Tobacco Documents Online

STATEMENT BY BILL DWYER, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE TOBACCO INSTITUTE, AT A NEWS CONFERENCE ON SMOKING & HEALTH, WASHINGTON, DC, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1979 . The release of a new Surgeon General's Report on Smoking on the 15th anniversary of the first one suggests it will be more rehash than research. Science doesn't time its findings. It was suspect from the start. HEW Secretary Califano launched his anti-smoking campaign a year ago with all the zeal of a reformed sinner. In an apparent attempt to bring some science to the side of his new evangelism, the former three-pack-a-day Secretary told the Surgeon General to prepare a new Report. Its issuance, an internal HEW memo said, "would be a media event." Turning a significant health question into a publicity stunt is an insult to serious science. America beware if Joe Califano ever gives up drinking or other pleasure pursuits--even the most intimate. - But, it isn't so much this scheme to grab time and space for Califano's cigarette condemnation that is troubling, it's the more important issue of credibility. The Surgeon General's office said in its own consideration of a new Report: "Reaching scientific consensus could be difficult however because of the controversial nature of several of the issues involved." Would he allow the views of those who disagree with his mindset on smoking to be heard? Repeated attempts on our part to learn what path would be followed in•a new Report got the back of the federal hand. What about those inside HEW reporting results seen as damaging to the Califano campaign? The lesson of Dr. Gori's "less hazardous" cigar- ette research stands as a warning to those who would avoid Siberia. Can his public statements be trusted? The HEW Secretary told the news media in Connecticut that one billion dollars of the 13 billion spent each year in Social Security disability payments is for diseases caused by cigarette smoking. Yet, what we obtained in response to our Freedom of Information request fails to support that figure. In short, the Secretary's own bureaucracy called it into the doubt it deserves. Social Security officials gave him such cautions as "No data is readily available...reasoning depends 0 on broad-brush assumptions...more appropriate data is lacking." He chose to ignore them. If this is the best way the HEW Secretary can find to fortify his angry attacks, a credibility question is indeed at hand. His endeavor is subjective, stubborn and strident. We rather resent attempts to guess us out of business. -000-