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Koop to Pippen: Take out the cigar / Ex-surgeon general lectures celebrities

Tuesday, June 16, 1998

BY CHIP JONES
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The victory cigar Scottie Pippen savored after the Chicago Bulls' win in the NBA Finals drew fire from former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop yesterday.

Koop issued a "call to responsibility" to sports and entertainment stars to stop touting cigars, a growing craze in tobacco use. Pippen appeared on national television with a cigar in his mouth shortly after the Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz Sunday.

"I caution them that America is watching," Koop told an American Cancer Society conference on the health risks of cigar smoking.

As Congress keeps debating a national tobacco bill, cigars remain untouched by the proposed federal legislation or by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rules on tobacco, which are being contested in court.

Only California requires warning labels on cigars and cigar advertising, with Massachusetts ready to impose a similar law by year's end.

But based on this daylong conference, the nation's $1 billion cigar industry is in the crosshairs of the anti-smoking movement.

Health officials are alarmed by the spread of cigar smoking in recent years, including the rise in "cigar nights" at clubs and hotels, as well as industry-financed cigar pitches in movies, television shows and magazines.

Cigar companies are using images of sex, success and sports to lure new, young smokers, speakers charged.

"With the Scottie Pippen image, cigar smokers decide that applies to them," said Dr. Frank Baker, director of the Cancer Society's Behavioral Research Center in Atlanta. "They're athletic, too."

Baker declined to discuss photographs of President Clinton with cigars but said, "I think any public figure who smokes risks being a role model."

Clinton has made youth smoking a continuing theme of his administration, but his taste for cigars has given the tobacco industry fodder for counter-advertising.

One R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. billboard shown at the conference asks, "Why do politicians smoke cigars while taxing cigarettes?"

A spokesman for the Cigar Association of America denied the industry targets youths with its marketing.

"We hardly expected an endorsement from Dr. Koop, but one thing we have in common is we don't want kids smoking cigars," said Norman Sharp, a spokesman for the Washington-based trade group.

"But we strongly defend the right of adults to freely enjoy one of life's small little pleasures."

Sharp also denied the validity of studies showing an increase in cigar smoking among youths, saying there was "no consistent supply of data."

Most of America's 12 million adult cigar smokers don't think they're harming their health, according to the Cancer Society. But cancer deaths among men who smoke cigars are 34 percent higher than for non-smokers, the group said.

And regular smokers who inhale, particularly those who smoke several cigars per day, run a higher risk of coronary heart disease and other pulmonary diseases, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Koop warned of a "rapidly expanding" pool of new users in their teens who are helping fuel the cigar boom in the United States. More than 5.2 billion cigars were sold last year, a 50 percent jump from just six years ago, he said.

"Cigar banquets have been launched to boost interest in cigars," said the former pediatric surgeon in his trademark stentorian voice. He lamented cigar ads on call-waiting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

He blasted another New York hotel, the Hyatt, for delivering complimentary humidors of cigars, "thereby making the room uninhabitable for people like me."

Koop said he had only heard about Pippen's victory smoke Sunday night. "But you're talking to underprivileged kids who are particularly susceptible" to influence by sports role models, he said.

Bulls guard Michael Jordan also has been criticized for lighting up victory cigars, but he escaped Koop's attention yesterday.