THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 17, 1996 TAG: 9610170354
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 45 lines
The Clinton administration has told Congress it has no intention of retreating from its decision to raise the price of cigarettes sold in military grocery stores on Nov. 1.
A special House panel that oversees the commissaries and military exchanges challenged the decision last month, asserting that it had to approve such issues in advance. But in a letter released Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of Defense Fred Pang told the panel the Defense Department will ``stand by our tobacco policy.''
As part of the administration's campaign to curb smoking, the Pentagon decided earlier this year to boost the price of cigarettes sold in military commissaries to the level of cigarettes sold in military exchanges, an increase of $3 to $4 a carton. Because the commissaries are supported by taxpayer money, tobacco prices there are lower than in exchanges, which are military stores not directly supported by taxes.
A Pentagon official said cigarette prices on military bases are 30 to 60 percent lower than in civilian stores, in part because the tobacco industry since World War II has ``targeted military personnel'' with lower tobacco prices.
The special oversight panel on morale, welfare and recreation of the House National Security Committee objected to the tobacco price increase, citing Congress's historic role in determining what products exchanges and commissaries may sell. Although acknowledging the issue has been lobbied by the tobacco industry, a spokesman for Rep. John M. McHugh, R-N.Y., the panel's chairman, said the issue was one of the panel's authority, not a question about the sale of cigarettes.
Military commissaries and exchanges sell about 96 million cartons of cigarettes a year.
A Pentagon official familiar with the issue said the tobacco industry had recently proposed increasing the price of cigarettes sold to the military, but had planned on pocketing the increase.
Walker Merryman, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, declined to discuss the pricing issue.
KEYWORDS: U.S. MILITARY CIGARETTE PRICES INCREASE MILITARY
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