THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507270011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
A California congressman's claim to have documentation that Philip Morris used schoolchildren and college students in smoking research some 20 years ago is no surprise.
On Capitol Hill Henry Waxman is to the tobacco industry what Jesse Helms is to the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts or National Education Association, take your pick).
Waxman contends that the material contains evidence that Chesterfield County children as young as third-graders were tested to see whether hyperactive youngsters were more likely than others to become smokers and that college students were given electric shocks to determine whether the anxiety made them smoke more.
Philip Morris officials declined to comment beyond noting that the company has always said that it studies why people smoke.
Even if Thomas Osdene, the company's director of research at the time, is correct in suggesting that Waxman ``does have a tendency - to be gentle - to give hyperbole to these things,'' the allegations are disturbing. They contribute further to tobacco's image as an industry in which questionable behavior is commonplace.
For example, the Justice Department has convened two federal grand juries to look into allegations against cigarette manufacturers. A grand jury in New York will determine whether executives failed to disclose information about their own research into the addictiveness of nicotine and any efforts to manipulate the level of nicotine in cigarettes. A grand jury in Washington will investigate whether, in testimony before Congress last year, seven executives lied when they said nicotine is not addictive and that they have not tried to control nicotine levels in cigarettes.
Clearly, tobacco is under siege. As it should be. The harmful effects of smoking were documented years ago and are evident all around - in the many thousands of people who are sick, suffering and dying because the nicotine habit was one they wouldn't or couldn't break.
But as tragic as consequences are for those who became hooked decades ago, the greater tragedy, the obscenity really, is that in spite of all the warnings and evidence of harm, cigarettes apparently continue to hold an attraction for young people. The Clinton administration considers this problem serious enough that White House officials and the Food and Drug Administration are debating measures to limit smoking by teenagers.
Americans can and should applaud these efforts. But even as they do, many will doubtless wonder: If the federal government is so committed to this campaign against smoking, why doesn't it stop subsidizing those who grow the deadly weed? by CNB