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• Talking Business - A Few Men Helped Usher a Shift in Tobacco Policy  

This coming week, perhaps as early as Monday, President Obama will sign the bill into law, bringing tobacco products under federal control for the first time. Given the speed with which the bill flew through Congress this time around — the Senate vote was 79 to 17, while the House vote was 307 to 97 — the legislation seemed to have an air of inevitability about it.

But as Matthew L. Myers, the head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told me this week, that inevitability “was a long time coming.” . . .

And while a great deal of credit goes to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts — both of whom devoted years to getting the legislation passed — there were also these three others, strange bedfellows for sure, who were critical in making cigarette regulation come to pass: Dr. Kessler, Mr. Parrish and Mr. Myers. Take a bow, fellas.

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Our story begins in the mid-1990s . . .

So for years, Mr. Myers had to walk a delicate line, trashing Philip Morris publicly while quietly taking advantage of Mr. Parrish’s support and connections on Capitol Hill to move the bill forward — without ever acknowledging that help. And all the while he had to persuade the rest of the public health community of something that should have been obvious: if it was a good bill, why should they be concerned that Philip Morris supported it? All that mattered was the result: cigarettes would be regulated.

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