Are Smokers Junkies?

By Anastasia Toufexis

The cigarette industry and its customers are doing as much huffing as puffing these days. They're upset because the number of places where lighting up is allowed keeps shrinking and ashtrays are rapidly becoming collectors' items. Just this month have come moves to ban smoking in McDonald's company-owned restaurants, in U.S. military workplaces and in every work space, including restaurants and bars, throughout Maryland. Smokers are also dismayed that the Clinton Administration hopes to finance a large part of health-care reform with a 75 cents-a-pack increase in the U.S. cigarette tax (now 24 cents a pack). More than 16,000 industry supporters, many of them tobacco workers bused in by their companies,marched in Washington last week to protest any such tax hike.

But nothing is more threatening to America's smokers and tobacco industry (annual revenues: $48 billion) than a debate coming soon to Congress. Hearings will begin in the House next week on whether cigarettes should be classed as a drug and thus subjected to tight regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. No one expects cigarettes to be banned; that would create the greatest law-enforcement challenge since Prohibition. It is conceivable, though, that Congress could outlaw cigarette advertising and ban smoking in all public places.

Smoking opponents have been petitioning the FDA to regulate cigarettes as a drug ever since 1988, when the Surgeon General confirmed that the nicotine contained in tobacco is an addictive drug, creating a dependence similar to those caused by heroin and cocaine. After considering the issue for years, the FDA finally responded late last month. In a letter to the Coalition on Smoking or Health, an alliance of groups that oppose smoking, FDA Commissioner David Kessler acknowledged that there was ample reason to apply drug laws to cigarettes. Wrote Kessler: "Although technology was developed years ago to remove nicotine from cigarettes and to control with precision the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, ((they)) are still marketed with levels of nicotine that are sufficient to produce and sustain addiction."

Shortly after the FDA letter became public, the ABC newsmagazine Day One ; broadcast an investigative report suggesting that the cigarette companies cynically manipulate nicotine levels to keep their customers hooked. For example, the report cited a 1972 internal memo by a Philip Morris scientist noting that "no one has ever become a cigarette smoker by smoking cigarettes without nicotine" and advising the company to "think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine." In their defense, cigarette makers say it is no secret that they control the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. "How do you think in the past 20 years tobacco companies have produced low-nicotine cigarettes?" asks Thomas Lauria of the Tobacco Institute. He insists that cigarettes never contain higher concentrations of nicotine than found in unprocessed tobacco.

A list of 700 ingredients in various brands of cigarettes, as reported to the U.S. government, is kept secret, but officials say it contains five substances classified as "hazardous," including some carcinogens. So if the FDA treats cigarettes as a drug, then the agency's duty under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act is clear. The fda must make sure that drugs are "safe" -- something certainly not true of cigarettes, which have been linked to everything from lung cancer to premature menopause. The FDA would have two choices: ignore the law or ban cigarettes.

To avoid that dilemma, the fda is asking that tobacco's fate be decided on Capitol Hill. "We recognize that the regulation of cigarettes raises societal issues of great complexity and magnitude," wrote Kessler in his letter. "It is vital in this context that Congress provide clear direction to this agency."

Representative Henry Waxman of California will be the first to heed the FDA's call for action, holding hearings before his Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Waxman believes that "people should be allowed to smoke but not endanger others by subjecting them to secondhand smoke." Besides restricting smoking in public places, he says, the government might regulate the levels of nicotine in cigarettes and require warnings that the chemical is addictive.

Antismoking forces hope that new restrictions can counter some disturbing trends. After falling for decades, the percentage of Americans who smoke has leveled off at 25%, and the proportion of young people who pick up the habit is starting to rise again. An estimated 3,000 U.S. children begin smoking each day. Says Northeastern University law professor Richard Daynard, who hopes Congress and the FDA will join forces to reduce tobacco use: "No one wants to make people hooked on cigarettes suffer. We just want to make sure they are not followed by future generations."

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source:Federal Trade Commission; TIME Graphic}]CAPTION: Nicotine Levels: Whatever the Customer Wants

With reporting by Lawrence Mondi/ New York, Jeff Hooten and Jay Peterzell/Washington