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Excerpts from Industry foes fume over the tobacco deal They insist it won't slow teenage smoking

By Joseph P. Shapiro, U.S. News [11/30/98]

The massive $206 billion settlement between the states and cigarette makers may accomplish many things, but deterring people-- especially teens--from smoking is not likely to be among them. The deal contains few fresh approaches to solving one of the nation's most intractable health care dilemmas. Just how stubborn the problem is became clear last week in a new study that surprised even the most experienced public health experts: It showed a sharp rise in smoking among college students, the one group of teens that in the past had resisted tobacco's temptations.

Despite that blunt reminder of tobacco's lure, few chapters in the history of America's smoking wars were more consequential than a four-day stretch last week. On Monday, a group of state attorneys general at a crowded Washington press conference released details of the deal they had negotiated with cigarette makers to settle state lawsuits to recover the health costs of treating smokers. The money on the table--to be paid out over 25 years--was a tempting jackpot for governors. But, like hungry salesmen of time-share condos, the negotiators gave other states just four days to analyze 146 pages of legalese and decide whether to sign on or to gamble on grabbing more money by pursuing individual suits. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former Food and Drug Administration chief David Kessler were among public health officials urging rejection of the deal, accusing the states of selling their "virtue if the price is right" to give Big Tobacco protection against future lawsuits. Still, by week's end, no state took a pass on the largest civil settlement ever. (Four states settled earlier suits.) Tobacco firms will ink the deal this week.

State officials, President Clinton, and even tobacco industry representatives hailed the agreement as a milestone for fighting teen smoking. But the rhetoric that this was all for the kids was belied by what the deal left out. Unlike the $368.5 billion settlement between states and tobacco--which crumbled in June when Congress failed to approve it--the new pact is softer on tobacco. There's no federal regulation of nicotine, as the original bargain stipulated. (As a result, Congress won't have a say in this deal.) Also missing this time: penalties for tobacco companies if teen smoking rates do not drop, and an end to cigarette vending machines, the easiest place for kids to buy cigarettes. Public health groups vowed to ask Congress for such tools to fight tobacco. The American Heart Association's Cass Wheeler summed up the public health community's mixed reaction to the settlement: "Perfect? No. A beginning? Yes."

Yet it was the study of college-student smokers that mocked the celebration over the tobacco settlement. Harvard School of Public Health researchers, publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported smoking jumped 28 percent among college students between 1993 and 1997. The authors blamed cigarette marketing. But researchers know that even in California, a state considered a model for its aggressive antismoking advertising and school programs, teen smoking is peaking again. Peer pressure seems to trump even the best-thought-out antismoking strategies. And that's something that no tobacco deal can touch.

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