Tobacco Documents Online

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-2- The war against smoking, of course, if far from over. Fifty million Americans still smoke, four hundred thousand a year tobacco-related deaths. But a significant corner has been turned. Almost forty years of medical warnings and anti-smoking campaigns, decades of lawsuits and public-service announcements, and endless nagging from concerned family members and friends have indeed convinced millions of us to quit. The tobacco industry has lost significant ground. They and their workers are worried about losing even more--specifically, the imposition of a new seventy-five-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes to help finance the Clinton health plan. And so today they came to Washington. My colleague Chris Bury and I have spent a good part of the day talking to people on both sides of the issue--Chris in the field and I here in the studio (more footage of rally). Chis Bury reporting: On a chilly, damp, uncomfortable day, they came from the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky, and other tobacco strongholds--sixteen thousand who work in the factories and farms. They marched from the White House to the Capitol, the latest soldiers or perhaps pawns in the public-relations war the tobacco industry has been losing for years. Campbell: This isn't a rally about tobacco companies, it's a rally about real people, real people that work in our industry. It's about workers and their families and how they have to raise and support those families. Protesters: No more taxes! No more taxes! Koppel: The angry voices were bussed in from the factories of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds--bussed in and paid a day's wages to appear as victims of President Clinton's proposed seventy-five-cents-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes. Unidentified Protester: Our message to the President is think about working people a little bit more. We're losing a lot of jobs overseas and global economy. We've got to take care of our own a little bit. Unidentified Protester: I feel like they're just cracking down on the tobacco industry too hard. You know, I mean, that~s our freedom to smoke or whatever, and I feel like they're taking our freedom from'us.

-3- Bury: Not only do the tobacco workers marching today fear the law is closing in on them, there's a great sense of outrage that they are being unfairly singled-out to bear the burdens of a health-reform plan that is supposed to benefit everyone. Unidentified Protester: I'm in favor of national health-care. But we're not going to single us out and tax one industry to try to pay for the whole program for everybody else. It's not fair. Bury: The fears for their livelihood are genuine. Those jobs have been disappearing for a full decade and the workers who rallied today were really being used. According to a critic of the tobacco industry... Cliff Douglass (American Cancer Society): The tobacco manufacturers are showing an act of desperation today. While they've been laying-off tens of thousands of their workers left and right over the past decade, they've made billions more cigarettes in the process because they've increased automation. Now, today, we've seen them bring the remaining workers out from tobacco manufacturing plants to protest and put a human face on this.effort on behalf of the big companies. Steve Parrish (Philip Morris USA): In this country,. there are 2.3 million jobs generated by the tobacco industry in this country. And that's not just tobacco growers and tobacco workers. Those are the people in the retail business, in the wholesale business, in the transportation business, truck drivers. So, the effect of this tax will not be, contrary to what some people would like you to believe, felt just in tobacco-land, and felt just by tobacco growers and tobacco workers. You're going to see lay-offs in the retail industry, in the wholesale industry, the transportation industry. It's going to have an effect all across this country. Koppel: Why do the jobs have to disappear? I mean, I can understand they're not going to be doing the same thing that they're going to be now that they are selling ~ or retailing or packaging or in any way involving themselves in tobacco. A reasonable assumption would be ~ maybe they'll find another job. w Parrish: Well, we have a...the economy is growing N somewhat right now, but we still have an unemployment ~J problem in this country. I don't think our ecopomy (?p right now is at the position where we are willing-to u'( turn two hundred and seventy-five thousand people out of (~ work. That's not the way the economy in this country

-4- works, with the government telling people what business they should work. Our economy is based on choice and the free-market system ought to be allowed to work. Bury: The industry's scariest number is that a seventy-five cent tax increase will cost two hundred and seventy-five thousand jobs in a ripple effect of losses. But only four hundred twenty-six thousand people work in all of the nation's tobacco factories and farms and warehouses. Economists figure cigarette smoking would go down, maybe by twelve percent. But demand for US tobacco would drop by much less, as almost half of the US crop is now exported. Lawrence Adelman (Dean Witter Reynolds Analyst): The biggest markets outside the US for the major tobacco companies are Continental Europe and the United Kingdom. They're growing rapidly in the Asian markets as well, and those businesses are enjoying very good volume gains and good earnings increases. Bury: And a study in today's 'Journal of the American Medical Association' asserts a decline in smoking would not cost jobs, so much as move them around, as people spend the money on other things. Professor Kenneth Warner (University of Michigan) On balance, we would see relatively little change in aggregate national employment. My suspicion, based on our study, is that we would see a shift of some jobs from the southeastern tobacco states to the rest of the economy, to the rest of the country. Bury: The tobacco workers who came to convince the Capital today know they are in a last gasp fight. Koppel: The.tobacco industry was saying...the Parks Department said sixteen thousand, the tobacco industry says twenty thousand, but there are a lot of people out there on Capitol Hill today protesting this tax--tobacco workers, people in related industries. Does that ever have an impact on you and your colleagues? Representative Henry Waxman (Democrat Health and Environmental Subcommittee) I don't see how anybody's going to be moved by that appeal when we're talking about raising that tax for two purposes: one, to help fund health-care, and a leading cause of disease is cigarette smoking; and, secondly, to try to discourage .people from smoking because the price is going to go higher.

-5- Bury: In the halls of power those tobacco-workers roamed today, smoke-filled rooms are a relic of a cliche'. Smoking is banned in two hundred ninety-eight offices here and, in all of Congress, only forty-three members still admit to lighting-up. Koppel: From McDonald's to the Pentagon to the state of Maryland, the drum-beat to rid the public of smoking intensifies. We'll be back with that story in a moment. (Commercial Break) Koppel: For the past thirty years, the actual physical space in which smoking is permitted has shrunk. It is gone from broadcast advertising, from domestic flights, and, increasingly, from public places. Once again, here's my colleague Chris Bury. Bury: The government's war on smoking is now thirty years old Dr. Luther Terry (Surgeon General) (Footage from a 1964 speech): There's a very strong relationship, and probably a causal relationship, between heart disease and cigarette smoking. Bury: For the cigarette industry, that was just the beginning (clip of a commercial for Marlboro Cigarettes). By 1972, the Marlboro Man, along with other cigarette commercials, was booted off the airways-- both radio and TV--and reports from the Surgeon General's office kept piling up. Dr. C. Everett Koop (Surgeon General): In the 1982 Report on Cancer, we concluded that cigarette smoking was the single greatest cause of excess cancer mortality in the United States. In 1983, our report on cardiovascular disease identified cigarette smoking as the most important modifiable risk-factor for coronary heart disease. In 1984, we identified cigarette smoking as the major cause of chronic-obstructive lung disease such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis. The 1986 report thoroughly reviewed the evidence that involuntary or passive smoking is harmful, including that involuntary smoking is a cause of lung cancer in healthy non-smokers. Bury: That report moved airlines to ban smoking on all domestic flights in 1990. '

-6- Unidentified Northwest Pilot to Crew: A gentle reminder: we do have smoke alarms in all of our lavatories. Please don't try to sneak in there and get one. Thank you. Unidentified Waiter: Would you care for smoking or non-smoking? Unidentified Customer: Non. Bury: Many businesses and restaurants had already begun to segregate smokers or to ban smoking entirely and public service announcements took off the glove, attacking the cigarette manufacturers themselves. Unidentified Actor in an Anti-Smoking Commercial: So, forget about all that cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke stuff. Gentlemen, we're not in this business for our health. Parrish: The fact of the matter is, we have a little product which is enjoyed by fifty million people and I don't think the federal government ought to be in the business of social engineering and telling those fifty million people what they can do in terms of making their choices. Koppel: The federal government does that all the time. The federal government's taken thirty, forty, fifty percent of our income for all kinds of things that we have no say over. So why not impose it on something that medical knowledge, insofar as it exists today is firmly convinced, is costing us four hundred thousand lives a year. Parrish: When you talk about taking it in and applying it someplace, let me just tell you that right cigarette smokers already pay thirteen billion--that's billion with a`b' more in taxes than non-smokers do. This is not the way to achieve meaningful health-care reform. Especially...it's unfair, it's a regressive tax, it falls more heavily on lower and middle-income people than others. That's not where our government ought to be taking us. Waxman: When they're manufacturing a product that's hazardous, that, in fact, kills people, that can't be a argument to allow cigarettes to continue at the level o pricing where it becomes so readily accessible to a lot of young people, particularly and the money that can be raised from tobacco smoking can be used for health-care, which is a perfect symmetry since it's a leading cause of preventable disease in this country.

-7- Koppel: But they would take the position, they would say ,`Henry Waxman, you're not really saying that if we raise the price of a pack of cigarettes to two dollars or two-fifty or three dollars, you're going to leave us alone. You're out to put us out of business.' Sooner or later that's what you want to do, isn't it? Waxman: You know, I think what we ought to hope for is that the American people go to a smoke-free society. But that's going to have to be done voluntarily. Prohibition won't work; we've tried that with alcoholic beverages. But we need to discourage people from smoking. I just think that ought to be a major part of our public policy agenda because it is important for the health of the American people to encourage smokers not to smoke and non-smokers not to take up this habit. Bury: The growing government drum-beat on smoking has apparently had some success. By 1965, the year after the first Surgeon Generals report, forty-two percent of Americans smoked. By 1991, that number was down to twenty-six percent, and in just the last six weeks, the news for the tobacco industry has not been good. McDonald's agreed to ban smoking in all of its fourteen hundred company-owned restaurants; the Utah legislature banned smoking in most places of work; and Maryland may soon become the first in the nation to ban all workplace smoking, including bars and hotels. And the Pentagon announced that grabbing a smoke, long the one approved vice of American military men and women, would no longer be permitted in the workplace, presumably war-zones not included. Koppel: Mr. Parrish, you folks in the tobacco industry must be feeling a little like Old Testament lepers these days. We're all closing in on you a little bit? Parrish: Well, we've certainly seen in the last few days, in the last couple of weeks, a lot of, what I consider to be unfounded, and I think the facts show unfounded attacks on our industry. We have the health-care debate, along with a proposed excise tax on cigarettes, which we saw twenty-thousand people in the streets of Washington today marching against that proposed tax. Koppel: You guys gave them the day off and you chartered the busses for them, right? Parrish: No, actually, the way we did it was we provided the busses for them and we gave them a choice. They could work, in our instance in Richmond, at the

-8- factory or at their regular job; or they could be paid a regular day's wage and come up to Washington. Bury: Thirty years into the war on smoking, the tobacco industry, its workers and smokers themselves are under almost constant siege from the government, from society, and from science. Koppel: Smokers know its bad for them. Most of them will even acknowledge it can kill them. They know that second-hand smoke can harm someone they love, but they keep on doing it. Why? That part of the story when we come back. (Commercial break) Koppel: It may be banned for more and more places, but the addiction to smoking exerts a strong hold and there's new evidence that the tobacco industry may be chemically stacking the deck. Bury: Any smoker knows that the kick from a cigarette comes from nicotine--a drug found naturally in tobacco. Even the tobacco company's own researchers say they believe that nicotine is why people smoke. A 1992 study, co-authored by a RJ Reynold's scientist,concluded the beneficial effects of smoking on cognitive performance are a function of nicotine absorbed from cigarette smoke. Nicotine reduces anxiety and increases mental alertness and its addiction--so addicting to the Surgeon General, that nicotine makes quitting smoking as difficult as quitting cocaine or heroin. The Food and Drug Administration regulates nicotine as a drug. Nicotine patches and nicotine gum are controlled. So why hasn't the FDA ever tried to regulate cigarettes? According to a letter written by Doctor David Kessler, Commissioner of the FDA, the tobacco companies were given the benefit of the doubt, as to whether they intended their products to be used as drugs, or the cigarettes were intended to dispense nicotine. Decades ago, in a confidential memo, a Philip Morris official called a cigarette pack, 'a storage container for a days supply of nicotine.' A cigarette was a`dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine.' Now the FDA may be changing its view on cigarettes. An investigation by the ABC News Broadcast Day-1 found that cigarette companies carefully control the amount of nicotine in their cigarettes by adding precise amounts of tobacco extract which contains nicotine.

-9- Unidentified Former RJR Manager: They put nicotine in the form of tobacco extract into a product to keep the consumer happy. Clifford Douglass (American Cancer Society): The public doesn't know that the industry manipulates nicotine--takes it out, puts it back in, uses it as if it were sugar being put in candy. Koppel: Our sister-program, Day-1 a couple days ago, did a report on the tobacco industry and the revelation of that program--and, I must say, it astonished me--and that is that you folks have actually been adding nicotine to the product, to the tobacco as a means of causing people to become more addicted to the product. Parrish: It astonished me because that's not why, and Day-1 knew that before they aired the show. The fact of the matter is, number one, nicotine is a natural substance in tobacco. We do absolutely nothing in the manufacturing or processing of our tobacco which results in more nicotine in the final product that's in the naturally occuring tobacco. In fact, the nicotine levels in the cigarettes we make are lower than in the unprocessed tobacco. So for somebody to make those kind of claims is not only inaccurate, it's ludicrous, and it's outrageous as far as I'm concerned. Day-1 had information in advance of that show that contradicted the claims that they made showed that they weren't true. It's very unfortunate. Koppel: Says who?(?). Parrish: We are trying to get the facts out. Bury: The facts, according to the tobacco companies, are. that they only add tobacco extract to enhance the flavor, not to raise the nicotine content. Matthew Myers (Coalition on Smoking or Health): The recent ABC Day-1 report revealed substantial new information that, combined with FDA's own investigation, has brought the whole issue into a new,focus. We now know that the tobacco industry consciously manipulates the level of nicotine in tobacco products to insure that they're addictive. What that means is that tobacco products don't have to be addictive. They're addictive because tobacco manufacturers have consciously chosen to turn a once agricultural product into a drug. '

Waxman: I have just become aware of it, when the head of the Food and Drug Administration informed us that he has found a substantial amount of evidence indicating that the tobacco industry is adding nicotine to their product. Nicotine is the addictive substance. The National Institute of Drug Abuse has called it one of the most highly addictive substances around. I just find that unconscionable that they would try and make a product more addictive, and a large number of smokers would like to give it up, but they can't do it because this hook has been placed on them by the tobacco industry. Koppel: And they deny it, of course. You know that. The tobacco industry denies it. Waxman: They deny it, and of course they even deny that tobacco smoke causes illness of any sort. Bury: The revelation that cigarette companies manipulate the nicotine in their products has led FDA Commission Kessler to conclude that cigarette manufacturers may intend that their products 'contain nicotine to satisfy an addiction on the part of some of their customers.' And Kessler says it's obvious people buy cigarettes to 'satisfy their nicotine addiction.' If the FDA could prove that simply statement, it would then be able to regulate cigarettes as drugs. That could ultimately mean, in the words of Dr. Kessler, the removal from the market of tobacco products containing nicotine at levels that cause or satisfy addiction. Waxman: The Commissioner told us Congress has got to deal with this question. It clearly...he's not about to ban cigarettes and we're not about to ban cigarettes. But we ought to have some regulation on the level of nicotine and we ought to at least warn people on cicarette packs and other places that nicotine is in this product that is addictive. That we've known for some time, but we haven't been able to get that message out. Bury: Congress will soon hold hearings on the allegations that cigarettes are deliberately designed and marketed to keep smokers hooked. Even the industry's harshest critics don't believe a ban on cigarette sales is politically possible, but that the FDA is even considering such a thing is a sign of how far the tables have turned on the nation's deadliest habit. This is Chris Bury for Nightline in Washington. I if I