TOBACCO'S ROADBLOCK . . .

TOBACCO companies won another one, but a short-term victory for the
deep-pocketed industry and Senate Republicans could well come back to haunt
them. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott handed Democrats a powerful
election-year issue by leading the charge that resulted in killing
legislation to curb teen smoking.

Lott apparently relied on a poll showing that snuffing out the bill by
Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., would not have as dire a political result as
Democrats hoped. We'll see.

According to numerous surveys, most Americans are fed up with the lies,
advertising tactics and seeming willingness to do anything to sustain
profitability of cigarette makers, even when it means luring teenagers to a
habit that claims 420,000 lives a year.

It will be easy for the public to connect the $40 million tobacco industry
advertising blitz against McCain's bill with the vote by Senate Republicans
- -- and two tobacco-area Democrats -- to effectively kill the bill. And it
will not help those senators that tobacco company officials wasted no time
after the vote bragging that their Washington clout was alive and well.

Political shenanigans like Lott's refusal to bring the measure up for a
vote on its merits on the Senate floor and instead kill it through
procedural methods also could hurt Republicans. Americans already turned
off by political business-as-usual will not appreciate another attempt at
trickery.

Adding to the potential political risk to Republicans is the transparency
of Lott's arguments against the bill. He said it had become a big
government tax and spend measure with its abundance of amendments. He
neglected to mention that he pushed for many of those amendments.

The tobacco industry is not going to get off lightly either. The country is
a different place for tobacco interests from a couple of years ago, when a
group of bold state attorneys general (not including California's Dan
Lungren) took on the industry. Lungren did not join the lawsuit until it
was on the brink of settlement.

In the year since the original settlement, the industry was ordered to pay
punitive damages. The public became acquainted with -- and juries are being
shown -- long-hidden tobacco company documents showing that young people
were specific targets of tobacco advertisers and that cigarette
manufacturers manipulated nicotine levels to hook smokers. The
once-invincible tobacco industry also has agreed to pay $36 billion to
settle four Medicaid suits.

McCain's bill had flaws, but they could have been repaired in a
House-Senate conference committee. Lott and company ensured that no such
opportunity will occur.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page A22

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)