“Tobacco is a dirty weed.”
Graham Lee Hemminger
“Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.”
This now familiar warning became part of our lexicon in 1965 in response to the Surgeon General’s report detailing the health hazards of smoking. Fourteen years later, the Surgeon General issued a far stronger indictment linking cigarette smoking to heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema, and a variety of other serious ailments.
Despite volumes of well-documented medical evidence linking smoking to diseases which claim more 400,000 Americans lives each year, Congress succumbed to the pressures and campaign contributions of the tobacco
industry and its unrelenting army of lobbyists for nearly two decades. During that time a White House/Congressional cabal provided subsidies and tax breaks for the tobacco industry … while as many a 6 million lives were lost to smoking-related disorders.
Then, as today, industry spokesmen denied the existence of any scientifically convincing evidence linking use of tobacco products to cancer, heart disease, respiratory problems or even psychological or physiological dependencies.
Nevertheless, anti-smoking activists and the medical establishment chipped away at tobacco’s armor. Warning labels were periodically stiffened and later extended other tobacco products. Radio and television advertising of cigarettes and cigars was banned. Some restrictions protecting the rights of nonsmokers were enacted, banning smoking in such places as schools and elevators, and requiring nonsmoking sections in most restaurants.
Occasional law suits against one or more cigarette companies received lots of media attention, but failed to accomplish much more than lining the pockets of the high-priced lawyers on both sides.
Within the last year, however, the tobacco industry’s clout began to go up in smoke. This unraveling began when the EPA released a report declaring secondhand smoke a Class A carcinogen.
An avalanche of state regulations and local ordinances banning smoking in both public buildings and private businesses followed. Many federal agencies, including the Clinton White House, also banned smoking within their confines. This month, the U.S. military is finally putting the smoking lamp out in most of its facilities.
But, the tidal wave of bad news for the tobacco industry wasn’t over. In March ABC News and the FDA released their findings from parallel studies, accusing cigarette manufacturers of spiking their products with nicotine to enhance their chances of addicting their customers.
While FDA czar, David Kessler, ponders whether, or perhaps when, to attempt to regulate nicotine as a drug … Labor Secretary Robert Reich has latched on a far more effective tool. Leveraging OSHA’s oversight role in monitoring indoor clean air quality standards in the workplace, he is proposing smoking bans be expanded to nearly all businesses in America … including bars and restaurants.
Predictably, the tobacco industry has denied charges of loading their “coffin nails” with nicotine. Tobacco Institute spokesman Charles Whitley recently told a House panel, “We don’t think (nicotine) does any harm.” One wonders how he can keep a straight face during such testimony.
Simultaneously, tobacco executives, who themselves may now have to sneak outside to light up, have come out fighting. They not only filed a $10 billion lawsuit against ABC, but most have suddenly emerged as born-again civil libertarians.
They decry the loss of liberty for smokers if the threatened no-smoking regulations are implemented, a specious argument, at best. Individual rights to freedom of action are only valid when they do not infringe on the rights of others. But, the potentially life-threatening health hazards of secondhand smoke greatly outweigh any rights smokers might have to light up in the presence of others.
However, banning tobacco products is not the answer!
Seventy-five years ago, “social progressives” attempted to regulate alcohol, with disastrous results. Any attempt to outlaw smoking will fail as surely as either prohibition or the nation’s ill-conceived war on drugs.
The Reich response, together with continuing anti-smoking education programs, is a better answer … making smoking both expensive and, in protecting nonsmokers, inconvenient. Moreover, it is the least costly and least intrusive approach. It’s also the one most apt to succeed.
