SURVEY TO TRACK YOUTHS' SMOKING

WASHINGTON - President Clinton was announcing today that the federal
government will begin conducting annual surveys to determine
cigarette-brand share in the market for underage smokers, a defiant gesture
aimed at tobacco companies and their congressional allies.

Recoiling from the demise of comprehensive anti-smoking legislation in the
Senate last week, Clinton today was issuing an executive order directing
the Department of Health and Human Services to begin documenting which
brands enjoy favor among smokers aged 12 through 17, as part of the yearly
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, administration officials said
yesterday.

The tobacco bill, which stalled after failing to win the necessary 60 votes
to end debate, would have called for such research into the youth smoking
market. In one of its more controversial provisions, the bill also would
have imposed large financial penalties on cigarette companies that did not
reduce their sales to youngsters by 30 percent over the next five years and
60 percent over the next decade.

Those penalties, to which the tobacco firms vociferously objected, cannot
be imposed now that the legislation has died. Moreover, they were likely
targets for a challenge on constitutional grounds had the bill passed. But
Clinton aides said there is logic to performing the market research anyway.

Clinton, they said, has two objectives. The first is to project a public
message of optimism: Clinton maintains there is a chance that comprehensive
tobacco legislation will pass later this year, and it makes sense to get a
head start on the brand surveys that will be needed to monitor the
performance of the cigarette companies in reducing sales to minors.

But even if the legislation never becomes law, administration officials
said, the surveys will be a useful way to put public pressure on the firms.

"For the first time, we'll have clear evidence of which companies are
responsible for this problem," said one senior administration official who
works on the tobacco issue. "We'll be able to see which companies are
targeting youth."

`A political gesture'

Scott Williams, a tobacco-industry spokesman, said yesterday that cigarette
companies have agreed to support general research into the reasons for
youth smoking, but that the industry objects to performing brand surveys or
imposing fees on individual companies. He dismissed Clinton's planned
action as a "political gesture" aimed at stigmatizing tobacco and diverting
attention from Clinton's failure to pass tobacco legislation-his top
domestic policy priority.

"It sounds like somebody just thought, "What do we do now?' " Williams said
of the executive order. "Brand surveys will not tell you what will work to
reduce underage smoking."

Williams said Clinton is to blame for not exerting greater leadership to
implement a settlement agreed to by state attorneys general and the major
cigarette makers - last June after close consultations with the White House.

Among several provisions of that June 20 agreement, cigarette companies
reluctantly agreed to pay the government up to $2 billion in annual
"look-back" penalties if youth smoking did not fall enough. The fees would
have been paid by the industry as a whole, without reference to which
brands were popular with young people.

Failed bill's penalties

The failed bill, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and amended at
White House insistence, would have increased the maximum annual penalty to
$3.5 billion, and imposed additional penalties on individual companies that
missed their targets. These company-specific fees would have been $1,000
per smoker for every smoker beyond the target.

While there are no reliable government studies, an administration official
said Philip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, has about 60
percent of the youth smoking market and RJR Nabisco, manufacturer of
Camels, has about 20 percent.

Under the agreement last June, cigarette companies would voluntarily curb
their advertising, - which many experts say is the biggest factor driving
youth smoking, in exchange for limits on their liability in lawsuits. But
the tobacco firms later abandoned voluntary limits, complaining that the
legislation drafted by Congress and the administration had become too
expensive and punitive. The industry committed some $40 million in
advertising to defeat the bill.

Clinton plans to make yesterday's action the first in a series of executive
orders aimed at keeping the profile of the tobacco issue high,
administration officials said. The strategy is patterned after Clinton's
extensive use of executive orders in 1995 and 1996, when he was laboring to
demonstrate his political and policy relevance in the face of opposition by
the new Republican majority in Congress.