Essay 1079

From The Chicago Tribune…

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... and a verdict on tobacco

Speaking of killing yourself ...

There once was a time when cigarettes were advertised as good for your health. “Not a cough in a carload,” Chesterfield promised. “Not a single case of throat irritation,” boasted Camels. “Why risk sore throats?” asked Old Gold.

That was a half century ago. It seems the tobacco companies have become more sophisticated, and more misleading, in their sales pitches. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler of Washington, D.C., ruled recently that tobacco companies have systematically lied to the public with their use of such healthy-sounding labels as “light,” “ultra-light,” “mild” and “low-tar.”

Tobacco companies argue innocently that such labeling refers only to flavor and lack of harshness. But with words like “light” or “lite” branded on almost everything from beer to butter, most consumers think “light” cigarettes are somehow better for you.

“Light” or not, they’re just as addictive, Kessler wrote in her 1,653-page opinion. Most damning: The major tobacco companies, she wrote, deliberately adjusted nicotine levels to encourage addiction even after the federal government and some anti-smoking organizations filed the federal suit in 1999. All “defendants continue to market ‘low-tar’ cigarettes to consumers seeking to reduce their health risks or quit,” she wrote. “All defendants continue to fraudulently deny that they manipulate the nicotine delivery of their cigarettes in order to create and sustain addiction.”

A six-year study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health agrees with her verdict. It found the average amount of nicotine inhaled by smokers increased by 10 percent between 1998 and 2004. Some brands boosted their nicotine output by more than 20 percent.

But Big Tobacco sounds anything but contrite. Tobacco lawyers are appealing Kessler’s ruling. They’ve asked her for a legal clarification so they can, in effect, have her permission to continue to advertise “light” cigarettes overseas.

Congress needs to bring nicotine under the oversight of the Food and Drug Administration. The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that Congress had not given the FDA a mandate to regulate tobacco as a drug. Since that ruling, Congress has avoided the obvious: nicotine is a drug--a deadly drug--and should be treated as such.

“Why risk death?” You’re not likely to see that on a cigarette ad in this country. But it’s the real calculation smokers have to make.