THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603150433
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 107 lines
Sensing uncertainty in what had been an intractable foe, anti-smoking and campaign finance reform activists accused tobacco interests Thursday of trying to buy Congress' help in warding off further regulation of the industry, and particularly of sales to children.
Industry spokesmen in turn accused the groups of attempted censorship and denied that tobacco companies target youths in their advertising campaigns.
Studies released by Common Cause, the self-styled ``citizens lobby,'' and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer and environmental advocacy group, said tobacco interests gave more than $4 million, a record, to senators, congressmen and the two major political parties during 1995.
Several Virginia and North Carolina lawmakers were among the industry's biggest beneficiaries, the reports said. The two states contain key tobacco-growing, manufacturing and trade centers, including Hampton Roads.
The reports released Thursday indicated that the industry has shifted its campaign contributions toward Republicans since the GOP took control of Congress last year. Republicans and Democrats should join in rejecting those donations, the activists said.
``They did not give that money out of the goodness of their hearts,'' said Ann McBride, Common Cause's president. Instead, she charged, the industry invested heavily in congressional campaigns to block a new regulatory drive by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
The groups released their reports a day after Liggitt Group, the nation's fifth-largest tobacco firm, broke with others in the industry and announced it is settling a class-action suit brought on behalf of smokers and former smokers who say smoking has given them cancer and other illnesses.
As part of the settlement, Liggitt agreed to pay up to $50 million a year for programs to help people stop smoking.
Though other companies insisted they will not follow Liggitt's lead, anti-smoking forces hope the firm's implied admission of responsibility for smoking-related illnesses will spur the drive to regulate the industry.
The tobacco struggle has enormous implications for Virginia. The golden leaf has been the state's most important cash crop for generations; it is grown across Southside Virginia and processed in Richmond, where Philip Morris operates the world's largest cigarette-manufacturing plant.
And each year, millions of pounds of tobacco pass through the Port of Hampton Roads, making it among the most important agricultural products handled there. Virginia-grown leaf and manufactured cigarettes are exported worldwide, and Philip Morris imports tobacco from abroad to be blended into its cigarettes.
The studies released Thursday indicate that Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, a Richmond Republican who is the industry's highest-profile defender in the House, leads all his colleagues in campaign receipts from tobacco interests. Bliley, chairman of the House Commerce Committee, collected more than $127,000 from tobacco interests during the past 10 years.
Virginia's two senators and congressmen representing Hampton Roads also have received substantial industry support. Sens. Charles S. Robb and John W. Warner have collected $41,000 and $36,000, respectively, from tobacco interests since 1986, the groups said, placing them among the top 15 recipients of tobacco donations in the Senate.
In the House, Rep. Norman Sisisky, whose district includes parts of Chesapeake, Portsmouth and western Tidewater, has received tobacco donations of $44,750 since 1986, more than all but 28 other members. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman of Newport News, who represents much of the Peninsula, ranked 29th in tobacco receipts, with $31,560, while Reps. Robert C. Scott of Newport News and Owen B. Pickett of Virginia Beach, reported totals of $12,600 and $14,850, respectively.
With more than $20 million in campaign contributions since 1986, and $4 million in gifts during 1995 alone, tobacco interests have ``bought . . . pro-tobacco action . . . and long-standing loyalty'' among senators and congressmen, said Matthew Myers, a lawyer for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
But Sisisky noted that many tobacco firms have other business holdings that are important to his district. Cigarette-maker RJR Nabisco, for example, counts Planters Peanuts among its holdings.
The FDA has proposed a series of steps to end tobacco sales to children, including a ban on vending machines, limits on billboard and other outdoor advertising, and a ban on tobacco sponsorship of sports events and teams.
Both Virginia senators and every area congressman except Pickett have signed a letter protesting those rules as excessive and an end-run around Congress, which has refused to impose similar restrictions on the industry.
The groups and the FDA say the regulations are needed because state laws that ban tobacco sales to children in Virginia and most of the rest of the country have not worked. About 3,000 children take up smoking every day, the groups asserted.
Sisisky said he has no apologies in looking out for tobacco growers and manufacturers, who are part of the economic lifeblood of his district. And he's never felt even a little influenced by their support of his campaigns, he added.
His $44,750 in tobacco donations over the past decade ``isn't much,'' Sisisky said, given that he's put hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into his campaigns during that period.
Sisisky, a multimillionaire, was a beer and soft drink distributor before going to Congress in 1982. ``I don't feel obligated to anyone'' because of campaign contributions, he said, but acknowledged that ``I feel sorry for some of these (members)'' who must rely on help from special interest political action committees to finance their campaigns.
Ed Mierzwinski, an analyst who put together the U.S. PIRG study, acknowledged that tobacco-state lawmakers like Sisisky and the other Virginians have good reasons to support the tobacco industry.
But 70 percent of the industry's donations go to lawmakers from non-tobacco states, Mierzwinski said. Tobacco interests ``are trying to get them addicted to tobacco money,'' he asserted. by CNB