ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: From Knight-Ridder/Tribune and The Associated Press
NOTE: Lede
President Clinton and the Food and Drug Administration delivered Friday on their promise to regulate the tobacco industry by launching severe restrictions on the selling of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco and advertising for tobacco products.
``With this historic action we are taking today,'' Clinton said at a Rose Garden ceremony attended by doctors, legislators and children sporting ``tobacco-free kids'' T-shirts, ``Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man will be out of our children's reach forever.''
While health experts are skeptical that the rules will achieve their target of halving youth smoking - now running at almost 30 percent - in seven years, the real issue may be that the rules open the door for the FDA to further tighten its noose around tobacco's neck.
``Is this the nose of the camel in the tent? I don't know,'' said Everett Koop, the country's former surgeon general, whom Clinton singled out for praise Friday. ``This is a political compromise. I think the country is not ready yet to attack the whole of smoking in society, but who can protest against a campaign to stop kids from smoking?''
The White House said the move probably would save public health coffers $28 billion to $43 billion over 10 years - tobacco-related disease costs the country $50 billion annually. Some 2,500 farmers could lose their jobs as tobacco consumption is projected to fall by 4 percent in the next decade, said Mike McCurry, White House spokesman.
The response from the tobacco industry and public health officials was immediate: The industry said the move would hurt tobacco jobs and would never pass constitutional muster, while doctors hailed the move as one of the most significant in medical history.
Federal health officials say some 3,000 children start smoking every day, and 1,000 of them will eventually die of tobacco-related disease. Almost half a million Americans die every year from those diseases.
``I would liken it to the day when Jonas Salk found a safe and effective vaccine against polio,'' said Lonnie Bristow, a top official at the American Medical Association.
The rules will become official Wednesday, when they are published in the Federal Register. Most of the rules go into effect in a year, except the plan to make a federal offense of selling tobacco products to children, which will take effect in six months, and the plan to deny tobacco companies the right to brand-name sponsorships of sports events, which will take effect in two years.
The FDA received some 700,000 letters and comments in the year since the proposal was put out, with the biggest chunk being 300,000 copies of a form letter opposing the proposal. The public reaction, the largest in FDA history, prompted changes in the agency's plans.
It decided to permit mail-order sales of tobacco - which the proposal had wanted to end - after it found that ``kids don't order through the mail,'' Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said.
Owners of bars wrote in to argue that their patrons were solely adults, which led the agency to permit cigarette vending machines inside such places.
The FDA also changed its plan to ask the tobacco industry to pay $150 million a year for an anti-tobacco educational program. Instead, Kessler said, the industry would have to spend about the same amount of money to conduct an educational program.-THIS GRAF DIDN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME.
In addition, the industry will have to spend about $150 million a year to conduct an anti-tobacco educational program.
While Congress ended direct subsidies for the tobacco industry in 1982, tobacco farmers have a government price-support program to keep themselves afloat. The Agriculture Department administers the program, setting annual crop quotas and support rates. But the money comes from the per-pound payments growers make each year to a fund they created to cushion themselves from market swings, said Charles Hatcher, a department tobacco expert.
If a farmer can't sell tobacco at a price level set by the government, he or she can turn the entire crop over to a private growers' association. The association then makes the farmer a ``loan,'' using the crop as collateral, he said.
The farmer doesn't have to repay that loan, however.
Farmers end up selling the tobacco at the rate that the Agriculture Department estimated months before, and they are compensated for losses by fellow producers, he said. If the government makes a bad estimate, the losses are deducted from money set aside for subsequent years.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB