Talks on Capitol Hill to Regulate Tobacco Industry Break Down

Smoke Club Newsletter ^ | 10-2-03 | By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos.

[SheLion]

Talks in Congress to regulate the tobacco industry broke down Wednesday along partisan lines, making it highly unlikely that new restrictions would be imposed on the cigarette industry anytime soon.

Lawmakers had been close to passing legislation that not only would have ended unpopular tobacco subsidies, but also would have allowed government control over tobacco products for the first time.

But Democrats said late Wednesday that regulations that would have handed the Food and Drug Administration (search) oversight of cigarettes were not strong enough.

"Unfortunately, the proposed legislation which Republicans put forth today falls far short of the strong FDA authority which is needed to effectively do the job," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the leading Democrat on the health committee. "A weak bill is worse than no bill at all because it would give the public a false impression that their health was being protected."

The House and Senate had been close to voting on bills that would have ended Depression-era tobacco farm subsidies that lawmakers have described as archaic and harmful to the farming communities in several states that grow tobacco.

Farming quotas -- which dictate how much tobacco a farmer can grow and the subsidies given in return -- have been slashed by 50 percent over the last several years due to the decline in demand for cigarettes and foreign competition on the international market.

Paid for by a five-year annual assessment on manufacturers that import tobacco, the buyout would pay for both farmers leaving the tobacco business and those choosing to continue growing the crop on their own.

"The tobacco support system is "outmoded and not practical anymore," Rep. Mike McIntyre, R-D-N.C., told Foxnews.com, explaining that the government began controlling the production of tobacco farming in the 1930s to ensure stable payments to farmers for their crops.

"You can imagine what would happen if your income were cut in half," said Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., whose district has been devastated by the declining tobacco industry. "And they still don’t know if it can be cut further."

McIntyre joined Rep. Ernie Fletcher, R-Ky., Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., and Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., in introducing a bill last month to end the subsidies with a $15.7 billion buyout.

While the House had not planned to include FDA legislation in the bill, Sens. Judd Gregg (search), R-N.H., the chairman of the Senate health panel considering the legislation, and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, had agreed to marry the FDA authority to a bill proposed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that would have allowed a $13 billion buyout.

Calling the FDA proposal a "bitter pill for this senator to swallow," McConnell said in a recent floor speech that support from the senators and the health community behind FDA regulation would be necessary to end the subsidies once and for all.

"That is simply a reality which we confront today," he said, noting that linking the two measures together would create "a formidable coalition here in the Senate across an ideological divide to move us in the direction of achieving both these goals."

House aides had said that similar FDA legislation would likely have remained in final legislation written when negotiators from both chambers met in conference. That way, the bill would have had a better chance of passing in the House, but would also have satisfied lawmakers who wish to see greater regulation of tobacco products.

But when Senate Democrats saw Gregg's final proposal, they said that the provision that allowed only Congress to ban cigarettes was so vaguely written it could have prevented the FDA from requiring changes to make cigarettes safer.

"The vague language was a loophole that could prevent FDA from taking any steps to reduce the harm caused by tobacco," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

"We’re not willing to support FDA regulations that are too weak," said Allison Dobson, spokeswoman for Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, before the final legislation was offered. "I think there are a lot of senators who feel strongly that this shouldn’t be a sham."

Mark Berlind, a lawyer for Philip Morris parent company Altria, rejected the criticisms. He said health groups wanted the FDA to be able to ban tobacco products, something that was in a previous bill sponsored by Kennedy.

"We're disappointed that these talks broke down over a last-minute insistence that FDA be able to ban all cigarettes for adults," Berlind said.

Jacob Sullum, editor of Reason magazine, added that the public health lobby is "never satisfied." He said that he thinks the latest attempt to regulate tobacco is just another boondoggle for government.

"This is more than [the public health lobby] dreamed of years ago, but they are still not happy," Sullum said, referring to the 1998 tobacco settlement with the states in which the cigarette makers were forced to pay hundreds of billions of dollars for state programs as well as comply with new marketing and promotion standards.

Other areas of disagreement include how far states should be able to go in setting their own restrictions on the industry and whether tobacco companies can be sued for failing to adequately warn people about smoking hazards.

This latest effort by lawmakers to regulate the tobacco industry was the most serious in years. Whereas a buyout of tobacco-growers was an unpopular suggestion five years ago, it had recently been embraced by farmers and lawmakers alike as the only solution to their ongoing financial woes.

Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker and a major campaign contributor, had also recently reversed its previous position and endorsed FDA regulation, even though would be getting hit twice in the pocketbook -- once for the buyout, another with the oversight fees.

Smaller companies like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, Inc., say they will be financially ruined by both the buyout and the oversight measures.

Smaller cigarette makers will likely be squeezed by the new rules, said Sullum, who added, "The cost will be passed on to consumers."

But lawmakers say the move was necessary to help the ailing farming community as well as provide regulations aimed to protect the public health.

The FDA asserted authority over cigarettes in 1996, but the Supreme Court later ruled that only Congress can give the FDA that power.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Judith Anne]

And PS, Mom was a non-smoker.

[MrLeRoy]

Cuba, China, and Sweden are harshly anti-drug, as was the Soviet Union.

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

The New Statesman, which is more typically shrouded in the soft socialist values of George Bernard Shaw or Beatrice Webb than Mill, argued that prohibitionists had not met that burden.

How is that responsive to anything I posted?

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

[MrLeRoy]

The first sentence of the piece you quoted (without attribution, or even quotation marks): "The right-of center British magazine the Economist has for years
called for an end to the drug war and the legalization of the drug
trade."

[Gabz]

I too have more important things to do - it's parent teacher conference day at my daughter's school, but I'm waiting for the dryer to finish so I figure I can hang for a few more minute :-)

I have yet to see a "no shoes, no shirt" sign on a true public building, yet the elected officials are generally the ones that mandate the private sector require those regulations.

Gee, I can walk into the state capitol building barefoot, but I can't go into the convenience store thusly unattired.

Certain rules for certain people. lovely.

[cinFLA]

From the open publishing newswire: Many Indymedia readers have been raised on the “War on Drugs.” There were too many socialist-type gains in the 60s and 70s for the taste of President Nixon. With the mind-expansion help of drugs, people were uniting, racial and gender lines blurred and rights were won, communes that questioned land ownership were born, people loved freely and a war was stopped.
From a United States perspective, what has this 30-year war given us? A booming profit-driven prison economy where half of those incarcerated are non-violent drug consumers? An expensive law enforcement system where one half of our “peace officers” are mandated to convict petty sellers and consumers? A drained economy that sends billions upon billions of US dollars to right wing paramilitaries in Latin America to stop drug production, which kills thousands of peasants.

This war has fueled a violent black market, a savage capitalism that will never be diminished because of the enormous profits to be had. And, although our government professes concern for the consumer, thousands die each year due to no quality regulation. A friend of mine died last year because of this.

The war has failed, violently and miserably, and its motivation now as in the beginning is clearly right wing government control. First to slap down US leftists and now to control all of Latin America so the literal superhighways may be paved through such devices as Plan Colombia, Plan Puebla Panama and the extension of NAFTA.

[Gabz]

I just don't think it's such a bad thing.

Of course you don't, you're a former smoker. You are not a bar or restaurant owner whose business is being decimated. I've got way too many friends in the hospitality industry to not know what this is doing to them. And I have been in this battle far too long to even begin to think the anti-smokers ar doing this for any other reason than money.

But, local communities would still have the right to pass local ordinances that reflect the values of local citizens. That way, there would be a place for everyone in America that suits the tastes, lifestyles and moral codes of the wide variety of individuals who make up this country.

I can 95% agree with you on that. The problem with these smoking ban ordinances is that the highly Paid (smoker-funded) anti organizations come into a town or city or county or state and proclaim how such bans will do wonders for business and health. In other words they lie - but because they have so much money, people that know better, such as business owners from jurisdictions where these things have passed don't have a snowballs chance in Hades to get their voice heard.

The total smoking ban in Delaware has been a boon to business, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The only businesses that have profitted from the ban in Delaware are the fraternal and veteran's organizations, they are exempt and their membership numbers have skyrocketed.

[MrLeRoy]

Cuba, China, and Sweden are harshly anti-drug, as was the Soviet Union.

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

[TKDietz]

Most people I know who smoke wish they didn't. I smoked for more than twenty years and like most people I know who smoke, I was always talking about how I really wished I could quit. There are some people, however, who seem to be able to get away with occasional smoking without ever getting to the point where they can't leave them alone. These people appear to be in the minority. Most frequent smokers develop an addiction/dependancy/habit, whatever you want to call it, and it gets to the point that they can't quit without a good deal of difficulty.

I'm just floored to hear that there are still people out there who don't consider cigarettes to be addictive. Haven't you known anyone who has tried and tried to quit smoking but constantly failed? Haven't you known people you felt were credible who told you about their struggles with quitting smoking?

People who smoke like you do are in the minority. Most who smoke a pack every few days either quit or end up smoking more and more and more until they find themselves hooked. These aren't my emotions talking, this is my nearly forty years on this planet's worth of experience talking.

Again, you may be built such that you are not particularly susceptible to nicotine addiction, but most of the rest of out there do not possess your superior genetics. Most of us who smoke with regularity for an extended period of time turn into nicotine fiends. I can't tell you how many times I tried to quit and how much money I spent on nicotine patches, gum and other smoking cessation treatment. If I hadn't have been addicted. I would have just put 'em down and walked away like I did with some other bad habits I had through my college years.

And as for the comment about how the "biggest lie of all" is that tobacco has anything to do with the death rate in this country, all I can say is that there are still those out there who believe the world is flat, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The notion that there is some vast conspiracy to fool everyone into thinking cigarettes are unhealthy when in fact they are not is laughable. Why on earth would this be so? No doubt there is a good deal of pure exaggerated propaganda out there by government and anti-smoking concerns. The same thing goes on in the war on drugs, but there is just way too much smoke for there not to be any fire. There is just too much evidence from too many sources who have found that cigarettes are unhealthy and many of these sources have absolutely nothing to gain from saying cigarettes are bad.

Okay, I've blown way too much time today. I need to get a few things filed and walk across the street to the jail and talk to a few people hopelessly "habituated" to methamphetamine.

[cinFLA]

The study, “Gun Control in the United States: A Comparative Survey of State Firearm Laws,” was conducted jointly by the Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities and Culture and the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention.

... But the study stresses that the foundation of effective gun control is registration and licensing, two elements crucial in preventing guns moving from legal to illegal ownership.

The Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, a project of the Open Society Institute, funds projects to achieve public safety solutions through sentencing reform and by reducing both gun violence and excessive incarceration. The Open Society Institute is a nonprofit grantmaking foundation created by George Soros. The Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention consists of OSI, the Irene Diamond Fund and other funders working together to reduce and prevent the harm caused by excessive availibility of guns.

[cinFLA]

I think you need a lesson in civics and socialism.

[MrLeRoy]

The study, “Gun Control in the United States: A Comparative Survey of State Firearm Laws,”

... has nothing to do with tobacco or other drugs. What is your point?

[MrLeRoy]

Cuba, China, and Sweden are harshly anti-drug, as was the Soviet Union.

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

I think you need a lesson in civics and socialism.

Provide that lesson or stand self-exposed as an irrelevant windbag.

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

[cinFLA]

You of all people are completely aware of Soros' involvement in drug legalization movements and his quest for total gun control.

[MrLeRoy]

You of all people are completely aware of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's support for drug criminalization and their quest for total gun control---and smoking bans.

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?

[cinFLA]

You of all people are completely aware of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's support for drug LEGALIZATION!

Drug Strategies funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and George Soros

"Defensive" strategist Mathea Falco, ex-assistant secretary of state for International Narcotic Matters during the Carter administration, works at least unwittingly with the movement in the mainstream. Now the president of an institute in Washington D.C. called Drug Strategies, Falco has argued for an end to aggressive supply-side approaches, preferring instead more education and treatment. " Education and treatment," like "harm reduction" approaches, happens to be the mantra of the legalization kingpins as well. She advances this argument in a book sponsored by the Twentieth Century Fund entitled Winning the Drug War and in a widely-publicized report from her institute entitled Keeping the Score. The thrust of her works forces drug problem solutions into a false dichotomy: either supply interdiction or demand reduction, but not both. Since supply efforts appear to be failing, its time to shift to demand.

[cinFLA]

Seems like Sweden tried the hard drug route and it failed. Following the 'gate-way' theory they have reduced drug use and drug related crime to historic lows.

[MrLeRoy]

"The bulk of the money [for Partnership for a Drug Free America], Dnistrian [PDFA's VP] asserts, comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation" - http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/01.25.96/pot2-9604.html

[cinFLA]

My husband and I use 4 ashtrays in the house, one on each of our desks and one next to each of our chairs in the family room. They get emptied into the "burn barrel" outside everynight. There are 2 butts in the tray next to my chair and one in the tray on my desk, and I have been up since before 6 this morning.

Eeeuww ....

[MrLeRoy]

Seems like Sweden tried the hard drug route and it failed.

Provide evidence for your claim.

they have reduced drug use and drug related crime to historic lows.

Your praise for socialist Sweden is duly noted.

[MrLeRoy]

Has your position on smoking and property rights been correctly reported here?