Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 1, 1994 TAG: 9404020017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Cigarette makers are on the defensive. The deadly impact of smoking is finally becoming a public-health priority. And all this has to be heartening for America, where hundreds of thousands of lives may be saved as a result.
Among the good news items from the battlefront:
The Food and Drug Administration has announced it is considering regulating cigarettes as an addictive drug. Allegations have surfaced that tobacco companies actually manipulate nicotine levels to help induce addiction.
The state of Maryland and the Defense Department, among others, have banned smoking in workplaces as an occupational hazard. The U.S. Labor Department is seeking a nationwide ban on smoking in workplaces.
A congressional subcommittee has passed legislation that would raise the federal cigarette tax from 24 cents to $1.49 per pack. The Clinton administration wants a big hike in the excise tax to help pay for health-care reform.
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders has launched a vigorous campaign against cigarette advertising aimed at the young, including the infamous Joe Camel cartoon ads promoted by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
Three developments appear to be driving the current offensive.
One is growing public awareness of tobacco's effects. Study after study has shown it's a killer, but the fact has taken time to sink in. According to the surgeon general, more than 420,000 Americans die because of smoking every year. It's by far the worst public-health tragedy, and a preventable one.
Fortunately, adult smoking has been declining. And the tobacco lobby's pitch of defending employees and farmers' jobs is having diminishing effect in the face of the vast illness, addiction and death their product is causing.
Last month, the tobacco industry sent an army of more than 15,000 people to Washington to agitate against the Clinton administration's cigarette-tax proposal. But more politicians today seem willing to consider the issue from a vantage point other than inside the industry's pocket.
A second notable development is increased awareness that secondhand smoke is dangerous. The Environmental Protection Agency helped anti-smoking efforts greatly last year when it declared secondhand smoke a cancer-causing agent. The EPA said passive smoke from tobacco is causing 150,000 to 300,000 respiratory illnesses in children and 3,000 lung-cancer deaths a year.
No longer can smokers say they should be allowed to kill themselves if they want to (never mind their health bills and lost productivity for which the rest of the public must pay). If smoking puts nonsmokers at risk, that helps legitimate the increasing isolation of smokers and regulation of their habit.
Of course, the biggest beneficiaries of no-smoking policies and the stigmatizing of smokers in workplaces are still the smokers themselves, if they are thereby helped to cut down or quit.
The focus on secondhand smoke has also attracted attention to a third development in the war on cigarettes: increasing awareness of the impact on children. It is hard for anyone, except perhaps a tobacco lobbyist, not to be outraged by the health effects of passive smoke on kids with no choice in the matter.
But just as outrageous is the spectacle of adolescents, in a vulnerable time in their lives, getting hooked on cigarettes. The dismal facts:
About one-third of all adolescents smoke or use smokeless tobacco. The average age of a new smoker is 13. Fully 60 percent of new smokers are children. Almost 5,000 adolescents need to be added to the ranks of nicotine addicts every day if the size of the smoking population is to be maintained. Cigarette sales to youths under 18 account for $1.26 billion in illegal sales for the tobacco industry every year.
There is, of course, no point in trying to prohibit cigarettes; it wouldn't work even if it were tried. But there is a big point in waging the war against smoking on as many fronts as possible. Saving youngsters from the addiction ought to be reason enough.
by CNB