lawmakers who developed the bill have declared. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., also warned that Senate Democrats could disrupt legislative action on other issues if the Senate delayed debate on the tobacco measure.
- Listen to streaming audio which contains comments from Steve Lombardo, president of KRC Research
- Steve Lombardo of KRC Research, said: ``The fact that such a strong majority of Americans feel that Washingrton wants the money, but the bill is not likely to actually reduce the levels of youth smoking, is problematic for Congress.'' . . The results cited in this release are drawn from telephone interviews with N=1,507 adults 21+ throughout the U.S.; the margin of error for a sample of this type is plus/minus 2.5%. Responses were gathered May 5-7, 1998. This survey is a joint project conducted by The Tarrance Group, Inc. and KRC Research on behalf of the following companies -- Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, Lorillard Tobacco Company, Phillip Morris Incorporated, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and United States Tobacco Company.
- Efforts in Congress to curb teen smoking are being endangered by a fight over how the government should spend the billions . . . The money fight is being exploited by the cigarette makers, which are claiming in a nationwide advertising campaign that they would be unfairly taxed by the pending legislation to pay for new government spending.
- This week is crunch time for Republican Sen. John McCain's (Ariz) $516 billion tobacco proposal. With the McCain bill expected to arrive on the Senate floor next week, GOP sources say Republican Policy Committee Chairman Larry Craig (Idaho) is planning to release a report sharply criticizing the proposal for being a "big government" solution that doesn't jibe with conservative Republican principles. GOP sources predict that Republican Members who don't like the McCain bill will use Craig's analysis, which is slated to be released early this week, as political cover to come out against the McCain proposal.
- "This analysis confirms my suspicions about the high cost of the Commerce Committee bill," Nickles said. "I don't believe it is necessary to raise taxes and spending by hundreds of billions of dollars to have a good anti-tobacco bill." Explaining the rationale for counting the effect of inflation, the analysis said, "Americans don't earn or pay constant dollars." The administration's estimate, the analysis said, "does not reflect actual pocketbook expenses as taxpayers would experience them." . . Raidt said, "They know that the debate has always been in the context of 1998 dollars."
- The true costs of the leading tobacco bill could run hundreds of billions of dollars more than the estimates of its authors, Republicans charged yesterday. But the bill's supporters countered that the new estimate was little more than, in the words of one, "a numbers game."
- Consumers and tobacco companies would pay hundreds of billions of dollars more than previously estimated under a tobacco bill to be considered by the Senate this month, according to a REPUBLICAN POLICY COMMITTEE analysis released Sunday.
- Their analysis bolsters critics of the legislation, who have labeled it a "big government" move that puts too much money into federal coffers. The REPUBLICAN POLICY COMMITTEE said the bill, overwhelmingly approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, would bring in $755 billion to $869 billion over 25 years.
- Some in Congress want the money to pay for tax cuts, to boost the Medicare system or pay down the national debt. President Clinton wants to spend it for child care tax credits, more teachers and school construction. The money fight is being exploited by the cigarette makers who are claiming in a nationwide advertising campaign that they would be unfairly taxed by the pending legislation to pay for new government spending.
- To counter the tobacco industry's reported $50 million ad campaign against tobacco legislation expected on the Senate floor next week, public health advocates are stepping up their grass-roots efforts to persuade voters that enactment of a bill is critical this year. "Senators Bond and Ashcroft: Are you for Big Tobacco or for kids?" asks a preliminary draft of a full-page ad by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids slated for Missouri newspapers this week.
- Democratic challengers make tobacco donations an issue against GOP Reps. Shimkus of Illinois, Hill of Montana and Nussle of Iowa. Democrats say Arizona GOP Rep. Hayworth's return of a $500 RJR gift shows that the issue cuts. The Center for Tobacco Free Kids targets such GOP senators as Missouri's Ashcroft and Ohio's DeWine in ads that Friday begin pushing Sen. McCain's tobacco bill. House GOP election chief Rep. Linder dismisses the tobacco attacks. The industry fights back with an ad blitz in more than 40 media markets to reach constituents of key senators
- The higher the tax is raised, the greater the profit to be made from smuggling; the only question is how much will smuggling rise. The black market will not only reduce the government's revenue, but also undermine the effort to keep teenagers from smoking. It is something Congress should seriously consider before deciding that higher taxes are the way to reduce smoking.
- Members of the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday said they might claim jurisdiction over a pending tobacco bill, a move that could indefinitely delay Senate consideration of tobacco-control legislation. . . New York Republican Alfonse D'Amato said the committee clearly has jurisdiction but he thinks it might be better to let the bill go to the floor and let the full Senate fight it out. "The important element is to get the bill up and get the process going forward," D'Amato told reporters.
- A key conservative senator is joining the movement to kill Congress' leading tobacco bill because, he says, it contradicts the conservative principles on which the GOP won control of Congress. "This bill is nothing more than a big government boondoggle cloaked in the language of 'protecting children,"' Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., said in a statement Tuesday.
- Instead, they enlisted police officers, Wall Street analysts, restaurateurs and former congressional staff members -- all with an interest in tobacco's future but none with the negative image of the industry's traditional lobbying army. . . . Even so, many eyebrows have been raised over the high-profile role being played by JAMES O. PASCO JR., the executive director of the FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE. Pasco has mounted an aggressive campaign to warn Congress that the Senate's sweeping tobacco bill would be a nightmare for law enforcement, sparking a black market in duty-free cigarettes and overwhelming police forces. He has been less forthcoming about his other affiliation: registered lobbyist for Philip Morris
- In one of the latest maneuvers of an all-out media blitz on Washington, R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO. has called on its retirees to join a massive letter-writing campaign aimed at Congress. The tobacco industry and its foes are coating congressional offices with letters, phone calls, faxes and e-mails to influence tobacco legislation that might be passed this year.
- GOV. JIM GILMORE on Tuesday called for a national summit next month on proposed tobacco legislation in Congress that he contends would put thousands of people out of work. Gilmore asked labor leaders around the country to help organize the June meeting, which he said should focus on preventing underage smoking and protecting families whose livelihood depends on tobacco.
- Domenici joined conservative attacks on the bill sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz. Members of the Senate Finance Commitee asked Majority Leader Trent Lott to give the panel jurisdiction over the issue. Such a shift would delay action and could effectively kill the McCain bill.
- "I HAVE NO DOUBT in my mind," [Gary Black] said, "that the combination of the $2.76 per pack price increase, sharply higher legal costs, and explosive black market, which will displace legitimate product, will bankrupt one or more players in the industry, and make it easier, not harder, for kids to buy cigarettes."
- However, in testimony to the Senate judiciary committee yesterday, GARY BLACK, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said the cost estimates contained in the bill seriously understated the real costs to the industry. He said it would actually raise the price per pack by approximately $2.78, bringing the total cost to an unsustainable $862bn. MARTIN FELDMAN, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, also testified that the $1.10 estimate was implausible.
- The Senate Judiciary Committee is debating whether a bill meant to deter youth smoking would create a black market for tobacco. . . But the National Association of Police Organizations wrote committee members Monday, warning that the pending tobacco legislation could "create a whole new black market opportunity for organized crime."
- Yes, it's a bit of a stretch to compare a legal American industry to machine-gun-wielding drug smugglers, but it's fun. Besides, transferring wealth from tobacco companies to law firms, health care providers and state governments sure beats working for a living. Why, with sharp minds like Humphrey's looking out for you and courageous law firms willing to take risks on your behalf, no industry is safe from a big lawsuit.
- The print advertisement, which begins today in New York City's Amsterdam News, includes a bold headline that asks: "Representative Towns: Big Tobacco or Kids?"
- The political fissures over the big anti-tobacco bill opened a yawning chasm Wednesday between Missouri's two Republican senators. SEN. JOHN ASHCROFT, R-Mo., said he would use every possible weapon, including the filibuster, to defeat bipartisan legislation . . . Ashcroft's colleague, SEN. CHRISTOPHER "KIT" BOND, R-Mo., is among Republicans who consider tax increases on tobacco not only appropriate but necessary. Bond has supported the basic thrust of McCain's legislation
- The S.C. Republican Party has refused to run an advertisement attacking federal legislation that would increase taxes on tobacco by more than $500 billion. The two-page ad was to have run in the program for the party's convention Saturday. "South Carolina's Republican hierarchy apparently cares more about shielding its members and, perhaps, some candidates from controversy, than about an unfettered discussion of issues of importance to delegates," said Thomas Humber, president of the National Smokers Alliance, a non-partisan organization dedicated to fighting discrimination against smokers.
- The American Cancer Society (ACS) will release its newly commissioned report, which refutes tobacco companies' claims of being forced into bankruptcy if the McCain bill passes. Economist David Sweanor and attorney Ed Dolan of Hogan and Hartson law firm, Washington, D.C., will present the report
- 'We do not believe that the proposed legislation will materially affect the tobacco companies risk of insolvency,' said GARY GENSLER, Treasury's assistant secretary for financial markets. In fact, he said, the risks of future and pending tobacco litigation and the 'vicissitudes of the market' pose more of a threat to bankrupting the industry than comprehensive tobacco legislation. 'Even under conservative assumptions with respect to price, domestic sales volume and operating margin, the tobacco industry will remain very profitable,' he said.
- Senate Finance Chairman WILLIAM V. ROTH is proposing to sweeten the Senate's tobacco bill with health-care tax cuts of as much as $18 billion over five years. But even as the influential Delaware Republican moved to put his stamp on the bill drafted by GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, some senators and congressional analysts began raising concerns about the package's financing.
- Billions of dollars in tobacco industry money would be spent to help the self-employed pay for health insurance under a proposal circulated Wednesday within the Senate Finance Committee. The draft is expected to be discussed at a meeting Thursday of the panel, whose senior members demanded to make changes to the tobacco bill sponsored by Sen. JOHN MCCAIN before it goes to the Senate floor. "We feel very strongly about this," the committee's chairman and senior Democrat, Sens. WILLIAM ROTH, R-Del., and DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN of New York, wrote to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
- SEN. ROD GRAMS, R-Minn., announced that he will oppose the proposed national tobacco settlement, calling it " nothing more than a huge tax increase."
- Advocates of a Senate tobacco bill Wednesday appeared to have overcome a last-ditch attempt to sink the measure in procedural quicksand. "It was a futile effort," said an aide to a conservative Republican foe of the tobacco bill sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
- The Senate Finance Committee today . . voted 10-9 to go beyond the price increase of $1.10 a pack over five years proposed in the bill sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain of Arizona.
- The Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to include higher cigarette taxes in draft tobacco legislation, giving anti-smoking forces more momentum going into next week's Senate debate on the historic law.
- Action by the Senate Finance Committee today sets a new standard for "tax and spend." It removes all doubt that the tobacco legislation is nothing more than Washington's version of "show me the money."
- A Senate panel voted Thursday to toughen a key tobacco bill by raising cigarette taxes by $1.50-a-pack over three years. It also rejected a provision that would have used tobacco money to reduce taxes for self-employed workers. "We have to give the cost of a pack of cigarettes a jolt," said Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I. who argued that the increase would discourage teen-agers from smoking. The Senate Finance Committee sent the amendment to the floor on a 13-6 vote.
- A Senate committee hopes to revamp big sections of the tobacco bill Thursday, turning industry fees and assessments into a straightforward tax, and earmarking some of the money for tax cuts to help people afford health insurance, senators and staff said. "Call a tax a tax," said Oklahoma Republican Don Nickles
- The Senate Finance Commitee today begins discussing how to raise and spend billions of tobacco industry dollars that would be generated by a Republican anti-smoking bill set to go to the floor Monday. The panel, chaired by Sen. William Roth Jr. of Delaware, may consider as part of the changes setting aside industry money to help the self-employed pay for health insurance.
- The committee, asserting its jurisdiction over tax and trade legislation, also seemed likely to propose increasing the tax on cigarettes in a way that would drive up the price faster than the main bill that is before the Senate. . . Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, a senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said that a consensus had developed to place an excise tax directly on each pack of cigarettes rather than require cigarette makers to pay a lump sum each year to the government, as the McCain bill would do.
- ACS Chairman of the Board of Directors JENNIE R. COOK said, "The tobacco industry is out there telling people tobacco control legislation is about 'big government,' 'big taxes' and 'black market smugglers.' Well, it's not. It's about saving lives -- the lives of our kids. We don't want them to die from a life of addiction and disease caused by tobacco."
- The AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION (AHA) and the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (AMA) today launched advertising to urge strong tobacco legislation. The print ads feature an image of three tobacco industry executives walking away and feature the bold message: "Big tobacco can walk away. We won't."
- Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, D-S. D., says sweeping tobacco legislation could come up for a floor vote by the end of next week. Daschle told reporters today he believes the bill will pass, even though none of the Republican leadship supports it.
- They are looking for a way to weaken the McCain bill in the Finance Committee, which will work on the legislation today. . . The fate of tobacco legislation depends on whether the committee can resist demands to protect the industry. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato of New York both sit on the committee. Now is the time for them to defend the McCain approach and strengthen the bill's tobacco control provisions.
- INCREASINGLY, THIS Congress seems headed in wrong directions. . . Tobacco legislation is in trouble. This is a Congress that had -- perhaps still has -- the opportunity to pass a strong anti-smoking bill, one that would tax up the price while reaffirming regulatory authority over the drug nicotine. But the industry is campaigning hard against such a measure.
- Declaring that "Washington already has too much of the people's hard-earned money," U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) said the "coming debate on the Senate tobacco bill" is a crucial opportunity to say "no" to higher taxes and more government.
- STEVE FORBES, honorary chairman of Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity, a national issues advocacy organization, today expressed concern that the number of American teenagers who smoke is on the rise. But he blasted the high-tax, pro-trial lawyer tobacco legislation making its way through Congress as no solution and urged Congress to reject it.
- More than 1,000 kids will gather at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, May 20, to call on the Senate to pass tough comprehensive tobacco control legislation now. The kids will be joined by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chief sponsor of a tobacco control measure moving through the Senate; Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a leading advocate for comprehensive legislation; and Tara Lipinski, U.S. Olympic gold medalist. Several of the campaign's 1998 Youth Advocates of the Year will also be present.
- Liability caps in the tobacco bill being considered by the U.S. Senate will be raised to $8 billion a year, senators said on Friday. Also, parent corporations, not just the cigarette subsidiaries, would be held responsible, they said.
- With a possible U.S. Senate vote scheduled as early as next week in Washington, the Louisiana Wholesale Food & Tobacco Distributors Association is calling on Senators John Breaux and Mary Landrieu to oppose the tobacco legislation (S. 1415) authored by Senator John McCain, R-Arizona.
- Kentucky AFL-CIO representatives and its unions representing workers in the tobacco and related industries held a lunch-time rally today in downtown Louisville, urging political and business leaders to speak out against the tobacco legislation proposed by U.S. Senator John McCain. More than 140,000 Kentuckians are directly or indirectly employed in the tobacco industry.
- With the introduction of this important bipartisan bill, the House of Representatives can follow the lead of the Senate and finally get down to the serious business of reducing youth smoking in this country.
- Eighty-eight members of Congress have backed a new tobacco-control bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Hansen, a Utah Republican and leader of the House Task Force on Tobacco and Health. Hansen held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to unveil his proposal Thursday . . . "At last we see something that puts the public health first,'' said C. Everett Koop, a former U.S surgeon general. ``I endorse this [Hansen's] legislation wholeheartedly and will do all I can to see this bill is enacted.''
- PRESIDENT CLINTON would sign a bill that raises cigarette taxes by $1.50 a pack over three years if it also met other anti-smoking goals, senior Senate Democrats say. "I think they will clearly accept $1.50 if we can get it done," Senate Minority Leader TOM DASCHLE said following a meeting Thursday with ERSKINE BOWLES, the White House chief of staff.
- The Senate Finance Committee Thursday voted to raise cigarette prices by $1.50 per pack, upping the ante on a tobacco bill headed for the Senate floor even as the General Accounting Office reported that such a boost would promote a black market. The finance panel meeting demonstrated how momentum for a tough bill to curb youth smoking has overwhelmed GOP leaders' efforts to stop members from using it as a vehicle to raise taxes.
- "For the second time, a Senate committee has taken up the tobacco bill and ended up strengthening it, not weakening it," said Matt Myers.
- "This is a very important win for the good guys. It is going to be very difficult for (the Senate) to go backward from where this committee has gone," said Matthew L. Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Scott Williams, a spokesman for the tobacco industry, said the high tax would prove self-defeating if enacted. "I think the black marketeers are going to break out the champagne. This is going to give us a black market faster and worse than under the McCain bill, and that's going to undermine all efforts to reduce teen smoking," Williams said.
- The committee approved, 13-6, a package of changes to the comprehensive tobacco legislation (S1415) approved by the Commerce Committee in April. The package will likely be offered as an amendment when the legislation reaches the Senate floor, probably next week. Majority Whip DON NICKLES, Okla., told reporters, "I want to kill this bill. I think it's a bad bill."
- He says a solution exists: soften the bill to regain support of the tobacco industry so that it will again agree to give up some rights that only it can surrender voluntarily.
- The Clinton administration and Republican sponsors of a Senate tobacco bill are negotiating an agreement on key provisions of the legislation that is scheduled for action next week.
- Some in the GOP leadership, like Oklahoma SEN. NICKLES, raise concerns about Lott's push for a vote on the tobacco bill next week. . . That means he will need a coalition of mostly moderate Republicans and Democrats to win passage. . . The industry-funded NATIONAL SMOKERS' ALLIANCE Friday starts ads on radio talk shows attacking the bill.
- By AP Wire Service 5/15/98 OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The father of a former Oklahoma congressman continued his son's attack on tobacco Thursday while a young crusader stepped up to receive an award for carrying on Mike Synar's legacy. EDMOND SYNAR . . spoke out against tobacco for the first time since his son's death two years ago from brain cancer. Edmond Synar wrote a letter Thursday to SEN. DON NICKLES, urging him to change his opposition to the comprehensive effort instead of supporting a more "narrow" approach.
- WARNING to SEN. ORRIN HATCH, R-Utah: The former U.S. surgeon general has determined that your stand on tobacco reform is hazardous to the nation's health. Former SURGEON GENERAL C. EVERETT KOOP attacked Thursday Hatch's arguments that top reform bills go too far and could bankrupt tobacco companies
- As legislation on the industry nears a vote and elections approach, contributions are being watched
- The tobacco campaign features reams of postcards and letters generated by tobacco company mailings as well as sophisticated and expensive telephone-bank operations that connect callers directly with their congressional representatives, or send letters for them. . . individual companies . . . have opened their massive databases of smokers and hired telemarketing firms to call and solicit their help.
- Senator EDWARD M. KENNEDY persuaded key women's health advocacy groups this week to line up behind his ''patient bill of rights'' legislation, even though it threatened to stall Senator ALFONSE D'AMATO'S bill banning ''drive-by'' mastectomies, a measure they also support. . . Kennedy's ploy halted D'Amato, but only temporarily. The New Yorker got the mastectomy amendment attached to the tobacco bill, which the Senate will take up next week.
- Days before the Senate is to vote on comprehensive tobacco legislation, President Clinton is ready to bless a Republican-drafted bill that extends limited protection from lawsuits to cigarette companies, and his aides are busily trying to line up support for the measure from anti-smoking activists.
- After several days of negotiations, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and senior White House officials said Friday that they have reached broad agreement on amendments to the McCain-drafted bill that is scheduled for debate as early as Monday. The amendments would increase cigarette makers' maximum liability in civil lawsuits and set terms for how the $65 billion -- the amount the bill is predicted to raise in its first five years -- would be disbursed among states, the federal government and tobacco farmers. The changes, according to senior administration officials, would strengthen the bill sufficiently for Clinton to sign it
- Senator Lott will hold out the money from any tobacco bill to force Clinton to give the industry the two things it needs to separate tobacco from non-tobacco assets -- an unconditional cap, and some provision that makes clear that coporate parent assets would be off limits if the domestic tobacco subsidiaires went bankrupt.. This, we belevie, would give the Boards of Directors the protection they need to spin off tobacco or non-tobacco parts without fear of fraudulent conveyance risks
- Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott Friday said there is "at least a 50-50 chance" that the Senate will pass a tobacco bill next week but he predicted that the Senate would roll the measure back to more closely resemble the deal the industry itself backed last June. "If we get something it will be much closer to the so-called settlement that was agreed to in June of last year," the Mississippi Republican said in an interview taped for CNBC-TV's "Tim Russert" show.
- "Obviously we feel we've picked up some momentum," Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., said. "I believe we've enhanced our chances for tax increases of $1.50 per pack" of cigarettes, he added. Republican proponents, including the bill's author, Senate Commerce Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., have been equally optimistic.
- "I will not support the excessive cigarette tax increase of $1.50 narrowly approved by the Finance Committee. This amounts to a 40% increase in the amount overwhelmingly approved by the Commerce Committee last month. The action taken today does not treat the states fairly. It eliminates the fundamental concept of the settlement of states' claims against the industry and the reimbursement to the taxpayers of tobacco-related costs."
- Sen. John McCain¹s much-touted anti-tobacco legislation fell apart because of its sponsors¹ avarice . . . Let¹s face it: The tobacco bill was a way to turn an unpopular industry into a treasure chest for politicians who wanted to spend a lot of money and make major contributors happy. . . Congress ought to stick to the basics: Keep whittling taxes. Stop writing pestilential new rules and regulations. And whenever the impulse to spend a trillion dollars arises ‹ leave town and let your constituents tell you what they think of the idea.
- Working people might be a little nervous about their newfound champions, Republican Sens. JOHN ASHCROFT of Missouri and PHIL GRAMM of Texas. The ambitious pair of would-be presidents helped defeat the $1.50-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes, all, they claimed, in the name of workers and the poor. . . . just how much of a favor is it, Sen. Ashcroft, to make it easier for working parents and their children to smoke, to get sick and to die of cancer. How much of a favor is it when many of the working poor don't have medical insurance because there is no universal health care? Your newfound compassion overwhelms us, senators.
- While anti-tobacco interests accuse the industry of cleverness and sophistication in defending itself, nobody has been more disingenuous in this struggle than those trying to further their interests by plundering the tobacco business. There have many casualties in this war, but truth has been perhaps the most visible. Meanwhile, the shabby treatment of those who choose to continue smoking has been a national disgrace, given that these people are doing nothing more than availing themselves of a legal product from which they derive pleasure.
- Have I ever lied to you? No. Has Big Tobacco lied to you? Twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five. If you don't know what ''twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five'' means, ask the next young man you see wearing a worn ball cap and a brown plaid flannel shirt. . . . Trouble is, a lot of the people he's listening to are not telling the truth. . . They're part of the machine he wants to rage against, but he hasn't discovered that yet. So he's not only not raging against them, he's buying their product and letting it shorten his life. . . So when you're an average citizen like you and me, and you have two radically opposing sides like Big Tobacco versus Decent Americans, you have to make a choice. . . . If you see through Big Tobacco's Big Lie, write to that good Arizona Republican Sen. McCain and urge him to keep up the good fight toward a reasonable settlement.
- But many of the people gathered in Wentworth seemed most concerned about tobacco legislation that threatens the economic life of Rockingham County. The reality, Faircloth lamented, is that in coming years there will be some sort of national tobacco settlement, or elimination of the tobacco allotment program coupled with a buyout of tobacco farmers and allotment holders. "It will not pass this year, but eventually it will pass," Faircloth said.
- TO UNDERSTAND THE McCain tobacco bill, which was approved by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee April 1, you first must set aside the legislators' tough talk and industry executives' pained cries. The bill is not so much a package of laws to be imposed on Big Tobacco as it is a take-it-or-leave-it offer in a process that both sides hope will result in a deal reached with the industry's consent. But if it doesn't, industry legal challenges could clog the courts for years.
- "When you hear them, I'd like you to remember that these are the companies that came to Washington and swore under oath that they didn't market cigarettes to children," McCain said . . . at a Pima County Republican Women's fund-raiser in the Viscount Suite Hotel.
- GOP conservatives map more assaults on Arizona GOP Sen. McCain's tobacco bill. Missouri Sen. Ashcroft plans an amendment to dedicate half of the bill's $1.10 a pack cigarette-price boost to tax cuts for people earning under $30,000 a year. One goal is to force Democrats into embarrassing votes against tax benefits for the working poor. North Dakota Democratic Sen. Conrad will seek a compromise on two rival plans to aid tobacco farmers. Senate Leader Lott of Mississippi pushes an $18 billion plan that would also kill the tobacco price-support program. But Kentucky Democratic Sen. Ford believes he has 50 votes for a $28 billion plan that would keep the program. Presidential prospect McCain will attend a luncheon Monday in New Hampshire, an early primary state, before resuming his antismoking effort in the Senate.
- But amid the congratulatory backslapping surrounding the assault on smokers and the attack on the tobacco industry, whispers of what we can expect next rise above the din. Just last month a top AMA official noted that if Washington can force Joe Camel into retirement by gutting the First Amendment in the name of "the children," it can certainly do the same to the popular Budweiser frogs.
- With each state lawsuit -- first Mississippi, then Florida, Texas and Minnesota and soon Washington -- it is getting easier to fight the tobacco industry as ever more damaging documents are released. So the demise of the national tobacco settlement shouldn't worry anybody. Congress will continue to speechify, leaving states to rein in the tobacco industry.
- As an apolitical person without any ax to grind, I am not troubled by the fee. I am troubled by those who show up after the battle is won to publicly criticize the heroes in a transparent political attack. The monumental accomplishment of Ciresi and Humphrey should not be diminished by political pettiness.
- Talk about voodoo economics! I'm disappointed with Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and the Star Tribune for not being more candid or more perceptive about what the state and its lawyers are receiving from the tobacco settlement and who will pay the cost of this settlement. . . I have seen only one brief reference to the fact that the value of the settlement in today's dollars is around $2 billion. . . Who is really going to pay this settlement? The state will collect nothing unless Big Tobacco continues to sell cigarettes to today's smokers and a whole lot of those kids the attorney general says he hopes don't smoke.
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