![[ASH Logo]](/images/ash3.gif) | ASH -
ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 2013 H Street, NW / Washington, DC 20006 / (202) 659-4310 |
The previously-secret plan to bail out the tobacco industry by granting them immunity for both FDA regulation and from law suits has drawn strong criticism from spokespersons from several different vantage points.
Here are just a few as reported by the news media by Tuesday morning:
"It's a little bit like the guy who demolishes your car and offers to buy you a new steering wheel," says ASH's executive director, John F. Banzhaf III. ". . . I think it's really just an opening offer. As laid out, it will be totally unacceptable."
He was careful, however, not to close the door to a higher offer.
"I would want to look very, very carefully at the offer and want to consult with some of my colleagues here," he said. "There is something wrong about compromising with someone who has done as very many bad things as they have done . . . but I suppose politics is the art of the practical."
A few months ago, he said, Philip Morris floated a trial balloon that would have given cigarette-makers permanent immunity from lawsuits in exchange for only token payments.
"In a very short time," he said, "they've come a long way, baby."
"I am very skeptical of any effort by the congressional majority to allow a group of businesses to secure special legal immunity from the laws all other businesses must obey, simply because that industry is politically powerful," said Hubert H. Humphrey III, attorney general of Minnesota.
"I think if there was any chance for a realistic and reasonable resolution, the [disclosure in the press] probably blew it," said Russ Hermann, a top New Orleans plaintiffs lawyer who represents Louisiana in its suit against the tobacco industry. "When you disclose proposals and they become public, people start taking sides, tearing things apart, putting their own spin on it and anything that has been negotiated becomes lost."
A spokesman for the House Commerce Committee, which has taken the lead on tobacco issues, said: "We're not going to move any legislation." The spokesman, who added that the proposal has "no chance" of passage by year end, also said that Chairman Thomas Bliley Jr. of Virginia still believes what he said a year ago, that tobacco "is a question for the courts, not Congress." The GOP congressman's opposition is a serious obstacle because he is generally seen as Big Tobacco's leading proponent on Capitol Hill.
The reported proposal shouldn't be given any more weight than other legislative plans that have gone nowhere in recent years, a House Commerce Committee staffer said. "This should be given about the same consideration as if June Cleaver came up with a plan," said the staffer, who added that committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr., Virginia Republican, has not endorsed the proposal.
Atty. Gen. Hubert H. Humphrey III, who has launched a suit against the industry, called the proposal a bailout. "Because we are talking about decades of illegal behavior, the numbers in this proposed settlement don't even begin to add up," Humphrey said.
An aide to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), a leading tobacco industry foe, said Waxman considers the proposal "a nonstarter because it would give an unprecedented degree of immunity to an industry that we just recently found out hid information for decades on the danger . . . and addictiveness of [its] product."
JOHN BANZHAF: (Executive Director, Action on Smoking and Health): Maybe something is possible. It will be incredibly difficult and the tobacco industry is going to have to come up with some real money, not a pittance.
| ASH -
ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 2013 H Street, NW / Washington, DC 20006 / (202) 659-4310 |