Smoke 'Em, If You Got 'Em
By Charles Bierbauer/CNN
WASHINGTON (June 19) -- My father was a heavy smoker until his heart and lungs gave out. I was seven when he died. We didn't sue the tobacco companies.
I bought my last pack of cigarettes the day I joined the army. I was 18. Free packets of cigarettes came with the C-ration meal packages soldiers of the sixties got in the field. "Smoke 'em, if you got 'em," the platoon sergeant used to say. Wasn't that nice of the tobacco companies?
Cigarettes seemed almost a staple of life in those idyllic days. Lucy's always lighting up in the old "I Love Lucy" shows my seven-year-old watches on cable these days.
It's today's seven-year-olds -- and their slightly older siblings -- that anti-tobacco legislation was supposed to keep away from the lures of smoking. The tobacco companies outfoxed Congress. The legislative plan to implement last year's tentative tobacco settlement died three days short of its first birthday.
There's plenty of blame to go around. Let's blame greed to start. When you're up $368 billion, it's no time to play double-or-nothing.
The $368 billion was what the states' attorneys general, the tobacco companies, the public health industry and batteries of lawyers agreed to on June 20, 1997.
"We thought what we got on June 20 was so good that even Congress could live with it," one of the negotiators, lawyer John Coale, reflects.
"We didn't expect Congress to rubber stamp what we had negotiated," says Philip Morris senior vice president Steve Parrish. "But we did think that we were there in good faith."
Hold on a second. These aren't new guys in town. And they're not that naive.
It was clear Congress had to play a role or the proposed tobacco settlement wouldn't be worth rolling and smoking. It needed legislation to effect the deal's centerpiece -- limited lawsuit immunity for the tobacco companies in exchange for surrender of their First Amendment rights to advertise their products. A cap on damages and Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man take a hike.
The settlement might have worked, had no one gotten greedy. Just about everyone did. The tobacco deal became a cash crop.
Blame the president.
President Bill Clinton factored the settlement into his budget. He counted on it for billions to help fund not just anti-tobacco programs, but also child care and education plans.
Blame Congress.
There's hardly a member of Congress who doesn't profess to want to curb teen smoking. But at what cost and to whom?
In Sen.John McCain's Commerce Committee the $368 billion grew to $516 billion. The committee consulted Wall Street analysts who calculated Congress could extract that much without any of the tobacco companies going bankrupt. When the bill grew, tobacco balked.
Blame the Democrats for overreaching.
Blame the Republicans for piling on.
Republicans, though they complained of Clinton funding his social programs, earmarked part of the anticipated increase in tobacco tax revenues to reduce the marriage penalty in the federal tax code. That's a conservative social goal. But dragging in the extraneous elements helped kill the bill. And didn't the Republicans know it would?
Blame the lawyers.
The billion dollar bonanza in lawyers' fees was capped in the Senate, at least before the whole deal collapsed. Lawyers- - easy target. The cap for those lawyers in the action from the beginning was still $4,000 an hour.
"I'm not sure anyone is going to get $4,000 an hour," says lawyer Coale. He thinks lawyers "have fared poorly" in public perception through the tobacco saga. His four years work will pay him nothing without a settlement, though he's still got a piece of about two dozen class action suits that could gain momentum now.
Moreover, there will be plenty for lawyers to do as the states pursue their lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Mississippi, Florida, Texas and Minnesota have already settled multi-billion suits with tobacco. Washington State has a September court date. But that won't yield all the state attorneys general sought in last year's agreement.
"Only a national settlement passed by Congress will be able to give us the public health gains that we really need if we want to stop the problem significantly of underage smoking," says Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire.
Blame the public health lobby, headed by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and the former head of the Food and Drug Administration David Kessler.
"Koop and Kessler have moved the goal posts almost on a daily basis," complains lawyer Coale. "Nothing was good enough."
Blame the tobacco companies.
Or give them credit for the most successful campaign of the past year. It may have cost the five major companies $40 million for the ad blitz that shifted the debate from teen smoking to "tax and spend" politics. But it worked and was but a puff of smoke compared to what the Senate legislation was going to cost them.
"I think reasonable people recognize that if we gave the keys to the business to the federal government, youth smoking is not going to go away," says Philip Morris' Parrish.
Blame the media, too.
In Washington, at least, when the Senate bill died, more reporters seemed to be asking about a political fallout in November than about the 3,000 teens who purportedly start smoking each day.
My father used to tell a story illustrated by a pack of Camels.
"You're in the desert and night is falling," he'd start. Then pointing to the three prominent features on the cigarette pack, he'd ask, "Do you sleep under the palm tree, beside the pyramid or next to the camel?"
We'd guess. The palm tree?
He'd grin with the wisdom of age, turn the pack around to reveal exotic palaces, and say: "I'd go to one of the hotels around the corner."
Congress, the president, the lawyers, the health community and, for that matter, the tobacco industry are in a desert sandstorm when it comes to curbing teen smoking. Is there a sheltering hotel around the corner?
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