Tobacco.org

• Philip Morris Averts FDA Regulation: INFACT Report Details Concerted Campaign to Block FDA Authority 

INFACT, a national corporate watchdog organization, released the report ``Pulling Out All the Stops: Philip Morris' Fight to Block FDA Regulation of Tobacco.'' The report, available online at www.infact.org, documents Philip Morris' concerted campaign over the past six years to block independent oversight by the FDA. ``The Supreme Court found that Congress has not given the FDA authority over the tobacco industry. Their reasoning illustrates that Philip Morris' undue political influence is at the root of this problem, and has powerfully served the tobacco industry's interests once again,'' said INFACT Executive Director Kathryn Mulvey.

``Pulling Out All the Stops'' presents a detailed analysis of how Philip Morris has used everything from lobbying and political pressure to public relations smokescreens to aggressively fight FDA regulation since 1994. The report cites internal tobacco industry documents released through the state of Minnesota's health care cost recovery lawsuit, as well as news articles, to expose tactics such as Philip Morris' 1996 plan to ``[i]mplement a legislation program to block FDA regulation of tobacco.''

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• It's vendors' turn to try to get money back 

Jeffrey Cassorla says he watched with an acute sense of powerlessness in the mid-1990s as proposed federal tobacco regulations ruined almost overnight what had been his thriving cigarette-vending-machine business. . . Now, five years later, Cassorla and some 525 other vending-business owners are fighting back.

They have filed a series of lawsuits in federal claims court in Washington, arguing that the FDA action amounts to a violation of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the government taking private property without paying the owner just compensation. . . If upheld by the courts, the vendors' suit would represent a watershed case in an increasingly contentious area of law involving differing interpretations of the Fifth Amendment's takings clause.

The clause says: "private property (shall not) be taken for public use without just compensation

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[P]rivate property (shall not) be taken for public use without just compensation
A strict or loose interpretation of the Fifth Amendment's "takings" clause is at the center of a lawsuit over the FDA's teen access regulations by vending machine operators. Quoted in Richey, W. <i>It's vendors' turn to try to get money back</i>