I noted in a previous post (The Altria Earnings Protection Act) that Philip Morris, the major player in the U.S. tobacco industry, was fully supportive of the upcoming Congressional bill that will give the FDA control over tobacco. At the time it seemed to make sense that "Altria," the newly sanitized name for the same company we used to call Philip Morris, would support the bill, since it gave them an economic advantage against their competitors, who oppose it.

The bill has now emerged from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). In the final rancorous days of disagreement among committee members, the ranking Republican Senator, Mike Enzi, revealed that Philip Morris was not only involved in negotiating the bill, but was actually a co-author. "We need to fight the war on tobacco head on, not sign a peace treaty with Philip Morris, one of the authors and strongest supporters of this bill." This was not a casual comment where the Senator might have been speaking figuratively. This was in an official post on the HELP Committee website (PDF).

Enzi proposed placing tobacco regulation under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where decisions would be made using "science, not politics." He believed the FDA, concerned with restoring health and keeping the nation's food supply safe, was not the appropriate organization. Said Enzi: "[The] FDA approves cures, not poisons."

As I mentioned a few posts back, Altria, the sanitized name for Philip Morris, is the major player in the U.S. tobacco industry. The company spent $12.9 million on lobbying in 2006. And yet they fully support the upcoming bill that gives the FDA control over tobacco, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. All the other big tobacco companies - Reynolds American, Lorillard -- oppose the legislation. Why is Altria so supportive?

According to Eoin Gleeson, writing in MoneyWeek:

[B]ecause the firm has read the small print. "This legislation might as well be dubbed the Altria Earnings Protection Act," says Fortune magazine. For starters, the bill prevents the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from ever banning cigarettes. But just as importantly, the wording makes it extremely unlikely that the FDA will ever approve a new cigarette product because the entrant would have to be deemed "appropriate for the protection of the public health". So the bill basically featherbeds the dominant tobacco groups' [Altria's] share of the market.

It's fairly common knowledge that the tobacco industry has engaged in nefarious practices, such as secretly verifying the addictive quality of nicotine and strategizing how best to get kids to smoke. If you take a moment to read some of the actual memos and reports that chronicle these goings on, I think you'll find it's much worse than you imagined.

The once-secret documents of the tobacco industry are available at Tobacco Documents Online.

As part of the Master Settlement Agreement between the States and the tobacco companies, the industry was required to make the documents used during the trials available. They posted the documents on their websites, but searching required going to several different sites, each with a different interface.

That same agreement required the industry to turn over a snapshot of their sites as of July, 1999. Tobacco Documents Online (TDO) spent over a year standardizing the document descriptions to allow uniform searching, and through the American Legacy Foundation, obtained tapes of the document images. TDO offers powerful searching across all the companies, access to high-quality images, OCR, and the ability to collect and annotate documents. The tools here have been built for document researchers, and are available to anyone with a web browser.

We've come a long way in the history of cigarette advertising. Here's a 1949 commercial for Camels.

The "More doctors smoke Camels" campaign was a response to concerns, starting in the 1940s, that smoking caused lung cancer and heart disease. There had been a series of articles on this in the widely read Reader's Digest. What better reassurance that smoking was not harmful than an endorsement from doctors?

Smoking causes lung cancer. We've known that for 60+ years. But the regulation of tobacco has happened in slow motion, thanks largely to political lobbying by the tobacco industry. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the FDA could not take it upon itself to regulate cigarettes. It would first need legislative approval from Congress.

With President Bush gone, Congress should finally be voting on FDA regulation of tobacco in 2009. The proposed bill, called the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, was introduced in February 2007 by that health and energy hero, Rep. Henry Waxman. The bill has been out of committee since April 2008. As I mentioned, these things happen slowly.

The proposed bill strengthens restrictions on advertising and youth marketing, and it requires new, stronger warning labels. The Canadians have graphic illustrations of smoking-related diseases directly on a pack of cigarettes. Here's a whole page of Canadian warning labels. The Canadian graphics are mild compared to the Brazilian warning poster that shows a gruesome case of smoking-related gangrene. The U.S. tobacco bill would presumably usher in Canadian-like labels. It also requires full disclosure of all ingredients in tobacco products and restricts harmful additives.

Roll Call, the daily paper aimed at Washington politicos, gets endorsements such as the following from members of Congress:

Former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.): "Roll Call is a critical and indispensable tool for deciphering the day-to-day maneuverings of Capitol Hill. Roll Call has its finger on the pulse of Congress."

Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.): "I get a lot of information from Roll Call that I can't find in other publications. I have to read it to keep my head above water in this town."

When you want to send a message to Congress, you can take out a full page ad in Roll Call.