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Monday, 6/30/97 As smoke clears, war must continue TOBACCO: Hollow victory makes nation complacent, leads to more danger for future smokers

By Derrick Z. Jackson Attorneys general for 40 states huffed and puffed. They blew a few shingles off the roof of Big Tobacco. The house still stands, and the tobacco wars remain this country's biggest act of cowardice in failing to protect the world's public health. Getting Big Tobacco to cough up $368.5 billion over the next 25 years for cigarette damages seems better than nothing, especially if you listen to the attorneys general. Mississippi's Attorney General Michael Moore hailed the pact as "the most historic public health achievement in history." Florida's Attorney General Bob Butterworth boasted, "The Marlboro Man will be riding into the sunset on Joe Camel." Massachusetts's Attorney General Scott Harshbarger said, "Only the discovery of major vaccines could rival what this proposal promises to accomplish for children and the public health for generations to come." These big, bad wolves are merely yapping Chihuahuas. First of all, Big Tobacco is not paying for a settlement. Addicted smokers will simply pay higher prices, mainly to Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco. Philip Morris and RJR will then pay the states, claiming it, incredibly, as a business deduction. While the $368.5 billion charged pays for smoking-related health problems, government figures place the 25 years of health costs and lost productivity due to cigarettes at 10 times more: $3.75 trillion. Second, newly-addicted people would have very limited rights to sue for damages. This reduction of lawsuits could encourage Big Tobacco's uncanny ability to repackage itself in the form of "safer" cigarettes. Third, the agreement would block the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to ban nicotine in cigarettes before 2009 and create such a labyrinth of procedures to alter nicotine levels that former FDA Commissioner David Kessler said regulating nicotine could be "almost impossible." Fourth, the proposed fines of up to $2 billion if youth smoking does not decrease is a small amount next to Big Tobacco's $13-billion-a-year earned for hooking smokers for life. Investors are so confident this agreement did nothing in the long run to keep Big Tobacco from luring minors that Philip Morris's stock has gone up 60 percent from its low over the last year. "We don't see any reason to doubt the future of the domestic market," said Steven Goldstone, chief executive of RJR Nabisco. This is not to say that the attorneys general wasted all their time. America would be more beautiful without cigarette billboards, without tobacco-sponsored sporting events and concerts, without cigarette vending machines and without cigarette placements in television and movies. It is important to get the cigarette companies to agree to larger warning labels that say for the first time that smoking can kill you. But getting a company to admit that its product kills people and then leaving them solvent to keep doing so is hardly a public health achievement. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, "We have shackled and caged the beast, but we haven't conquered it." Even that attempt at modesty misses the truth. The caged animals were the attorneys general, shackled by Big Tobacco's alliance with Congress. While public anger sank DDT, asbestos, chlorofluorocarbons and lead paint, Big Tobacco stayed solvent by making $25 million in political contributions over the last 10 years. In one example of Big Tobacco's clout, the House last year narrowly voted down a bill that would have transferred $25 million of taxpayer money from tobacco crop insurance to rural health programs. Big Tobacco is happy to pay a mere $368.5 billion to erase lawsuits that it was in increasing danger of losing and to sucker America into thinking locally while the Marlboro Man thinks globally. Smoking rates are rising so fast in developing countries that annual deaths will rise from its current 1 million to 7 million by 2025, according to the World Health Organization. Last Friday, Goldstone said, "The agreement secures the tobacco industry's rightful place in the mainstream of legitimate U.S. commerce." If that is true, this agreement does more harm than good for generations to come. Big Tobacco, at home and abroad, should face marketing curbs and taxes that cut so deeply into their profits that its stocks crash rather than soar. It should face stiff penalties for luring youth to smoke that if caught, it becomes unprofitable to make cigarettes at all. Harshbarger, eyeing the Massachusetts governorship, likened the agreement to a great vaccine. Maybe, but not in the way he had in mind. In their volatile mix of do-gooderism and political expediency, the state attorneys general may have done more to inoculate Big Tobacco from scrutiny, scorn and harm than protecting children from tobacco. It was a nice try, but no cigarette. Big Tobacco still awaits the wolf that will truly blow its house down. Previous Daily Bruin Story Big tobacco lights up for lawsuit immunity, April 23, 1997