Feds and smokers fume over the right to inhale

Insight on the News, April 24, 1995 by Hank Cox, Valerie Richardson

The billion-dollar tobacco industry has taken some tough hits recently from Congress and the medical community, among others. But would smoking prohibitions really be good for the country's health?

In February, Cindy Gilmer flew from Starkville, Miss., to the nation's capital to testify before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The experience, she said later, was a "real eye-opener."

Gilmer owns and operates a billiards hall, the sort of establishment in which smoking is de rigueur. OSHA wants to outlaw smoking in the workplace, including restaurants and pool rooms. "You can't just throw a blanket over business and treat us all the same," says Gilmer. "A lot of us do not need, and certainly cannot afford, to spend $10,000 on a separate smoking room. It just doesn't make any sense."

Even as the Clinton administration championed a hefty 75-cents- per-pack tax increase on cigarettes to fund health care reform, Congress was publicly chastising tobacco executives. Last April, Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California and then-chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and the environment, seemed to revel in the role of righteous avenger as he grilled companies. The antismoking drive had kicked into overdrive.

In February 1994, for example, McDonald's Corp. banned smoking in all of its 11,000 restaurants, prompting other restaurant chains to follow suit. Within days, the Department of Defense imposed a worldwide ban on smoking at military bases. The same month, the Food and Drug Administration began to consider classifying nicotine as a regulated drug.

The antismoking lobby and the tobacco industry was headed for a major legislative showdown when the November election ushered in a conservative landslide, ceding control of key House committees to Republicans, who are less interested in regulating behavior by legislative fiat. "The biggest setback was an end to the investigation," an aide to Waxman tells Insight. "The tobacco industry had agreed to surrender all internal documents relating to health effects. Now we'll never see them."

The recent shift in tobacco's fortunes in Congress was not reflected on state and local levels, however. During the last 10 years, the number of local governments restricting smoking has increased from 45 to more than 600. Even anarchic New York City has adopted a comprehensive smoking ordinance that goes into effect this month, for the first time extending smoking restrictions to outdoor areas, such as parks and stadiums. "This is where the rest of the world is going," explained Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Meanwhile, California withstood an assault on its antismoking law. Proposition 188, heavily backed by the tobacco industry during the November election, would have overturned not only the state measure but local antismoking ordinances as well. "Even though Philip Morris outspent the opposition 20-to-1," says Cathy Leonard, who works for the State Assembly's Committee on Labor and Employment, "Proposition 188 got less than 29 percent of the vote.

Most recently, Maryland has instituted one of the most comprehensive antismoking ordinances in the nation. State health officials had proposed a ban on smoking not only in office buildings, but also in bars, restaurants and convention centers, although Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening has led a compromise effort to allow smoking in bars. At any rate, the Maryland antismoking measure will be the first instituted not by legislators or voters but by bureaucrats. "Both parties support restrictions on smoking," says Peter Fisher of the Coalition on Smoking or Health, a Washington organization that educates policymakers on tobacco- control topics. "It is a bipartisan issue."

Indeed, cigarette manufacturers, tobacco farmers and smokers are losing the war as well as the battles over smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of American adults who smoke has decreased by almost half during the last 30 years, from a little more than 42 percent of the population in 1965 to about 25 percent today. Nevertheless while health officials hope to eradicate smoking altogether, they face formidable financial reality.

Tobacco is a major agricultural crop in the United States, especially in the Southeast, with total farm sales of $2.8 billion in 1993. That year, the major tobacco companies grossed $50 billion from domestic sales and another $5.7 billion in foreign sales, reporting more than $5 billion in net profits. Perhaps more importantly, excise taxes collected on tobacco products mainly cigarettes, exceed $13 billion annually, or more than four times the total value of tobacco products raised on the farm. That money supports many government programs. According to a 1992 study by Price Waterhouse, the tobacco industry account for more than 680,000 jobs.

In addition, members of Congress despite their public stands on smoking are not adverse to tobacco money According to Common Cause magazine, 73 percent of senators accepted campaign contributions from tobacco companies between 1989 and 1994; 66 percent of congressmen took tobacco money in the last House election. Critics claim this "tainted" money extracts a far bigger price on society. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, tobacco- related illness costs society $50 billion annually