DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997           TAG: 9702270462

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELLEN NAKASHIMA, THE WASHINGTON POST 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   78 lines

VA. OFFICIALS WON'T HELP U.S. ENFORCE TOBACCO LAW FEDERAL RULE IS AIMED AT CURBING YOUNG SMOKERS

Virginia officials said they will not enforce new federal regulations taking effect Friday that require tobacco buyers younger than 27 to produce photo identification.

State Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, a Republican who is running for governor this year, contends that the federal government has no business regulating the sale or use of tobacco, Virginia's No. 1 cash crop.

``It is the attorney general's position that the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) does not have the authority to invoke jurisdiction over tobacco,'' said R. Neal Graham, the Virginia Health Department's director of tobacco-use control programs. ``What they've proposed is invalid. So, therefore, we're not going to enforce an invalid law.''

The new regulations are the first phase of a three-part national crackdown on teen-age smoking that President Clinton made a point of touting during the fall election campaign. They also set 18 as the minimum age for buying tobacco, although every state already has such a restriction.

During the next two years, the FDA will impose several other restrictions on tobacco companies and their promotions, including limits on billboard advertising, giveaways of promotional products such as T-shirts and gym bags, and brand-name sponsorship of sporting events.

Federal officials are counting on state agencies to help enforce the regulations.

Catherine Lorraine, the FDA's director of policy development, said that by the end of spring, the agency will launch a $4 million pilot enforcement program in which 10 states will contract with the federal government.

Lorraine said that she had not heard of any state declining to enforce the regulations and that Virginia officials had returned a questionnaire to the FDA indicating that they might be interested in the pilot enforcement program.

But Gilmore's spokesman, Mark A. Miner, said the FDA shouldn't count on any help from the state.

``They're federal laws,'' Miner said of the new regulations. ``States don't enforce federal laws.''

Gilmore's stance echoes that of his boss, Republican Gov. George F. Allen, a states' rights champion who has fought what he has seen as federal intrusion into Virginia's policies on education and the environment.

Gilmore has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a North Carolina lawsuit challenging the new federal regulations. In the suit, the tobacco industry and others affected by the new rules argue, among other things, that the FDA had no legal right to extend its jurisdictional authority over tobacco and that it incorrectly classified tobacco as a drug.

In Virginia, the debate over protecting the tobacco industry vs. safeguarding the health of residents is likely to continue into the fall campaigns for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Gilmore pushed legislation through the General Assembly this year that allows liquor control agents to enforce anti-youth-smoking laws, including one requiring store clerks to card tobacco buyers who appear to be younger than 18, and doubling civil fines for selling cigarettes to minors.

But critics complained that already overburdened liquor agents don't have time to enforce tobacco laws, and they blasted Gilmore for turning his back on the new federal regulations.

``The attorney general is a monumental hypocrite,'' said Hilton Oliver, executive director of the Virginia branch of Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public. ``His claim to be against sales to minors is a complete sham.''

Ted Glickman, spokesman for the American Lung Association of Virginia, said the state's refusal to help enforce the regulations ``goes hand-in-hand with siding with the tobacco industry by filing a friend-of-the-court brief to stop tobacco regulation. . . . While tobacco is part of our heritage, we have to consider all the citizens.''

Gilmore's likely opponent this fall, Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr., a Democrat, supports the FDA's attempts to crack down on teen-age smoking.

``We need to find a Virginia solution to the problem of under-age smoking, and it's going to take leadership to do that,'' said Beyer's spokeswoman, Page Boinest. ``We could encourage retailers to checks ID's for cigarettes, just as they do for beer. The bottom line is we need to do a better job of keeping cigarettes out of the hands of children, and we shouldn't wait to do it.'' KEYWORDS: CIGARETTES TOBACCO LAW TEENAGERS VIRGINIA

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