Clinton to Reject Tobacco Settlement

His top priority is teen smoking

New York Times

Washington

President Clinton will decisively reject a proposed tobacco deal negotiated
by state officials and cigarette company lawyers and will outline his own
tobacco policy in an Oval Office speech today.

Clinton will insist that his chief goal reducing the number of teenagers
who smokecan be accomplished only by a sharp increase in the price of
cigarettes, by as much as $1.50 a pack over 10 years, White House officials
said yesterday.

In his first extended public comments on the sweeping nationwide tobacco
proposal announced June 20, Clinton will praise the efforts of state
attorneys general, plaintiffs' lawyers, health advocates and tobacco
company executives in devising a plan to advance important public health
goals while settling dozens of tobaccorelated lawsuits.

But the president will insist that the $368.5 billion settlement plan does
not go far enough to discourage smoking by minors or to help the nation's
45 million smokers end their nicotine addiction, aides said.

Without spelling out a detailed legislative proposal, the president will
describe the overriding principles he believes must guide the nation's
approach to tobacco use, aides said.

Among the tenets of the president's plan are unfettered authority for the
Food and Drug Administration to regulate nicotine as an addictive drug,
fundamental changes in the way cigarettes are made and sold in the United
States and the rapid disclosure of documents that chronicle the legal,
scientific and public relations conduct of the nation's tobacco companies
in the past 40 years.

In addition, Clinton will call for some form of compensation to be paid to
tobacco growers, whose income will decline as the nation's tobacco
consumption falls.

Congressional leaders have said that action on what is certain to be a
complex and contentious legislative package is not likely this year. And
the White House does not appear to be in a hurry to enact a comprehensive
tobacco program, calculating that the industry's position is weakening and
that tobacco control will be an effective election year issue in 1998 for
the Democrats.

The two officials who coordinated the administration's threemonth review
of the original tobacco settlement proposalDonna Shalala, secretary of
health and human services, and Bruce Reed, the president's chief domestic
policy adviserare expected to be at the Oval Office event today.

Also expected at the session is David Kessler, the former commissioner of
food and drugs and a longtime crusader against tobacco. Kessler's criticism
of the original plan helped persuade Clinton to scrap the deal in favor of
a tougher approach.

"What the president has cared about from the beginning is reducing the
number of kids who smoke, and this will work," Kessler said yesterday.
"This is no longer about whether tho coal is worth $360 billion or $500
billion or $700 billion. It's about what works, and I think this does.

"This will unite not only the public health community, but the whole
public," Kessler added.

Tobacco industry officials will not be represented at the White House
announcement, said J. Phil Carlton, a North Carolina lawyer who represented
the major cigarette makers in the negotiations.

Carlton said the industry has not decided how it will respond to the
president's announcement. But he said he hopes Clinton will endorse
legislation to conclude the dozens of lawsuits, filed by individual smokers
and by 40 states, that now threaten the industry's financial future.

WHAT CIINTON WANTS

Besides calling for payments that would result in a S 1.50 per pack price
increase during the next 10 years, the president also is expected to

Ask for full authority for the FDA to regulate nicotine.

Propose some kind of protection for tobacco farmers and their communities.

Call for more rapid disclosure of tobacco industry documents.