Tobacco With Federal Drug Administration's Blessings

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act just passed by Congress is deeply troubling for several reasons. Secret negotiations were conducted between Philip Morris (Altria Group) and members of Congress. Altria supports the bill--well should we be surprised? Apparently the Altria Group will maintain its monopoly position with established products because the legislation precludes certain kinds of competition and new products. The only change of any notice is the requirement to print health warnings with a larger typeface. The important fact to keep in mind is the roll the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) will be playing!

For the first time in its existence, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) will oversee the manufacture of and provide its stamp of approval upon a product that annually kills 400,000 people in the United States and millions around the world. George Orwell's 1984 (1949), is upon us in yet another alarming and dismaying manifestation!

The secret negotiations between Philip Morris (renamed now as the Altria Group, for similar reasons perhaps that Blackwater International now calls itself Xe, and why the military coup dictatorship changed Burma to Myanmar) and Congress lead, not surprisingly, Philip Morris to become the only tobacco industry corporation that supported the legislation. Interestingly, the bill will maintain monopoly status for Philip Morris by precluding competition against its established and even new products.

The only change of any positive substance, as limited a health factor as it might be, is the requirement to print package warning notices with a larger typeface. And we know how the industry fought and largely won the debate over warning labels many years ago. It took years and ugly compromises now for what should have been required long ago!

To have the FDA essentially issuing what is a stamp of approval on all tobacco products is Kafkaesque and Orwellian! The Act is a reminder that the tobacco industry, as a major champagne contributor to members of Congress, has the right to slowly and painfully kill vast numbers of people around the world as well as in the United States--with FDA compliance and cooperation.

I had hoped that nicotine would be classified as a Grade One narcotic, as is Cannabis and Coca. Coca leaves are a traditional stimulant for Andean peoples (chewing and retaining the masticated leaves in the cheeks of the mouth). In the U.S. both are strictly outlawed with severe punishments for even recreational use and possession. Neither marijuana nor cocaine are innately deadly and do not represent health risks.

If the war on drugs was a genuine conflict and not a lifestyle attack or governance by crime (Jonathan Simon), nicotine (tobacco products) would be Public Enemy Number One! If medical marijuna requires a doctor's prescription, the same should hold true for tobacco use. In reality, only tobacco requires one.

In 1964, I applauded the Surgeon General for his report on the health risks of tobacco use, principally cigarette smoking. Even by the 1960s many celebrity Americans had already perished from lung cancer as brought on by smoking cigarettes: Edward R. Murrow at age 57 and Humphrey Bogart at age 58 had died in the 1950s. Countless ordinary people have succumbed from the consequences of their tobacco habits since the 1964 Report. But today, we have the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act! The legislation is by intention a perpetuation of a macabre serialization of mass murder.

The consequences of tobacco use are insidious and when finally realized are usually terminal illnesses. If quantified, tobacco-related illness and death qualified even in 1964 as a pandemic! But, the charade continues.

The Act intends, supposedly, to protect children from acquiring a cigarette habit, which would be honorable if true; nonetheless, it is silent on the fate of adults. What happens to children when they become adults? Are we content in sacrificing the older generation with nicotine addiction?

The bill was negotiated between Tobacco-Free Kids and a well-prepared, agenda-driven, highly-paid Philip Morris team. Negotiators from Tobacco-Free Kids were ill-prepared do-gooders and amateur debaters with the best intentions, but no match for industry heavy-weights seeking a knockout. And the Altria Group got it in the first round, I am sure.

On Democracy Now, 2 July 2009, broadcast, Dr. Joel Nitzkin, Chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, states up-front that the Act was written by Philip Morris and provides "the appearance of effective regulation, but not the substance." To back this up, Dr. Nitzkin claims that the Act's restrictions of marketing tobacco products are already governed by the master settlement agreement or already covered by U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The tobacco and health care legislation reveal, if anyone still has doubts, who Congress actually represents! If Philip Morris and the health care lobbyists are enlisted to write legislation that will enhance profits and safeguard their very strange existence, then corporations rule America, and Clause 3 in Article I, Section 8 (the Commerce Clause) of the Constitution might as well be abolished. (The clause helps to balance state and national power spheres over commerce.)

When President Obama signed the Tobacco Control Act, he stated that the legislation would limit the power of tobacco lobbyists on Capitol Hill and curb the ability of tobacco corporations to market nicotine-containing products to juveniles. He said that the Act would "protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit that so many of our generation have lived with." (Sadly, he did not have the courage to add the phrase, ...and died by....) Obama thereby alludes to his own cigarette smoking habit which suggests, given his previously stated difficulties in stopping, he is himself addicted. He referred to his teenage use, but is not straightforward about his current situation.

If the President is a nicotine addict, he should come clean with the American people; and there was no better time to do this than at the signing. In detailing his efforts, he could help many people in shaking their addictions. Obama's thinness, skin texture with a particular yellow tinge seem not unlike those of other cigarette users. I am not quite certain about his underlying vocal roughness. You can often deduce tobacco use by voice texture. The detection is difficult to discern because Obama's speaking style is so heavily affected (and reminiscent of charades). However, it seems that the President will do nothing to upset Philip Morris, Lorillard and RPJ; to ensure that never happens, he hypes the legislation.

Philip Morris demanded that menthol not (italics are appropriately added) be eliminated, a banned additive. Menthol-containing cigarettes constitutes 28% of Philip Morris total sales. Dr. Nitzkin states that menthol is both a flavoring and a local anesthetic. Its inclusion makes cigarette smoking more comfortable; it reduces the "harsh feel and taste of the smoke." Without its addition many people would not be able to tolerate the discomfort, the pain, caused by high smoke temperatures and other irritants. (I am reminded of preparation drugs used to condition the condemned for lethal injection executions. In effect, cigarette manufacturers use a sedative drug to bring addiction to another drug that will most likely kill its users!) Philip
Morris has a new version of Marlboro soon to be released. The new formulation has a stronger tobacco taste and more menthol. The Philip Morris objection takes on meaning.

A race issue is involved with menthol as an additive to cigarettes. About 80% of African-American smokers use menthol cigarettes; and they are popular among other smokers as well. There is the appearance that the menthol exception targets the African-American population.

The sorted business of tobacco merchandising will get uglier with FDA cover. Allowing menthol exclusion from regulation would lead to countless addictions among young people. Fortunately, the exclusion is not yet settled law. Under strong objections from the African-American community, Congressman Waxman (D-Calif.) has included a requirement that the FDA's science advisory committee rules on menthol. But, according to Dr. Nitzin, the committee is mandated by the Tobacco Control Act to ban only substances which increase the risk of cancer, other serious disease or increase the addictiveness of the tobacco product. In other words, in a strict interpretation, the law does not allow the science advisory committee to ban ingredients that encourage cigarette smoking. This is an engineered Catch 22 in which Waxman protected tobacco industry profits. The Congressman, once somewhat reliable as former chair of the House Oversight Committee, has lost any regulatory zeal he may have had in his new chairmanship of the powerful House Finance Committee. Waxman has dropped the ball on tobacco regulation for whatever reasons. In the proposed menthol waiver, we feel the invisible hand of Philip Morris.

The segment on Democracy Now is titled, Up in Smoke: How the Tobacco Industry Shaped the new Smoking Bill. Dr. Joel Nitzkin states unequivocally that the bill only "provides the appearance of federal regulation of tobacco products while assuring the Philip Morris corporation the ability to continue to market their current and currently proposed cigarette products with little interference from federal authorities, protection against future liability and protection from competition from other tobacco companies and from smokeless tobacco products." With all this, there is no confusion as to who wins.

With the alleged tobacco control legislation and the battle over health care form, corporate rule is absolute, and its war room is located on Capital Hill. That corporations are "persons" within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, has to be revisited. Equally important, Congressional election campaigns must be financed solely by a public program.

Supreme Court decisions need to be reversed, among them are Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), and First National Bank v. Bellotti (1978). The former lead to the "persons" stipulation, and the latter, extended First Amendment protection to corporate political speech. These rulings ignore the fact that corporations exist only on paper and by State charters.
What we need is a "three-strikes" penalty for rogue corporations. National product boycotts should become routine acts of disobedience. With nicotine addiction, product boycotts are unlikely by those held captive. And the tobacco industry under FDA auspices will merchandise very deadly products, largely unregulated for another generation or more!