Califano, Joseph Anthony, Jr.
(Sec. of U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare) Joseph Califano Jr. is the former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (1977-1979), in Carter's administration (A 5/17/94; WP 4/3/85). He spoke against the tobacco industry on ABC's "Day One" program. He testified before the Waxman subcommittee on 5/17/94. He was an adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson (AP 5/17/94). He was President of Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, circa 1994 (AP 5/17/94).Biographical Information:
On the fourteenth anniversary of the landmark first surgeon general’s report, on January 11, 1978, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph Califano denounced cigarettes as “Public Health Enemy Number One” and unveiled plans to end tobacco’s sway on Americans. Among Califano’s proposals were a higher federal excise tax on cigarettes, a ban on smoking on all commercial flights, and lessons about the health effects in the curriculum of every school in America.
In hindsight, those measures seem sensible and cautious but at the time the response was vitriolic, especially in North Carolina. The state’s senior Senator, Jesse Helms, accused Califano of “demonstrating callous disregard for economic realities, particularly for the economy of North Carolina.” Governor Jim Hunt chipped in by inviting Califano to visit North Carolina to gain a better importance of the importance of tobacco to the economy. Meanwhile Representative Charlie Rose, whose constituency was largely made up of tobacco farmers, pledged, “We’re going to have to educate Mr. Califano with a two-by-four, not a trip.”
The man who provoked this response was born Joseph Anthony Califano, Jr., in Brooklyn, New York, on May 15, 1931, the only child of an IBM employee and a schoolteacher. His world views were shaped by the Jesuit education he received while attending St. Gregory’s Elementary School and Brooklyn Preparatory School. He had one aunt whom he never met, with the result that he imagined all sorts of explanations for the act that had caused her banishment. Eventually he learned that her offense had been to marry a Protestant.
His was a typical Brooklyn childhood, with Sunday mornings as an altar boy followed by Sunday afternoons spent in the center field bleachers at Ebbet Fields with his Uncle Tom, who told him, “This is where the real fans sit.” Also part of his life were cigarettes – he recalled buying “‘loosies,’ single cigarettes for a cent each” at the local candy store and that “Most of my friends and I got hooked on cigarettes early in our freshman year (there was a bathroom reserved for smoking at The Prep).”
In 1952, Califano enrolled at Holy Cross College. His parents urged him to become a doctor, but it took only two science courses to convince him that was out of the question. Instead he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952, then went on to earn an LL.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1955, while serving as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Califano enlisted in the Navy in 1955 and served in the Office of the Judge Advocate General for three years. He then spent three years with the New York law firm of Dewey Ballantine. His government service began in 1961 when he was appointed Special Assistant to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense. A series of promotions followed, and his accomplishments over the next three years included serving as General Counsel of the Army and as the principal legal advisor to the United States Delegation to the Investigating Committee of the Organization of American States on the Panama riots of January 1964.
In April of 1964, Califano was named Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. The following year he became a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson and served as the president’s top domestic aide for the remainder of his administration, with responsibility for such fields as education, environmental issues, civil rights, health care, urban development and labor-management relations.
When the Johnson administration ended, Califano joined the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter. Two years later, in May of 1971, he became a partner in the Washington law firm of Williams, Connolly & Califano and remained with that firm until being named Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare by newly elected President Jimmy Carter in January of 1977. The election of Carter represented a changing of the guard in Washington – he was eleven years younger than his predecessors, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, and was the first president to come of age during World War II. His cabinet selections were also designed to bring youth and exuberance to Washington and nobody exemplified that better than Joseph Califano. While a boy wonder advisor to Johnson, he prompted press secretary George Christian to remark that “Califano handled the domestic program with the exuberance of a kid who finally made railroad engineer.” He was forty-five by the time he was named to Carter’s cabinet, but still had plenty of energy, along with a great deal of passion on the subject of smoking.
After his early days of buying “loosies” and smoking in the “bathroom reserved for smoking at The Prep,” Califano had graduated to being a two to four pack-a-day smoker. He even kept a pack of regular cigarettes in one pocket and of menthols in the other so that he could keep smoking when his throat grew dry. And Arnold & Porter, the law firm he worked for from 1969 to 1971, represented Philip Morris. But he quit smoking on October 21, 1975, and became convinced of the need for all Americans to follow his example.
His tenure as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare included a wide variety of initiatives: the most thorough reorganization in department history; the launch of prevention programs such as one to encourage childhood immunizations; the introduction of programs to collect defaulted student loans; the establishment of major new programs to combat alcoholism and prevent disease; the issuance of the first Surgeon General’s Report to set health goals for Americans; the opening of the nation’s first free standing hospice in Branford, Connecticut, along with new regulations that made Medicare reimbursement available for hospice care; the introduction of computerized monitoring of welfare, Medicare and Medicaid programs, and the issuance of the first regulations to provide equal opportunity to the handicapped and to provide equal athletic opportunity to women under Title IX. Despite this wide sweep, nothing defined Califano’s time in the cabinet more than his declaration of cigarettes as “Public Health Enemy Number One” and the controversy that ensued.
According to Califano, President Carter was well aware of his intentions to make cigarettes a priority. He reported that during a private meeting in the Oval Office, “the president made it clear that the antismoking program was to be an HEW/Califano effort. Carter put ‘the smoking program’ at the top of a list of items he wanted to ‘keep off my desk and on your own desk.’ But he expressed no objection to my energetic pursuit of the program, possibly because, as he said in January 1978, ‘My own father did smoke four or five packs a day and he died with lung cancer, perhaps because of cigarette smoking.’”
But while Carter was well aware that the issue was a political hot potato and that he needed to distance himself from Califano, it is doubtful that he anticipated just what a backlash would ensue. As the day of the January 11, 1978, announcement approached, both the Tobacco Institute and the White House tried unsuccessfully to get copies of Califano’s speech. When thwarted, as Califano puts it, “the Tobacco Institute held an unprecedented press conference to attack a speech that had not yet been delivered and a program that had not yet been announced.”
Califano went ahead with his speech and even further toughened it with last-minute additions in which he termed smoking “slow motion suicide” and called it “Public Health Enemy Number One.” Not surprisingly, the tobacco industry continued its counterattack, with much of its venom being directed at Califano personally. Tobacco Institute spokesman Horace Kornegay portrayed the secretary as an anti-smoking zealot, and the industry finance bumper stickers that read “Califano Is Dangerous To My Health” and billboards with the message, “Califano Blows Smoke.”
Carter responded by distancing himself more and more from the embattled Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, with the result that his proposals languished On a trip to North Carolina in August of 1878, President Jimmy Carter earned cheers and laughter by telling the crowd, “I had planned today to bring Joe Califano with me, but he decided not to come. He discovered that not only is North Carolina the number-one tobacco-producing state, but that you produce more bricks in the nation as well.” By 1979, Ted Kennedy advised Califano, “You’ve got to get out of the Cabinet before the election. The president can’t run in North Carolina with you at HEW. He’s going to have to get rid of you.”
Finally, in August of 1979, Califano was fired during a major cabinet reshuffle. A number of factors for the dismissal were cited, including Califano’s bluntness and self-promotion and inability to get along with Carter chief of staff Hamilton Jordan. But it appears that more than anything else, the decision reflected the approach of the 1980 presidential election and the fact that Califano had become a political liability to Carter’s bid for reelection. Ironically, the Califano proposals that caused so much controversy were just as unpopular in the antismoking community. As Richard Kluger notes, “Public-health advocates like John Banzhaf’s ASH and the consumer groups allied with Ralph Nader dismissed Califano’s call as all gesture and little substance. HEW’s proposed antitobacco budget of $25 to $30 million was denounced as a spit in the ocean to counter the billion dollars then being spent by the industry on advertising and promotion – and it was laughably small when compared even to the $250 million that HEW itself had squandered not long before on a mass inoculation campaign to head off a phantom swine flu epidemic.”
After leaving Carter’s cabinet, Califano remained in Washington for several years and served as Special Counsel to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. In 1983, he returned to the law firm of Dewey Ballantine as a senior partner in the Washington office. Since 1992, he has been the chairman of the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), an organization that he established and for which he obtained the funding.
Califano has also written eleven books that reflect his wide range of interests, including The Student Revolution: A Global Confrontation (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), A Presidential Nation, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), The Media and the Law, co-authored and co-edited by Howard Simons (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1976), The Media and Business, also cowritten with Simons (New York: Random House, 1978), Governing America: An Insider’s Report From the White House and the Cabinet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), The 1982 Report on Drug Abuse and Alcoholism (New York: Warner Books, 1982), America’s Health Care Revolution: Who Lives? Who Dies? Who Pays? (New York: Random House, 1986), The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), Radical Surgery: What’s Next for America’s Health Care (New York: Random House, 1995), Inside: A Public and Private Life (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), and High Society – How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What To Do About It, (New York: PublicAffairs Press, 2007).
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Joseph A. Califano Jr., Governing America: An Insider’s Report From the White House and the Cabinet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981).
Joseph A. Califano Jr., Inside: A Public and Private Life (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
David J. Hanson, Ph.D., “Joseph Califano Biography,” http://www.alcoholfacts.org/Califano.html, retrieved November 17, 2008.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
Synonyms
Califano, Joe Jr.Califano, Joseph
Califano, Joseph Mr.