TI Analysis of 'Showdown on Smoking' Newsweek, June 6, 1983
CITATION:
Tobacco Institute: TIFL0537365-7375
"Showdown on Smoking" Newsweek, June 6, 1983
Date: 06 Jun 1983 (est.)
Length: 11 pages
TIFL0537365-TIFL0537375
http://tobaccodocuments.org/ti/TIFL0537365-7375.html
snapshot_ti TON01804.87-TON01804.97
Characteristic: CONFIDENTIAL
Named Person:
Newsweek 1 Radler, D. Group Against Smoking Pollutio 2 Addison Rita Arnold, D. Feinstein, D. Carr, P. Idaho Lung Association 3 James Action Smoking Health 4 Pacific Telephone Telegraph 5 Banzhaf Attleboro Department Public, W.E. 6 Aronow, W. 7 Froeb, H. 8 Lenfant, C. 9 Clark, M. White Froeb Roper Organization 10 Civil Aeronautics Board 11 Fresh Air Nonsmokers 12 American Cancer Society 13 American Lung Association 14 Wilson, D.G. Carnes, B. Schneider, C. Weigum, J. Grant, B. Association Nonsmokers Rights 15 Roberts, S. Rj Reynolds 16 Philip Morris 17 American Brands 18 Liggett Meyers 19 Lorillard 20 Hughes, I.W. Brown Williamson 21 Maxwell, J.C. 22 Tobacco Institute 23 Environmental Control Board 24 Merryman, W. Stokes, S.J. Tobacco Growers Association 25 Huddleston, W. Waxman, H. Food Drug Administration 26 Lundmark, C. 27 Nida 28 George Washington University 29 Flay, B. Davis, B. Bogart, H. Hoover, J. 30 University Michigan 31 Stewart, J. Smokers Club 32 Wilson Morgan, J.Alias: TIMN0334226-0334236
Type: REPORT
Request: Plaintiff's
03/07/97
Rfp Box: 115 Site: Cb1042, TI Storage Box 1482 Date Loaded: 24 May 1999 Litigation: Florida Ag
Annotations
1. Newsweek Named Person
* Affiliation: Newsweek 2. Group Against Smoking Pollutio Named Person
* Affiliation: Group Against Smoking Pollution 3. Idaho Lung Association Named Person
* Affiliation: Idaho Lung Association 4. Action Smoking Health Named Person
* Affiliation: Action Smoking Health 5. Pacific Telephone Telegraph Named Person
* Affiliation: Pacific Telephone Telegraph 6. Attleboro Department Public, W.E. Named Person
* Affiliation: Attleboro Department Public Welfare 7. Aronow, W. Named Person
* Affiliation: Creighton University 8. Froeb, H. Named Person
* Affiliation: University California 9. Lenfant, C. Named Person
* Affiliation: National Institutes Health 10. Roper Organization Named Person
* Affiliation: Roper Organization 11. Civil Aeronautics Board Named Person
* Affiliation: Civil Aeronautics Board 12. Fresh Air Nonsmokers Named Person
* Affiliation: Fresh Air Nonsmokers 13. American Cancer Society Named Person
* Affiliation: American Cancer Society 14. American Lung Association Named Person
* Affiliation: American Lung Association 15. Association Nonsmokers Rights Named Person
* Affiliation: Association Nonsmokers Rights 16. Rj Reynolds Named Person
* Affiliation: Rj Reynolds 17. Philip Morris Named Person
* Affiliation: Philip Morris 18. American Brands Named Person
* Affiliation: American Brands 19. Liggett Meyers Named Person
* Affiliation: Liggett Meyers 20. Lorillard Named Person
* Affiliation: Lorillard 21. Brown Williamson Named Person
* Affiliation: Brown Williamson 22. Maxwell, J.C. Named Person
* Affiliation: Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb
23. Tobacco Institute Named Person
* Affiliation: Tobacco Institute
24. Environmental Control Board Named Person
* Affiliation: Environmental Control Board
25. Tobacco Growers Association Named Person
* Affiliation: Tobacco Growers Association
26. Food Drug Administration Named Person
* Affiliation: Food Drug Administration
27. Lundmark, C. Named Person
* Affiliation: Lundmark C
28. Nida Named Person
* Affiliation: Nida
29. George Washington University Named Person
* Affiliation: George Washington University
30. Hoover, J. Named Person
* Affiliation: University Washington
31. University Michigan Named Person
* Affiliation: University Michigan
32. Smokers Club Named Person
* Affiliation: Smokers Club
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LINKS:
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Alternate Bates Number of same item: TIMN0334226_4236
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NOTES:
This is a TI analysis of Newsweek's 4 page article on the nonsmokers' rights movement, which was published in the June 6, 1983 issue. The TI closely monitored this article and Newsweek staff for months. In apparent appeasement, Newsweek shortened the article, moved iit to the back of the magazine, removed the item from Cover Story status and deleted 3 sidebars (one on health effects, one on political donations/industry lobbying, and one asserting a poor business prognosis). Despite these measures, the TI felt, "the article contains sufficient errors and indicatons of superficiality and poor research so as to leave an anti-smoking bias in readers' minds."
Advertising income suffered dearly. Issues of Newsweek before after after the June 6 issue carried 7-10 pages of cigarette ads, but this issue carried none.
According to Larry C. White's "Merchants of Death" (Morrow, 1988):
Newsweek's June 6, 1983, issue, which included a long article on the nonsmokers' rights movement, carried no cigarette ads. When the cigarette companies learned of plans for the story, they asked that their ads be removed. The magazine may have lost as much as $1 million in advertising for publishing that story.
But according to Cigarette Underworld (Medical Society of the State of New York, 1985), the decision was Newsweek's:
The most advertised product in the magazines most subscribed to by physicians for the patient waiting area is cigarettes. In magazines such as TIME and Newsweek cigarette advertising comprises between 15% to 80% of total color advertising for a given issue (except for the June 6, 1983 issue of Newsweek which contained a story on nonsmokers rights; Newsweek, not the tobacco companies, pulled the cigarette ads). Although they have published cover stories on AIDS, Legionnaire's disease, Tylenol, and toxic shock syndrome, these magazines have not carried a cover story on smoking since 1970--when the bulk of cigarette advertising switched into the printed media. in 1977, in an article on carcinogens, Newsweek listed tobacco as number 8 (arsenic was listed as number 1; the list was in alphabetical order). Each year, TIME and Newsweek accept in excess of $30 million in cigarette advertising, or approximately 20% of total advertising income. TIME, Newsweek, Better Homes & Gardens, and other magazines buy mailing lists of physicians to offer reduced "professional courtesy" subscription discounts.
Whether the ad removal was voluntary or not, we can probably accept White's estimate of a $1 Million revenue loss from publishing the article. Other magazines, before and since, suffered similar fates for publishing the wrong stories (most notably, Mother Jones, US News and World Report, Newsweek (again) (1994) and Time (1994).
Authors of the Newsweek article were: "Lynn Langway with Gerald C. Lubenow and Pamela Abramson in San Francisco, John McCormick in Minnesota, Petere McAlevey in New York, Marsha Zaba(name illegible) in Boston, Mary Hager in Washington and bureau reports."
Gene Borio
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"Showdown On Smoking"
Newsweek, June 6, 1985
Analysis
As published, the article leaves an impression that the current anti-smoking social movement will, if it prevails, have a more repressive effect on the custom of smoking than the asserted health effects.
As noted, a number of Newsweek bureaus and departments collaborated on the piece. Tobacco Institute staff members, as part of their increased media contact assignment, kept in close touch with various employees of the magazine over the several months during which the story was being prepared. The magazine was thus supplied on a number of occasions with all of the information and comments requested, and more.
A resulting backflow of information, indicated several postponements of publication. Early in the week prior to its appearance, the article was apparently scheduled to appear in the National Affairs section, accompanied by a cover illustration of a man smoking at a restaurant table seated across from a lady wearing a gas mask. Late that week the staff learned that the piece would be shortened, moved to the back of the magazine and not be illustrated on its cover.
It was also evident to The Institute staff that at least three "sidebar" articles were prepared to accompany the main piece, and not published. One focused on lobbying and candidate support by the tobacco industry, including data about tobacco PAC's and lobbying extent and expense, with a quotation from a Connecticut state senator to the effect that the industry had purchased the defeat of the state's self-extinguishing cigarette bill.
Another was a review of the asserted health problems associated with smoking, including a disease rundown, addiction, the industry's criteria for proof of causation, and references to synergistic effects of smoking and occupational hazards. A third dealt with pessimistic cigarette business forecasts.
TIFL 0537365
TIMN 334226
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-2-
On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, Newsweek made arrangements to deliver advance copies of the magazine containing the smoking article to Institute staff members and certain member company executives (not identified to the staff). The issue was printed in Wisconsin on Saturday afternoon and delivered to the staff at their homes Sunday morning. It was the staff consensus that day that a rebuttal would not be appropriate or necessary.
Nevertheless, analysis shows that the article contains sufficient errors and indications of superficiality and poor research so as to leave an anti-smoking bias in readers' minds. Its subhead statement that smoking is "an explosive issue of civil rights" is certainly an overstatement.
The article is accompanied by six illustrations. Two are anti-smoking; two-depict smokers fight back; one depicts anti-smoking teaching of youngsters and one shows graphically a current slight rise in the percent of adults who smoke.
A detailed commentary on the text follows:
Warning: cigarettes can endanger your health in ways the surgeon general never imagined. Consider two signs of the times. In an East Hampton. N.Y., movie the writer Fran Lebowitz lights up a Carlton--thereby incensing the man in the next seat, who grabs for the cigarette. Lebowitz calls in the cops and has him arrested for harassment. Verdict: not guilty. In Cambridge, Mass.. Daniel Radler, 25, chides a female passenger for smoking on a bus. She beans him with her umbrella. He sues the transit authorities with the help of the local Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP) and winds $3,500 in damages. And so it goes. Massachusetts GASP president Rita Addison, anticipates more mayhem ahead. "We all have fantasies of violence," she says. "Sometimes, this feels like war."
This paragraph contains a biased selection of anecdotes. There is no counterbalance to indicate that smoking is an issue, which is usually defined as a confrontation of opposing views.
Nearly 20 years ago the first surgeon general's report on smoking warned that cigarettes could harm the health of people who used them. The result war a generation or of quitters, would-be quitters and failed quitters.
The "generation" passage omits a major category which should have been included -- those who neither wish to nor have tried to quit smoking - - those who genuinely enjoy tobacco.
TIFL 0537366
TIMN 334227
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-3-
But now smoking is under attack by people who don't smoke. They are madder than hell and aren't going to take it anymore--not in airplanes or offices, not in elevators or restaurants. Increasingly, the nonsmokers regard smoking as a public transgression rather than thin a private indulgence "We're really on the defensive," says public-relations executive Dick Arnold, a two-pack-a-day man from San Francisco, which just passed a tough smoking law. "Everytime I light up, I feel like a pariah."
This may imply that all nonsmokers are attacking. We know it is only the anti-smoking minority of nonsmokers. On airplanes, for example, complaints about smoking range below three percent of all complaints about air service.
What makes the showdown on smoking such a bard-fought battle is that smokers are no easy target. In fact, after a decade of relatively rapid decline, America's smoking population seems to be on the rise again. A forthcoming Gallup poll will show that 38 percent of American adults now smoke, up from 35 percent two years ago.
"Decade of relatively rapid decline" is a meaningless phrase, unsupported with data and unexplained as to what it is related. It evidently refers to the proportion of the population, rather than to the number, and makes no reference to the substantial increase in cigarette sales during the decade.
This beleaguered minority confronts a newly militant majority of non-, ex- and antismokers.
It would have been appropriate here to mention that the "beleaguered minority" amounts to nearly. 60 million persons and that they "confront" only a vocal minority of the majority, as it were. This could have been documented by reference to seven initiative and referendum ballots in which voters have consistently rejected smoking restrictions.
Last year antismoking helped persuade Congress to double the cigarette tax.
This statement is unsupported and evidently incorrect. The excise increase was a small part of a revenue package measure whose record of passage fails to show anti-smoking sentiment.
TIFL 0537367
TIMN 334228
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-4-
This year Congress is considering a bill to strengthen the health warnings that already appear on every pack of cigarettes.
The rich and powerful tobacco industry is fighting back, but it faces enemies on many fronts. Today 36 states restrict smoking, compared with only five in 1971. Cities are taking vigorous action against smoking in public. San Francisco's new ordinance, which mayor Dianne Feinstein is expected to sign into law this week, requires all private employers to provide "reasonable accommodations" for both smokers and nonsmokers But if a single nonsmoking employee objects to the arrangements, the company must ban smoking in his or her area or face a possible $500-a-day fine.
Given many a smoker's volatile mix of emotions-desire, resentment and remorse-- blowups are predictable. Ex-smokers, who now number approximately 34 million, can be especially irritating. "There is an air of fanaticism with a lot of those people," says Pat Carr, past president of the Idaho Lung Association. "My father used to say that there's nothing worse than a reformed whore. He was wrong. A reformed smoker is worse."
Consolation: Purveyors of tobacco have been squashing their critics since the 17th century, when King James I proclaimed the native American crop "loathesome to the eye, hateful to the nose." Cigarettes have survived periodic suppressions--13 states instituted some form of ban during the early 1900s--thanks to superb salesmanship and a willing public. But during War II, advertising rendered smokes second only to Betty Grable pinups as the GI's consolation; by 1955 the postwar male smoking population had peaked at 53 percent.
The statement that advertising accounted for the level of smoking by World War II GI's is not documented and is included as a statement of "conventional wisdom" on the role of advertising which is disputed by every study done on the subject. In fact, GI's in WW II were, if anything, underexposed to cigarette advertising in comparison with other adults. It might be noted that among their counterparts today, marijuana smoking has reached a level of official and public concern But marijuana has never been advertised.
Subsequent cancer revelations, the advent of warning labels (1966) and the ban on broadcast commercials (1971) all shook the industry--temporarily.
That the broadcast advertising ban "shook the industry" is an unwarranted assumption, as can be recognized by anyone familiar with its history. This is another example of editorial carelessness and perhaps an unconscious attitude of "if it seems logical, print it."
On each occasion, cigarette makers managed to rebound with innovations, from filter tips to low- and ultra-low tars.
This "rebound" statement, while dramatic, is a myth. If the writers had looked at consumption data, they would have found no significant decline from which a rebound would have occurred.
TIFL 0537368
TIMN 334229
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-5-
Most recently, smoking interests have been challenged in the workplace. At least one-fifth of all US firms now post some restrictions on smoking, according to Washington's Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., California's largest private employer, is formulating smoking guidelines for its 103,000 workers, after a survey showed that nearly three-fourths of the employees who responded--including more than half the smokers--wanted controls.
The reference to "at least one-fifth of all U.S. firms" is a major datum made to sound authoritative but really is only a made-up number by Banzhaf of ASH, whose professional anti-smoking status is not noted.
When rules cannot be worked out amicably, nonsmokers are taking legal action. Courts in Missouri, California and New Jersey have sided with nonsmokers, ruling that those who are sensitive should be provided with either a smoke-free environment or disability payments. On the other side of the case, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington recently held that employers have no obligation to satisfy the demands of nonsmokers.
In a potential landmark case in Massachusetts the rights of smokers and nonsmokers pitted directly against each other for the first time: one allergic case- worker wants the Attleboro Department of Public Welfare to ban smoking from its open offices while a colleague claims to be an addicted smoker who can't function without cigarettes. A pending case in San Mateo, Calif. could prove even more important. The county fire department won't hire anyone who smokes-- on or off the job. The department claims the policy will save millions in workmen's compensation since some job-related ailments appear to be smoking-related as well. But the firemen's union is suing, charging an unconstitutional invasion of privacy--and the decision could reverberate widely as other employers consider the economic benefits of such discrimination.
Errors and omissions in this passage render it severely distorted. The Missouri case has not been decided. If the New Jersey reference is to Shimp it should have been noted that the same judge later made a contrary decision in another case. There should have been mentions of the major Federal court cases decided against nonsmokers - - FENSR, the Superdome being two; and to a Pennsylvania case recently (of which The Institute staff advised Newsweek) in which smokers won a decision that smoking bans should be considered in collective bargaining, not the court.
Medical research has encouraged the nonsmokers' cause. Evidence on the link between smoking and lung cancer, cancer of the mouth, larynx and esophagus, heart disease and strokes has mounted over the years almost to the point of numbness.
That the "evidence... has mounted" is another of those conventional assertions made without noting that the contrary evidence has mounted as well. This would have been an obvious place to mention, for example, the current spate of intervention studies, including MRFIT, which are seriously troubling those who believe that smoking causes heart disease.
TIFL 0537369
TIMN 334230
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-6-
But recently, preliminary studies have suggested other potentially explosive findings: cigarette smoke may also endanger the hearts and lungs of those who do not smoke. Dr. Wilbert Aronow of the Creighton University School of Medici in Omaha showed that angina sufferers develop chest pain when exercising in poorly ventilated, smoke-filled rooms much more quickly than do patients working out in smoke-free conditions. In another study. Dr. Herman Froeb of the University of California San Diego Sound that nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke from their co-workers for 20 years or more had the same degree of respiratory impairment that a doctor would expect to find in a "light" smoker of 11 light cigarettes a day. "For the first time, we have a quantitative measurement of a physical change, a fact that may tip the scales in favor of the nonsmokers," says Dr.,Claude Lenfant of the National Institutes of Health.
A severe bias or at least ignorance and lack of research is demonstrated in the above passage. Newsweek medical editor Matt Clark was given substantial nonsmoker health information by The Institute staff. If Aronow was to be relied upon, his unfrocking by FDA and investigation by EPA should have been noted. The discrediting of White-Froeb, by a co-author of the "passive smoking" chapter in the Surgeon General's 1982 report, is not noted. Lenfant is quoted and his further statement in the same article is ignored: "The evidence that passive smoking in a general atmosphere has health effects remains sparse, incomplete and sometimes unconvincing." Finally, the publicized study from the May 5 New England Journal of Medicine could have been noted. Its authors found that stewardesses on eight-hour flights absorbed, at most, the equivalent of one cigarette, and concluded that this was "unlikely to have physiologic effects." The opportunities for balance here were unlimited.
'Dangerous Development': As the Roper Organization predicted in a 1979 survey for ,the Tobacco Institute: "What the smoker does to himself may be his business, but what the smoker does to the nonsmoker is quite a different matter . . . this we see as the most dangerous development to the viability of the tobacco industry that has yet occurred."
Born in the '60s, the antismoking movement came of age in the early '70s when ASH persuaded the Civil Aeronautics Board to restrict smoking on airplanes. Like GASP or FANS (Fresh Air for NonSmokers), at least 50 local groups have since flourished, abetted by such national forces as the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. What they lack in funds, local foes of smoking make up in determination. When repeated remonstrances against an illegal smoker failed, MIT Prof. David Gordon Wilson--the founder of Massachusetts GASP--uncorked his secret weapon, a vial of ammonium isovalerate, and waved it in it in the air. "It smells a like a cross between Limburger Cheese and an athlete's foot," he reports. Little escapes the grasp of New Jersey GASP; the energetic organization urges corporations to create smoke-free office space and pickets tobacco-sponsored events such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Vatican exhibit, backed by Philip Morris.
The "coming of age" reference to ASH and the CAB is fatuous. Journalistically, Betty Carnes and the Arizona statute would have been more accurate in the context. The CAB action was little more than recognition of the previous airline management decisions to separate smokers and nonsmokers voluntarily in the interest of the personal comfort of both.
TIFL 0537370
TIMN 334231
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-7-
A major campaign against cigarettes has been waged in California. In 1977 the tobacco industry Spent more than $6 million to help defeat a statewide referendum to restrict public smoking. Since that setback many antismokers have changed tactics to concentrate on local governments. The results are remarkable: 20 California communities have passed restrictions in the last three years, alone. Smoking is illegal in most public places in Berkeley, where no-smoking placards outnumber stop signs 10 to 1. San Diego recently adopted a public-smoking law that, among other things, requires all restaurants seating more than 20 to provide smokeless zones. San Francisco's attempt to regulate smoking in the office goes even further. "In a restaurant or bar, you can walk out," says board of supervisors president Wendy Nelder, who drafted the recent legislation with the help of the Bank of America. "In the workplace, you have no choice."
This California passage is very superficial and sloppy. The reference is to a 1978 initiative, not a 1977 referendum. No mention is made of the 1980 initiative, nor of the 1992 Kern County referendum, nor of the many other legislative defeats suffered by the anti-smokers in that state.
As health-conscious as California seems to be, it is Minnesota that leads the nation in smoking controls. Eight years ago the legislature passed a Clean Indoor Air Act, barring smoking in banks stores, offices and almost any other public space except where expressly permitted. "The law regulates virtually every place indoors except bars and private homes," says Charles Schneider, the health-department official in charge of enforcement. Penalties range from warnings to $100 fines, depending on the circumstances. The penalty for giving a cigarette to a minor is harsher than that for giving him a joint.
But Minnesota's law as largely self-policing. "Smoking permitted" and "prohibited" signs blanket the state like its trademark snowdrifts, and citizens aren't shy about making reprimands. "If you don't obey, you'll be reminded," says Jeanne Weigum, president of the Association for Nonsmokers' Rights. At the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, fans actually applaud the no-smoking announcements at the beginning of sports events. When the Minnesota Vikings play in play in Michigan's Silverdome, Coach Bud Grant complains, "You can see the blue haze start from the top and work its way down over the field. Afterward, you go in the dressing room and take off your shirt, and you reek like you were in some bar all night."
Squabbles: The joys of clean air do not come without struggles. As amended, the Minnesota law requires restaurants to set aside at least 30 percent of at lug 30 their seats for nonsmokers. Many reserve more--and that often causes squabbles. When one burly customer at Robbie Stair's Mud Pie restaurant in Minneapolis rejected the admonitions of his fellow diners by growling, "I smoke when I eat," Stair snatched away his plate and declared, "Now you're done." The fellow stormed out. "This is a very emotional issue," says Steve Roberts, a safety engineer who has plumbed the mysteries of buffer zones, air exchanges and stationary partitions while drafting smoking policy for Honeywell's 17,000 workers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. "A lot of our people have perceived smoking as a right; it isn't, it's a privilege."
The Minnesota situation appears to have been given more than its due, yet in this much space readers might have been exposed to the other side of the story -- the opposition by law enforcement, hospitality, labor and other groups, as well as the sentiments of smokers.
TIFL 0537371
TIMN 334232
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-8-
The Spread of comprehensive smoking is regulation is far from inevitable, given the clout of the tobacco industry. Nearly one-third of the almost $23 billion Americans spent on 624 billion cigarettes last year poured into the tax coffers of federal, state and local governments--making most of them less than eager to restrict consumption . Although more American adults were smoking last year than the year before, the number of cigarettes sold decreased for the first time in five years, due partly to higher taxes. But a barrage of brand launches is in the works to offset another anticipated drop in 1983. R.J. Reynolds, the giant producer of Camel, Winston and Salem, is trumpeting Bright, a minty low-tar; king -size Philip Morris Inc. is ballyhooing its Players brand. American Brands has reincarnated Lucky Strike as low-tar filters. Liggett & Myers has scored a smash with low-price generic, cigarettes and Lorillard is staging a lavish bow for high-status. Satins. Says I. W. Hughes, chairman of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.: "I'd be a fool to tell you we aren't concerned as hell about what's going on, but this industry can adapt."
Finding ways to assuage fears about health hazards has been the primary objective of tobacco's $1 billion-a-year ad budgets for the last few years as brands containing as little as one milligram of tar captured 60 percent of the market. But recent medical research suggested that low-tars might do as much harm as good, by prompting smokers to smoke more and take deeper drags. Now, sales of low-tars arc flattening out. "Everything we do now is bad for our health according to _someone_," says leading tobacco analyst John C. Maxwell Jr., of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loch. "People simply decide, 'The heck with It'. Instead of stressing "safer" cigarettes, ads have returned to touting taste sensations, or such Marlboro Country intangibles as machismo. "You're tasting success and it sure tastes good," exclaims a Vantage ad, showing a brawny scuba diver stretched out on his boat. Many pitches are aimed at women, the growing market of you've-come-a-long-way-baby smokers that Virginia Slims has reached with great success.
"Evangelical Zealots": The industry's most visible advocate is the 25-year-old Tobacco Institute in Washington. With only 12 registered lobbyists, it is relatively small; the oil companies have as many as 200. But it is mighty. The Tobacco Institute will pay local lawyers and dispatch professional witnesses to the most obscure arenas; members of the Environmental Control Board in Evanston, Ill., were startled when four representatives turned up last winter to testify against a proposed citywide ban on cigarette give-aways. (It was defeated). From a desk adorned by a placard that says "kiss my butt," vice president Walker Merryman denounces the more extreme antismokers as "shrill, evangelical zealots indulging in unbridled rescue fantasies."
The relatively brief passage above might be construed as the only "good news" portion. However, to ascribe brand launches as a method to curb an expected drop in overall industry sales is rather novel. One would have expected such innovations to be regarded as market share competition rather than market expansion.
TI contests the methods and conclusions of most of the studies that link smoking and ill health. A recent Institute ad campaign exhorts readers to "weigh both sides before you take sides on smoking issues. Other ads make a libertarian argument: "Are occasional annoyances enough of a reason to limit freedom?" "Anyone who is an adult has a right to make a choice," Merryman says.
If the matter of smoking and health were appropriate to an article about the social aspects, specific illustration of The Institute's problems with research reports should have been given. Certainly they were available to the writers. But all that appears here is a throw-away line, and even that contained no reference to the views of independent, scientists who vigorously dispute the Surgeon General's conclusions.
TIFL 0537372
TIMN 334233
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Tobacco draws its deepest strength from the fields of North Carolina, Kentucky and' 20 other states, where "the golden leaf' helps support nearly 500,000 farmers and supplies about 2 million jobs. Many growers are bewildered by the anti-smoking onslaught. "We can't understand why they only pick on one commodity," complains S. J. Stokes Jr., who farms near Lexington, Ky. "If you do anything in excess--eat bread, or pizza--it will be bad for your health."
Quotas: Since tobacco is so lucrative per acre, it has long been the crop of choice among small Southern farmers. To prevent their widespread failure during the Depression, Congress created an elaborate federal system of allotments--permits - to grow tobacco on a specified number of acres. To further control overproduction, yearly marketing quotas were established by the secretary of agriculture.
Any farmer who wanted to plant more had to rent or buy the rights to other allotments, which were sometimes held by large non-growers who functioned as absentee landlords. Surplus crops were warehoused by growers' cooperatives until they could be sold. The cooperatives borrowed federal funds to pay farmers a minimum support price set yearly by the government and repaid the low interest loans when the tobacco was actually sold.
The system functioned quietly until recently when some tobacco farmers started protesting that allotments were unfair and costly, while supports kept prices too high to compete with cheaper foreign leaf. To stem their grumbles last year--and to resist pressure from antismoking and free-market forces in Congress--some tobacco-state congressmen endorsed reforms that were designed to make the system largely self-supporting. That still didn't satisfy dissidents. This spring 300 renegade farmers formed the United Tobacco Growers Association in North Carolina-the bedrock of Tobacco Road- to lobby for an end to the whole "feudal" system, which is still supported by the majority of allotment holders and farmers.
The mere thought of a free tobacco market might have been hooted off Capitol Hill five years ago, but not today. "I think we can save the [support] program, but it gets harder all the time," admits Sen. Walter (Dee) Huddleston of Kentucky. Once again, tobacco troops in Congress are trying to forestall abolition by proposing more reforms and hoping for help from their farm-belt allies.
"The Institute has no comment on pending farm program legislation). (sic)
More remarkably, congressional odds-makers give fair-to-even chances for passage of a bill that would strengthen warnings to a point just short of a skull and crossbones. One version proposed by California Democrat Henry Waxman reads: Warning: Cigarette smoking
* causes lung cancer and emphysema
* is a major cause of heart disease.
* is addictive and may result in death.
In an unprecedented move, representatives of the Tobacco Institute and the public-health service are now meeting to come up with a mutually acceptable alternative to submit when Congress reconvenes in June.
The labeling bill would also require cigarette makers to inform the federal government--for the first time--precisely what their products contain. Unlike the ingredients in other widely used products that are monitored by the Food and Drug Administration or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the contents of cigarettes are unregulated by any federal agency. The Federal Trade Commission polices ads and the Civil Aeronautics Board regulates smoking on airplanes, but no agency reviews the ingredients. Only after three years of requests did the secretary of health recently obtain a list of some of the 1,400 additives commonly used in the manufacture of cigarettes.
Perhaps hasty writing and careless review were responsible for the conflicting statements at the start and end of the paragraph about "ingredients." In any event, the writers almost seems (sic) disappointed that the industry has furnished HHS with a list -- it deprives them of an opportunity to exploit a secrecy angle more fully -- and they clearly ignored Assistant Secretary Brandt's repeated statements in praise of the industry-government transaction.
TIFL 0537373
TIMN 334234
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10
Group therapy. It's no secret that most smokers have an urge to quit: numerous surveys show that anywhere from two-thirds to 90 percent wish they didn't have the habit. And even though most successful quitters manage to stop on their own, commercial helpmates abound. Some offer hypnosis for $200 a session, while others administer acupuncture for $200 a treatment. The 10 Schick Centers in three states practice aversion therapy; for $495, smokers are closeted in tiny rooms with glutted ashtrays, forced to puff constantly and zapped with a 9-volt shock each time they do.
Group therapy and behavior modification are especially popular: the eight-week SmokEnders course has drawn 300,000 customers since 1969. Experts say the best programs make people confront their dependency--perhaps by keeping a cigarette diary--and substitute exercise and other gratifications.
Almost any cessation program will work--for a while. The long-term success rate, however, tends to be only 20 to 30 percent; within a year of quitting, up to 80 percent of smokers will restart. The habit is wrenchingly hard to abandon because it can be both physically and psychologically addicting, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Smoking can soothe or stimulate, focus the mind or serve as a social prop. More crucially, the desire for a cigarette is reinforced by daily rituals or social situations: every cup of coffee, every cocktail, every meeting or waiting room presents a challenge. "Smoking cigarettes is one of the greatest pleasures of my life in spite of what I have to go through to smoke them," says legal secretary Carolyn Lundmark of Oakland, who has tried to stop seven times because of chest pains and a hacking cough.
The Institute does not comment on quit-smoking activities on the ground that informed adults should make their own free choices regarding smoking. However, such decisions should not be guided by misinformation, such as the reference above to "addiction." Newsweek was aware of the politics of the NIDA release, as outlined in March in the Waxman hearing, and of the authoritative rebuttal testimony, particularly that of Dr. Blau.
Upticks. As committed smokers fight for what they see as their rights, they are being joined by younger recruits. After several years of decline, teen-age smoking seems to be increasing. Two recent surveys for NIDA both reported upticks. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse by George Washington University showed the percentage of smokers 12 to 17 years old had moved from 12.1 in 1979 to 14.7 in 1982, while the annual survey of high-school seniors conducted by the institute of social Research at the University of Michigan, revealed the first increase in five years, from 20 to 21 percent. Fearing that teens have stopped hearing health warnings--or consider themselves immortal--educators are revamping antismoking programs to stress aesthetics and social acceptance. "Emphasizing the immediate consequences, like smelly hair and yellow teeth and fingers, is a lot more effective," says social psychologist Brian Flay, who along with his colleagues supervises antismoking programs for 60,000 junior-high students in the Los Angeles area.
Kids, however, still tend to view smoking through a glamorous haze. "Some adults, as well, see themselves as Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart whenever they brandish a cigarette. Tobacco companies trade on such romantic fancies; but despite the "upscale," sophisticated images that dominate cigarette ads, smoking appears to be more the habit of the blue-collar segment of the population. The University of Michigan survey found that college-bound seniors were less than half as likely to smoke as those who had no college plans. "Increasingly, the upper-class, more educated people are stopping or not taking it up in the first place," says epidemiologist Joanne Hoover of the University of Washington.
The essential facts in the above segment have to do with the NIDA and University of Michigan surveys. Their presentation in the article is a clear illustration of blind media acceptance of prejudicial government statements. To dismiss the Michigan reference, it should be pointed out (and was not by Newsweek) that the survey authors do not regard their finding as statistically significant. TIFL 0537374
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The NIDA situation is more complicated. On investigation, The Institute staff has learned that the definition of regular smoker was different in the 1979 and 1982 surveys. The researcher himself, had he been contacted by Newsweek, might have said the same thing that he told The Institute: "It's a screwy way of doing it." The comparable figures are 12.1 and 12.4, not 12.1 and 14.7 as published by Newsweek.
What's more, the production of everything from toothpaste to air-purifying machines now drum away at the message that smoking is an offensive habit. Abstinence is often rewarded. At least 100 life-insurance companies give discounts to non-smokers. They're the only welcome guests at the year-old Non-Smokers Inn in Dallas, where employees weed out violators and add a $100 fine to their bill. Two-year-old Muse Air flies nothing but non-smoking sections out of Texas; desperate habitues on the long run from Houston to Los Angeles are given "survival kits" containing gum, candy and plastic pacifiers. And since last fall, Thrifty Rent-A-Car has offered some smoke-free vehicles (their ashtrays are filled with mints.)
Unorganized Resistance. Smokers are only now sporadically organizing against the opposition. New Yorker James Stewart, former chairman of a major insurance company was so fed up with antismoking lectures that he started Smokers United to combat smoking bans; and in Terre Haute, Ind, this spring the ad-hoc Smokers' Club was formed for similar reasons. There is, of course, much unorganized resistance to encroachments on smokers' rights. Two of the world's least luxurious conveyances have been rocked recently by smoking show-downs. Earlier this year, after smoking scofflaws emerged as the No. 1 complaint of New York City subway riders, transit police started issuing tickets, and sat least two policemen were injured in scuffles during the crackdown. And last week on the Long Island Rail Road, some commuters revolted when they lost one of their two remaining smoking cars. The third reduction in 12 years provoked a blizzard of pro-smoking stickers throughout the train, a few speeches about oppression and a flood of angry letters of complaint to the railroad.
For the near future the uncivil war over smoking will probably escalate. Antismoking forces predict eventual victory. "Smoking will go the way of spitting," says GASP's Wilson. "You just wait and see." But the cigarette companies sound just as confident. "There is no product whose supposed dangers are more well known, and yet 59 million Americans still enjoy their cigarettes," says James Morgan, executive vice president for marketing of Philip Morris USA. But enjoyment is precisely the point. Should the day-to-day hassles over smoking get more unpleasant, beleaguered smokers may decide the pleasure's not worth the problems. In the end, social pressure and self-image will probably do more to influence whether or not people smoke than any battery of laws--or the best-armed regiment of surgeons general.
This final section of anecdotes about the profit-making anti-smoking industry, in the context of the whole article, gives a sort of public-interest cast to these activities, particularly when contrasted with the references to the tobacco industry. Such a bias in unwarranted. The final forecast about smokers possibly succumbing to worsening pressure is negative. The alternative possibility --that the pressures may diminish -- is for some reason unmentioned.
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