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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on June 04, 2009, 01:43:28 PM
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Lawmakers Challenge Tobacco Industry With Regulation Bill
The Senate is debating legislation that would give the FDA authority to control ingredients going into tobacco products, restrict marketing and ads aimed at young people, and ban words such as "light" or "low tar" that may mislead people about the health risks of smoking.
AP
Thursday, June 04, 2009
In the half-century since the surgeon general issued his culture-changing report linking smoking to lung cancer, the tobacco industry has had little trouble defeating efforts to regulate cigarettes and other products. That could change this year.
The Senate is debating legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to control ingredients going into tobacco products, restrict marketing and ads aimed at young people, and ban words such as "light" or "low tar" that may mislead people about the health risks of smoking.
The legislation, said Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, is "by far the strongest bill to reduce tobacco use that this nation has ever seriously considered."
Myers and other supporters, such as the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, say the stars may finally be aligned for decisive action on the tobacco issue. The House passed a similar bill by a wide margin and President Barack Obama supports it. It also commands a majority in the Senate, although tobacco-state senators say they won't give up without a filibuster fight.
Federal dependence on the tobacco industry goes back at least to the post-Civil War era, when a tobacco tax became an important revenue source. Franklin Roosevelt made tobacco a protected crop and cigarettes were included in the C-rations of World War II soldiers, introducing smoking to millions of young men.
The 1964 surgeon general's report made official what many people already suspected -- that smoking is deadly -- but the next year Congress, under pressure from the industry and tobacco-state legislators, succeeded in watering down new health warning labels on cigarette packs.
In 1969, Congress did ban cigarette ads on television and radio but at the same time ended free anti-smoking ads on the airways and restricted the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to require stronger warning labels.
Myers said that the first time Congress acted in opposition to the tobacco industry was in 1984, when it passed legislation to strengthen warning labels.
In the late 1980s and again in 1990, lawmakers agreed to ban smoking on commercial air flights. "It was such a radical change," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., of that initial effort to prohibit smoking in a public area. Since then, he said, "we've had to creep and crawl every step of the way."
But popular attitudes toward smoking have been changing. Cigarette smoking has dropped from 51 percent of men and one-third of women in 1965 to 24 percent of men and 18 percent of women in 2006.
States have also taken the lead in banning smoking from public areas. Nancy Brown, head of the American Heart Association, noted that North Carolina, the country's biggest tobacco producer, recently passed one of the nation's toughest clean indoor air acts.
One turning point came in 1994 when tobacco company CEOs, at a hearing held by anti-smoking champion Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., one after another denied that smoking was addictive.
With that, said Brown, "people realized that the tobacco industry will stop at nothing to deceive Americans."
In 1996, the FDA sought to assert jurisdiction over tobacco products, beginning a legal battle that continues to this day.
The next year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., fell three votes short of overcoming a filibuster of legislation approving a massive settlement deal between major tobacco companies and the states and including FDA authority.
With that defeat, a more narrow deal was reached the next year under which the companies agreed to pay the states $206 billion for health care costs and anti-smoking campaigns.
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote in 2000 ruled that the FDA did not have the authority under current law to regulate tobacco. Since then the House and Senate have both approved bills giving legal status to the FDA but have not been able to agree on a common bill.
FDA authority was stripped out of the final version of a 2004 act signed by President George W. Bush that ended a Depression-era price support system for tobacco growers, replacing it with a buyout program that provided an incentive for many tobacco farmers to switch to other crops.
The decrease in tobacco farmers and workers in the tobacco industry is one reason the FDA bill is meeting less resistance from tobacco-state lawmakers this time around. Another is the realization that reducing the costs of tobacco-related health problems, estimated at nearly $100 billion a year, is essential to the drive to overhaul the nation's health care system.
Still, old habits die hard. It was only last year that Lautenberg persuaded the Senate to stop selling tobacco products at its shops and close all of its smoking rooms.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/04/lawmakers-challenge-tobacco-industry-regulation/
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Senator's Defense of Big Tobacco Draws Few Allies
GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, who is running for re-election next year, spent much of the past week arguing in the Senate against a popular bill that would regulate tobacco for the first time.
AP
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Like smoking, defending tobacco just isn't cool anymore.
Just ask GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, home to tobacco giants RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., and thousands of their employees. Last year, North Carolina farmers produced $686 million worth of tobacco, nearly half the value of the entire U.S. output.
Burr, who is running for re-election next year, spent much of the past week arguing in the Senate against a popular bill that would regulate tobacco for the first time.
Most of the time, he was alone.
It wasn't always so lonely.
Just five years ago, Burr was a congressman running for the Senate and had powerful allies such as then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who helped kill similar tobacco legislation.
Congress has a long history of legislative leaders defending the industry. Today, however, friends of Big Tobacco are few and far between.
It's not for lack of trying.
Individuals associated with the industry gave more than twice the amount of money to federal candidates during the 2008 election cycle than they had in 2006.
But that money wields less influence than it once did. Few lawmakers are willing to risk the political clout on defending an industry that many see as a political relic in an age where the public increasingly rejects tobacco products.
That shift has brought a change in strategy for the industry and its allies on Capitol Hill.
"Fifteen years ago, it was, `We don't support any regulation.' Now it's about the form and content of the regulation," says Tommy Payne, a top lobbyist and executive vice president at RJ Reynolds.
The Senate bill would give regulatory authority to the Food and Drug Administration and let the agency control the ingredients in tobacco products.
Instead of simply fighting the proposal, Burr and Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., have tried to highlight what they say are flaws in the legislation and have offered an alternative that would have a new agency to regulate tobacco. The senators say the current measure wouldn't do enough to reduce smoking.
Under their plan, the new agency would study the benefits of any reduction in nicotine levels; the competing bill would not require such studies. Their proposal would encourage adult smokers to switch to smokeless tobacco products, which the lawmakers and the companies claim are less risky than cigarettes.
That would help RJ Reynolds and Altria Group Inc., parent company of Philip Morris USA, which have bought smokeless tobacco companies in recent years.
Even Burr is distancing himself from the industry. He says he is not defending tobacco companies, but helping to save jobs in the health sector because adding a new mission to the already stretched FDA could have disastrous consequences.
"The media has tried to make this a story about the tobacco companies and in fact it's about the agricultural community, adult choice and its a story about the integrity of the FDA," Burr said. "I am passionate because I think we are getting ready to make a very serious mistake."
Burr attributes the shift in Congress to an environment where regulation is more popular. Gone are the days when DeLay helped kill FDA regulation of tobacco in 2004 after it passed the Senate. He said then he was philosophically opposed to increasing government regulation.
The North Carolinians certainly aren't the only opponents of the legislation. Some conservatives, along with other tobacco-state senators, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Sen. Jim Bunning, both from Kentucky, have come to the Senate to oppose the bill.
But the Democrats are in charge, and the chairmen of the two committees of jurisdiction -- California Rep. Henry Waxman and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy -- are among the original proponents of tobacco regulation. The House easily passed the bill this year and President Barack Obama, once a smoker, has pledged to sign it.
For most of the nation's history, tobacco has held a special place on Capitol Hill. Early lawmakers were farmers and many of them grew the plant. Tobacco leaves are carved into the speaker's rostrum in the House chamber and adorn the capitals of columns inside the building.
"The debate in both the House and Senate reflects a very new day," said Matthew Myers, the president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids who has been fighting for regulation for more than 15 years.
Even Burr's own state has accepted the inevitable. North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue signed a bill last month that will ban smoking in the state's restaurants and bars.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/06/senators-defense-big-tobacco-draws-allies/