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St. Petersburg Times May 19. 1998. Tuesday SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 3A LENGTH: 696 words ltEADLINE: Tobacco supporters admit: Anti-smoking bill will pass BYLINE: BILL ADAIR BODY: WASHINGTON - Sen. Mitch McConnell looked glum Monday afternoon. The Kentucky Republican held a news conference to endorse a plan to end tobacco subsidies, but halfway through, a tobacco farmer stood up and started heckling. "I'm really scared." said Danny McKinney. a farmer from Rockcastle Count3.'. Ky. "What am I going to raise? What am I going to do with my family?" McConnell, usually a loyal friend of tobacco, got a pained expression on his face and did not answer. Then came another painful question. How did he feel about the sweeping anti-tobacco bill that is going before the Senate this week? "1 don'i think this bill's going to die." he said. "From my point of view. it would be better if it did. But I think it's vet)' likely to pass." As the Senate began debating a sweeping tobacco bill Monday evening, some of tobacco's biggest friends seemed resigned that they could not stop it. "Any of a number ofthings can happen and a lot of them are not good." said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lot-t, R- Miss. The bill would dramatically change how tobacco products are sold and marketed. It would add S I. 10 to a pack of cigare~es, give the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate tobacco and put strict limits on advertising and labeling. The tobacco companies would have to pay stiffpenalties if teen smoking was not reduced to meet government targets. The issue has put Republicans in a difficult spot because they say they want to reduce teen smoking but their party has received far more tobacco money than the Democratic Party. The tobacco industry is opposed to the bill and has launched an expensive advertising and grass-roots campaign against the bill. Senate offices are being flooded with computer-generated postcards and letters that oppose the bill. The tobacco companies also are buying TV and newspaper ads throughout the countD,. Friends of the tobacco industr3., including the mighty US. Chamber of Commerce. have chimed in with ads urging senators to oppose the bill. "They call it a tax on tobacco." says the announcer in a new Chamber of Commerce ad. "But it's really a tax on 45- million hard-working Americans." Supporters of the bill are planning a huge rally on the Capitol lawn on Wednesday that will feature Olympic figure "skater Tara Lipinski. 1 of 2 T113663566

The rally will include 1.000 teenagers to symbolize the number of teens who take up smoking each day and are expected to die prematurely. Both sides say they have public support. A poll from the American Cancer Societ.~ says people favor the Senate bill by a huge margin, 55 percent to 33 percent. 13ut a poll from the tobacco industr).' tbund people were opposed 47 to 45 percent. Why the big disparity? The questions were worded differently. The cancer socie .ty poll, conducted by the Mellman Group, a Washington pollster, gave people a lengthy description of the bill and then asked them if they supported it. The tobacco poll took a similar approach listing pros and cons of the bill. But when interviewers read the question, they gave more cons than pros and used the same powerful language the tobacco industry uses in its TV and newspaper ads. "Opponents say (the bill) could drive tobacco companies out of business by giving them too little protection from lawsuits, raising taxes, creating new government bureaucracies and making cigarettes so expensive that a new black market would emerge," the question said. Steve Duchesne, a spokesman tbr the tobacco industry., said the wording was similar to a question asked in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. "Those poll takers went to great lengths to balance the questions." Duchesne said. But Du'chesnc acknowledged that tile tobacco mdustr3" added the phrases "raising taxes" and "creating new bureaucracies." which were not included in lhe NBC poll. Those phrases were included because they represent opinions from major groups about the bill, Duchesne said. Mark Mellman, the pollster for the cancer society, said the wording "clearly biases the question." He said the tobacco companies "have a pretty good history of buying the results they want. whether it's in polls or cancer research." LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: May 19. 1998 2 of 2 T! 13663567