TOBACCO FOES SEE FUTURE IN COURT

Bay activists angry, but also relieved, at smoking bill's loss

Bay Area anti-smoking activists reacted with a mixture of rage and relief to
the death of the congressional tobacco bill.

The nation is better off without the bill, because Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott's congressional henchmen thoroughly sabotaged it, adding
amendments than would have weakened the war on cigarettes, many activists say.

Hence, many prefer to sidestep Washington and return to their older
strategy: to slowly attack the tobacco industry by repeatedly suing it in
local and state courthouses from coast to coast.

"I don't see this (legislative defeat) as the end of the world because the
fact is, we're now back to where we were - litigation on a state-by-state
basis, which I actually think is a better way to do it," said the Bay Area's
best-known cigarette-hater, Dr. Stanton Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor
of medicine. "The real (anti-smoking) progress has always been made at the
local and state level."

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate dumped the bill,
intended to discourage teenagers from smoking. Sixty votes were needed to
overcome procedural hurdles, but the bill's supporters garnered only 57.

Ironically, the bill's chief sponsor was a Republican, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Asked to comment on the view that court fights are preferable to passage of
the Republican bill, San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne said, "I
cannot disagree with it." As written, the Republican bill "would have wiped
out all local government lawsuits against the tobacco companies."

"And that is most unfair, given the fact that our (local) lawsuits were
filed before 30 of the state attorneys general's lawsuits were filed," Renne
said.

Bill loaded with provisions

As written, the McCain bill worried Walt Bilofsky, co-chair of the
Smoke-Free Marin Coalition, based in Novato. It was a decent bill, until it
was sabotaged with the provision for a $500-an-hour limit on fees for
attorneys in future lawsuits, Bilofsky says.

"The only way the tobacco industry is going to get out of the business of
killing people is if they have to pay the price in dollars. The only
institution in our system of government that is likely to (make them) do
that is the courts," Bilofsky said. "Any bill that impedes what the courts
have been doing in the last couple of years, and are doing right now, is a
bad bill."

Still, some activists hope to resurrect the bill in a more acceptable form.

"If I could have gotten the McCain bill as it was last week without many
additions, I could have accepted it," Glantz said. At that time, "the bill
had emerged as a reasonably good piece of legislation from a public health
point of view, and it would have passed if Lott had allowed it to pass."

"Hypocrite of the year'

Glantz said that Republicans "started screwing with it," adding provisions
that would have weakened the anti-smoking cause - for example, limiting to
$500 an hour the fees of lawyers who file future anti-tobacco suits. A
$4,000 cap would have been set on the fees of lawyers whose suits are
already in court.

"Lott deserves the "Hypocrite of the Year' award," Glantz exclaimed. "He
said, "We can't pass this bill - it's a Christmas tree!' Well, he's the guy
who hung all the ornaments on it!"

Julia Carol, co-director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights in Berkeley,
said Lott "is lower than pond scum." Alluding to Lott's recent public
statements on gays, she said: "Maybe instead of bashing gays, he should
start bashing tobacco companies - they deserve it."

Despite media talk about the bill's death, Carol added, "I don't believe
it's over yet. I think the vote shows how much tobacco industry campaigns
can buy, but I don't think it's over yet. . . . It could come back to life,
you just never know."

Republicans charged that the bill would have constituted a tax increase by
boosting the price of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10.

"Dangerous to go to Washington'

"The Republicans delivered for the cigarette companies," Glantz charged. "I
started out saying it was stupid to waste your time to go to Washington. And
in fact, it's dangerous to go to Washington because the tobacco interests
are so powerful there."

Dr. Neil Benowitz, a nicotine researcher at San Francisco General Hospital,
acknowledged that as "more and more irrelevant (provisions) got tacked on to
the bill, the focus on really getting people to stop smoking was getting lost."

Still, Benowitz would have welcomed passage of the bill's provision
increasing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ability to regulate tobacco.

The bill's defeat sends the wrong signal to foreign countries considering
tobacco controls, Benowitz said: "They were all looking to the U.S. to see
what's going to happen."

Anti-smoking activists should pressure their congressional representatives
to revive an acceptable bill, one that enhances the FDA's muscle in
regulating the tobacco industry, said emeritus Professor Dorothy Rice of
UC-San Francisco.

They "have got to keep this issue really on the forefront," said Rice, an
expert on the impact of smoking on health costs. "It's terribly important to
keep it alive so it doesn't die completely."

1998 San Francisco Examiner

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett