ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: PETER BAKER THE WASHINGTON POST
BEING ON THE DEFENSIVE about smoking is new in Richmond, which once produced more than half the world's cigarettes.
Even at 7 in the morning, the bar at Johnie's lounge on the south side is crowded with workers in khaki uniforms. They're unwinding from their graveyard shift at the Philip Morris factory a few blocks away. Nearly everyone is drinking beer and smoking Marlboros.
If they feel at home, it's no surprise. The lounge is owned by a retired Philip Morris employee, and it does not have a no-smoking section. Few customers talk about the dangers of tobacco.
But even here, where the air is thick with camaraderie, there is a bunker mentality. The workers know they are part of a shrinking industry that is under fire from the White House to the courthouse. That's why Johnie's owner Drew Story took a buyout last year.
"It was time to get out of the tobacco business," Story said.
In recent weeks, the war against tobacco has grown more intense - and strange. One of the more bizarre twists occurred when the FBI raided several Richmond homes. On a tip from an ex-lover of a former Philip Morris researcher, agents seized thousands of documents they hoped might support a whistleblower's allegations that the company spikes its cigarettes with extra nicotine to keep customers hooked. The company has vehemently denied the accusation.
"My people are very defensive," union President Jerry L. Sprouse acknowledged last week, sitting at his headquarters near a sign saying, "Thank you for holding your breath while I smoke," and puffing on one of the 40 or so Marlboros he lights daily. Local 203-T of the Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers Union represents 3,500 of Philip Morris' 8,000 workers, each of whom gets one free pack per shift.
Sprouse predicted that when the company "gets to tell its side of the story," the allegations will prove to be fiction manufactured by disgruntled former employees. Even so, he and other union members realize that the attacks threaten their industry and could deprive them of an extraordinarily good livelihood. The typical factory worker at Philip Morris makes $22 an hour; with overtime, some make $70,000 or more a year.
Being on the defensive about smoking is a relatively new stance in a city that once produced more than half the world's cigarettes. But strong support still is coming from the state, which continues to impose the lowest tobacco tax in the country.
Whereas Maryland's state employees pension fund divested its $75 million investment in tobacco companies last week, the Virginia Retirement System has no plans to sell any of its $148 million tobacco portfolio. And although a number of states have filed lawsuits to recover smoking-related Medicaid costs from the tobacco companies, Virginia's legislators, who meet in a Capitol adorned with sculpted tobacco leaves, recently passed a bill making it easier for companies such as Philip Morris to fend off such suits. It was signed into law by Gov. George Allen, who dips snuff.
Yet tobacco clearly is in trouble. Along the James River in Richmond are abandoned cigarette factories with the fading names of such onetime favorites as Lucky Strike and Chesterfield. A growing number of establishments now prohibit smoking, as does the City Council in its chambers. Even the Tobacco Company Restaurant, a popular downtown tourist spot, now reserves half of its 250 seats for nonsmokers.
"The writing is on the wall," said nonsmoker Andy Thornton, whose contemporary furniture store, La Difference, occupies space where Philip Morris cigars once were made.
There are other signs of the growing discomfort with smoking. Several years ago, the name of the annual Tobacco Festival Parade was changed to the Fall Festival; about the same time, Philip Morris stopped conducting public tours of its plant. At the Capitol - where Senate clerk Susan Schaar recalled "it used to look like San Francisco" because of the thick fog of smoke - only a few of the 140 lawmakers are regular smokers, and they seldom light up at their desks.
Increasingly, both pro- and anti-smoking forces expect that in the not-too-distant future, Philip Morris, the lone remaining cigarette manufacturer in Richmond, will pull up stakes. It will consolidate its operations either at a more modern plant in North Carolina or, more likely, at an overseas location, where the future of cigarette sales still is bright. Fully 40 percent of the 600 million cigarettes produced daily at the plant (mostly Marlboros, the world's most popular brand) are shipped from the port of Richmond to overseas markets, primarily in Eastern Europe and Asia.
The company - which holds its annual shareholders meeting today - denies any plans to move and points to a modernization project scheduled for completion next year at its sprawling manufacturing center. Its 100-foot pylon, bearing the names of Philip Morris' major brands, long has been a landmark for motorists traveling south on Interstate 95 from downtown. The 200-acre site was built in the early 1970s at a cost of $225 million.
Despite downsizing that has halved its work force in the last decade - the result more of technological progress than a decline in market demand, officials say - Philip Morris remains the city's largest private employer and a major force in the community. Its economic impact reaches far beyond the plant gates, to suppliers of paper that holds the tobacco together, to makers of aluminum foil and packaging that bundle 20 cigarettes to a pack, to scores of trucking firms that haul in the raw product and cart off the finished one.
Although many tobacco manufacturers have left or folded, other tobacco-related companies have stayed, including the headquarters of Universal Corp., the world's largest buyer of tobacco; American Filtrona, whose 350 workers here make filters; and Lucky Strike Storages, where tobacco valued at $300 million or more ages in 1.1 million square feet of warehouse. All told, more than 10,000 people in Richmond depend on the weed for their paycheck.
Chamber of Commerce President James W. Dunn said he makes "no apologies" for the presence of Philip Morris in the community, calling it "a model citizen" that provides the region with top-flight talent. Its executives serve on countless boards, and this year its employees contributed $1.7 million to the United Way, 8 percent of the total donated. (The local groups do not participate in the United Way in protest of the company's involvement.)
Back at Johnie's, the discussion turned to the morality of spiking cigarettes with nicotine. A ponytailed electrician named Andy - he declined to give his full name, citing signs in the plant that warn workers not talk to reporters - said one company made a nicotine-free cigarette "and the people didn't want it." Another production-line worker said, "I do care what Philip Morris puts in its cigarettes," but then he conceded he wasn't sure what that might be.
Grayson Adams, the grandson of a tobacco farmer and someone who has worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift for nearly a quarter-century, said he wouldn't be surprised if the company adds nicotine to its cigarettes.
"All products are manipulated," he said. "That's how they maintain quality."
LENGTH: Long : 122 linesby CNB