Pubdate: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 Source: Newsday (NY) Copyright: 1999, Newsday Inc. Contact: (516)843-2986 Website: http://www.newsday.com/ Author: Marie Cocco CONGRESS BLOWS SMOKE AT DRUG KINGPIN The biggest drug kingpin has a big court date tomorrow. He will try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court not to lay a hand on him. He will argue that the justices can't touch him because that is the way his friends in Congress want it. The friends in Congress want Big Tobacco to get off. No time. No fine. No probation. No supervision. That is what these friends, bought with campaign contributions, decided in 1998 when Congress killed federal tobacco legislation that would have settled the big state lawsuits and let the FDA regulate the industry because cigarettes are a device for delivering the addictive and harmful drug nicotine. It decided then to ignore the decades of lies, the research that got deep-sixed, the evidence that the industry spiked cigarettes with additives and did other sneaky things to get people hooked and keep the customers coming. It ignored the industry documents that said things like this: "We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms" (Brown and Williamson memo, 1963). It ignored the evidence that Phillip Morris had done research on hyperactive grade-schoolers to determine "whether such children may not eventually become cigarette smokers in their teenage years as they discover the advantage of self-stimulation via nicotine." Congress is in so deep with this drug kingpin that it let him off the hook even though seven cartel leaders - that is, seven tobacco company executives - testified before Congress itself that they don't think cigarettes are addictive. Now the kingpin, his wares responsible for more than 400,000 deaths a year and his marketing reach extended to the youngest teens, is before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is even more significant than the now-famous state lawsuits that proved Big Tobacco's big lie and became part of the plot of a holiday-season movie, "The Insider." The movie makes you think the story of Big Tobacco is about corrupt corporate-tobacco skulduggery and corrupt corporate journalism and the lonely fight of one honest man, Jeffrey S. Wigand. He gave up his Big Tobacco salary and his big house and even his family to expose the industry malfeasance. The movie does a good job telling this part of the story. When it ends, what comes to mind is the part left out. That is how a corrupt Congress allows the biggest international drug kingpin to walk. Congress exempts tobacco from every consumer protection law-the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, you name it. It refuses to raise tobacco taxes, although a majority of its members can be heard arguing, regularly and heatedly, that the surest way to get people to do less of something is to tax it. It refused, a few weeks ago, to provide the Justice Department with the $20 million it says it needs to pursue its own lawsuit against Big Tobacco. Congress won't spend $20 million to recover more than 10 times that amount-that is, the $20 billion the government spends each year treating Big Tobacco's addicts under Medicare and other federal health programs. In 1996, the Clinton administration proposed that the federal Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco on the basis of incontrovertable evidence that nicotine is addictive and harmful. The tobacco industry sued, saying its friends in Congress did not intend for this to happen. This is the dispute the high court must resolve. It gets the case knowing full well Congress does not intend to regulate this industry. And it knows why. The case comes before the court as a regulatory skirmish. But what the justices must decide is whether to let this great national fraud to go on. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea