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Tobacco PR arms targeted
N.Y. attorney general seeks to shut two tobacco-funded institutes |
 
New headache for tobacco - April 29, 1998
Tobacco bill draws fire - April 2, 1998
Tobacco deal reached - June 20, 1997
State Tobacco Information Center More related sites... |
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - New York's attorney general took legal action Thursday to shut down two tobacco-funded research groups, contending they have "fed the public a pack of lies" in an "underhanded effort" to promote smoking among adults and children.
In a petition filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Attorney General Dennis Vacco alleged the Council for Tobacco Research USA Inc. and the Tobacco Institute, two tax-exempt entities ostensibly created to provide the public with impartial information on smoking, had instead proven to be "propaganda arms of the industry."
"This action," he continued, "will ensure that the tobacco industry will no longer be able to finance their propaganda machine at taxpayer expense."
Tom Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit corporation founded in 1958, responded with a terse, one-line statement: "We are confident that the Tobacco Institute has complied with the rules governing trade associations." Officials at the Council for Tobacco Research were not immediately available for comment.
The petition seeks the dissolution of both groups, a move Vacco initially took in January 1997 as one of the original plaintiffs in a 41-state landmark lawsuit against Big Tobacco.
That lawsuit resulted in a watershed $368.5 billion settlement with the industry last June. The settlement collapsed last month, however, when the cigarette makers pulled out after objecting to provisions in a compromise Senate bill the industry regarded as unduly punitive.
Since then, the sparring over cigarette legislation has intensified against a backdrop of heated debate over whether tighter government oversight and higher cigarette prices will actually curb teenage smoking. A consensus has thus far proved elusive.
In recent days, House Republican leaders were said to have rejected bipartisan tobacco legislation brokered by two leading negotiators that called for no tobacco tax increase, but would have imposed steep penalties on tobacco companies if the industry fails to reduce teenage smoking.
The compromise bill, hashed out between House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley of Virginia, and California Democrat Henry Waxman, set targets for reducing teenage smoking and provided for penalties after four years if the targets weren't met.
The sanctions in the House bill were five times larger than those prescribed in the Senate compromise crafted by Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
The House draft denied cigarette makers the legal relief from future lawsuits that has become a primary sticking point in legislation. It also would grant the Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over nicotine as a drug.
In a related development, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings Wednesday on whether higher prices for cigarettes could spawn a black market for cigarettes. Proposed Senate legislation could raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1.50 over five years.
Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, is concerned that raising prices too high will create a criminal culture around tobacco and make cheap, black market cigarettes available to children.
But Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and a senior member of the committee, asserted Thursday that such arguments were simply "more lies" by the tobacco industry. Leahy was seconded by Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who said that sufficient regulatory controls and other safeguards would prevent such a scenario from becoming reality.
The tobacco companies, themselves, have chosen to tackle the legislators head-on. Philip Morris Cos. Inc. said Thursday it has no plans to relocate outside the United States to escape operating restrictions that could be placed on the domestic tobacco industry by federal legislation, Philip Morris Chairman Geoffrey Bible said.
"It's a very inviting prospect, I have to tell you, but it's not our plan," Bible said at the company's annual meeting here. "We take our hits, but we seem to survive and come out in pretty good shape on the other end....We plan to stay here."
Philip Morris also called the McCain bill a "punitive, unreasonable assault" on the industry.
But earlier this week, Liggett & Myers broker ranks with its Big Tobacco brethren when it agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in its four-year criminal investigation of wrongdoing by the tobacco industry.
And Wednesday, a group of 35 state health insurers filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recoup the costs of smoking-related illnesses. Health officials estimate that smoking-related diseases cost the American economy $60 billion a year.
New York's Vacco, in a statement shortly after he filed his petition, said that the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute "together fed the public a pack of lies in an underhanded effort to promote smoking and addict out kids." 
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