Tobacco Documents Online

PBge 211 i®0033023 i TIME JulY 3, 1964 TOBACCO Smoke & Ire At a House Commerce Committee meeting last week, several critical Cdn- gressmen talked tough to Federal Trade Commission Chief Paul Rand Dixon. They wanted him to forget his plan to make cigarette manufacturers place poisoolike warning labels on their prod- uct. It was too late• replied Dixon, who then shocked everybody by disclosing that the order had already been written. Distributing copies to the Congressmen, he remarked somewhat sarcastically: '•We had our printers working all night in case you wanted one." The timing was surpasing. and so was the harshness of the order. If the FTC got its way, the cigarette makers would have to print health warnings on all their packages by next Jan. 1, and write them into all advertisements by July 1• 1965. While the wording was left up to the companies, the FTC made clear that the messages would have to indi• cate clearly that "cigarette smoking is dangerous to health and may cause death from cancer and other diseases." Speaking for the industry, Reynolds Tobacco Chairman Bowman Gray called the order "unwise, unwarranted." Tobacco men charged that the FTC had exceeded its authority, made plans to test the case in the courts. They got plenty of support from Southern Gov. ernors and Congressmen. Officials in the departments of Agriculture. Commerce• and Health, Education and Welfare wondered whether,they should have jur- isdietion in the matter instead of the in- dependent FTC-or whether any label- ing rule should be enforced at all. Even some of the sharpest critics of the in- dustry questioned the legality and pro- priety of the order. Surgeon General Luther Terry. whose fact-finding body triggered it all with the report last Janu- ary on smoking and health, doubted that the FTC had jurisdiction, suggested that the matter be turned over to the Food and Drug Administration. With a long dispute certain in the courts and Congress, Dixon himself agreed that the FTC order would not take effect for years-if ever. Mean- ' while, climbing sales of cigarettes showed that Americans may he enloy- ing It kas tww, but they art srnoking more than before the Surgeon Gen- eral's report. NEI+ISWEEK July 6, 1964 THE FTG: Label on the Pack? Almost casually, burly, soft-spoken Federal Trade Commission chairman Paul Rand Dixon fired his thunderbolt last week while testifying before the House Interstate Commerce Commission In Washington. Beginning next January, said Dixon, the FTC will require all cigirette labels to "cleady and promi- nently" warn smokers that smoking could kill them, and by next July, all cigarette ads avill ha.e to carry the warning too. The new FTC rule, set forth in a 20S-page book (devoted mainly to ou4 lining the legal and moral basis of the fowr-man commission's action), left the r..~ea au. Dixon: 'We've decfded' exact wording of the warning up to the cigarette companies. But Dixon con- oeded the phrasing, to win approval, would have to stick fairly close to the commission's own blunt statements that "cigarette smoking is dangerous to health and may cause death from can• cer and other diseases." Counterattack: The FTC's nding• pre• dictably, raised a storm among tobacco interests. Madison Avenue ad agencies handling cigarette accounts discreetly referred reporters to their clients. And the corament of one Philip Morris official was typical. "There's a lot of room and time to $ght thie," he said. °Any good lawyer would say to concede nothing," added a P. Lorillard & Co. spokesman. Most ontspokeu were tobaccv-state poli- ticiaas. North Carolina Cov. Teny San- ford ssid he would support lawsuits against the FTC. and North Carolina Denrocratic Rep. L.H. Fountain termed the health warning "capricious, arbitrary, unreasonable, and unsupported." Foun- tain and four other Southern House members quickl;: inhoducrd five resolu- tions akned at crippling or barring out- right any FTC action against cigarettes. Dixon's rebuttal to all this is: "1ti'e have made our decision." Congressional action either for or against the FTC stand, however, is unlikeW this vear. And a compro- mise betw•een the FTC and the indus- try• isn't considered likely either. (Dixon, though, indicates the commis- sion "might" lift its requirement that the health label appear in ads il the industry would acrept the label warning and other progress is made. ) In any event, the industry's only real altemative would seem to be to chal- lenge the FTC's legal rights to make such a ruling. R.J. Reynolds' chainnan Bowman Cray, speaking for the tobacco industry at the House committee hear- ings last week, eqreed "We opposed the Issuance of t th s rule during the course of the [FTC] proceedings" he said. "We shall oppose it in the courts."