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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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Editorial: Senate Should Stand Against Move to Kill FDA Proposal [10/05-1]
Excerpts from: Life and Death in the Senate
NY Times [10/05/04]
For years, the tobacco lobby has blocked one of the nation's most crying needs: to
have the cigarette industry, with its annual death toll of 400,000 consumers,
finally placed under regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. Now a
Senate proposal to give the F.D.A. that power hangs on for dear life in the
wheeling and dealing over the egregious corporate tax-break bill.
This is a sorry vehicle, originally a simple tariff-correction bill that obeisant lawmakers have turned into a $100-billion-plus porkfest for every corporate power lobby in Washington. The bill, as this page has stressed repeatedly, deserves to die on its manifold demerits. But the Capitol feels an irresistible election-year push to pass it - minus, however, its singular virtue, the F.D.A. controls over tobacco.
The Senate originally included the F.D.A. proposal as part of a multibillion-dollar bargain to buy out failed tobacco farmers - a boon to corporate agriculture and passive investors. But while the House eagerly bought into the idea of yet another giveaway of public money, the Republican leadership opposed the part aimed at helping to protect public health.
We implore the Senate to stand fast against the move to kill the F.D.A. proposal. If some sort of goody-laden bonanza must inevitably pass, this one patch of reform must be included. It is hard to imagine that Congress would approach Election Day burying a landmark blow for public health while cravenly ladling corporate giveaways to one and all
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