ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608260138
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
WHEN PHILIP MORRIS throws a party for the delegates, all the company wants in return, it says, is access.
Cigarette maker Philip Morris served up hors d'oeuvres, fine wines and anti-FDA lapel buttons Sunday night to Democratic delegates from Virginia and Kentucky.
What does a company, whose products include the cigarettes now headed for regulation by the federal Food and Drug Administration, seek with such hospitality?
``Access,'' said Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton, who arrived for the party at an Italian restaurant already sporting one of the buttons that says ``KEEP FDA OFF THE FARM.''
Philip Morris - maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Merit and Benson & Hedges cigarettes - has no apparent need to curry favor in Kentucky or Virginia. Patton and Bert Rhorer, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, said the tobacco giant was a major corporate citizen in both states.
``We're going to treat them as a major corporate citizen, no matter what they do,'' Patton said.
But the company is worried about its future and the possibility that federal regulations, now aimed at making tobacco products less accessible to children, could one day be stretched to encroach upon the rights of adult smokers, Patton said.
Darienne L. Dennis, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris in New York, said the company has 9,500 employees in Virginia and 2,500 in Kentucky, making food as well as cigarettes.
For his part, Patton has worn an anti-FDA button or baseball cap off and on for weeks.
Inside the Chicago restaurant, waiters offered trays of snacks and an assortment of beverages, including several wines and nine beers from Miller Brewing Co., a Philip Morris subsidiary. The centerpiece: an ice sculpture of a donkey.
Dennis said she did not know how much Philip Morris was spending for the party. She said the company wanted only ``to give these people a good time.''
Was Clinton's FDA regulation a factor? ``Oh, please!'' Dennis said. ``This has been planned for months.''
More like years. Philip Morris is a regular sponsor of political convention activities. And it is bipartisan: The company wined and dined Republicans earlier this month in San Diego.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB