
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994                   TAG: 9408090018
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A NEW DRUG

A PANEL of scientists has told the federal Food and Drug Administration that the level of nicotine in cigarettes is addictive. So big whoop, you might think.

This is news?

At least to anyone except tobacco executives and teen-agers who think they are invulnerable to human frailties?

Well, it may not be news to most of us, but it is a significant step in the regulatory process. It is apparent that FDA Commissioner David Kessler is determined to reverse government complicity in tobacco sales and launch a concerted battle against this health threat. Having an FDA advisory panel rule that nicotine is a drug is part of his strategy.

Drugs, of course, are subject to government regulation. What form that regulation might take is unclear. Kessler, wisely, would oppose an outright ban. Such a measure probably would reduce smoking, but it also could be expected to create another class of criminal, technically - one that might include your saintly mom, your brother and your best friend - and it would be impossible to enforce.

Even a plan under discussion to limit the nicotine in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels should be scrutinized carefully. Wouldn't people who are hooked simply smoke more, till they got the nicotine hit their bodies craved? And wouldn't that deliver more of other harmful substances, like tar, into their lungs?

Yet, cigarettes with nonaddictive levels of nicotine might help a new generation, not yet hooked but determined to experiment with smoking. New smokers would be likely to stop short of smoking the numbers of cigarettes needed to become addicted, and without a craving for nicotine, why would they continue to smoke? As a former two-pack-a-dayer noted, what fun is there in setting fire to a nasty, dirty weed, and drawing foul-smelling air into your lungs?

It is just such a scenario that leads tobacco-company executives to fear their industry will be regulated out of existence. It is a fear predicated on the fact that the nicotine in cigarettes creates a need to smoke - a fact the industry has never acknowledged.

by CNB