PHILIP MORRIS DEAL HASN'T MUCH SUPPORT

Philip Morris's proposed deal to avoid regulation of the cigarette industry by making a few carefully hedged concessions doesn't seem to have much support yet, but one should never underestimate the tobacco industry.

The following excerpts from the business-oriented WALL STREET JOURNAL suggest little support for the proposal from the FDA or in Congress. Indeed, even the industry's strongest supporter says he will not introduce legislation to put the plan into effect.

Nevertheless ASH suggests that you may wish to contact your Senators and Representative in Congress to tell them how you feel about the plan.

EXCERPTS FROM TWO WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLES:

Seeking to counter the Food and Drug Administration's sweeping proposal to regulate cigarettes, Philip Morris Cos. asked Congress to impose a more limited set of restrictions on cigarette sales and advertising aimed at curbing youth smoking.

But politicians in both parties voiced doubts that the Philip Morris proposal will fly, and smoking foes immediately pounced on a number of significant loopholes. The proposal also has a giant string attached: The FDA would be blocked from ever regulating tobacco products.

Philip Morris is acting amid the biggest legal and regulatory attack ever on the cigarette industry. It also faces a president who has seized on youth smoking as a popular campaign issue.

Before yesterday's announcement, Philip Morris and other cigarette makers had been talking to Congress about enacting a compromise tobacco law, so far without success. The strategy follows a long history in the tobacco industry of seeking compromise laws to avoid stiffer regulations.

In the mid-1960s, the cigarette makers forestalled Federal Trade Commission regulation of their ads by agreeing to put warning labels on their packs, and successfully weakened the FTC's proposed language. The labels became a powerful industry defense in liability lawsuits by smokers, letting cigarette lawyers argue that the risks of smoking were well publicized.

A few years later, the tobacco companies asked Congress to ban them from advertising on television. The ban reduced a wave of antismoking commercials that got on TV under equal-time regulations -- and cigarette consumption rose.

The tobacco industry "has always had this strategy of giving just what they had to give to head off something worse," says Michael Pertschuk, a former FTC commissioner and longtime tobacco opponent. "They need legislation to stop the FDA."

Some tobacco critics have also argued that Philip Morris, as the market leader, has particular reason to favor ad restrictions that would make it harder for rivals to challenge its position.

The FDA, whose final tobacco-rule proposal is expected to be issued this summer, said the Philip Morris plan "falls short" of being a viable alternative. "The president made it clear last summer that he welcomed a legislative solution,"said Mitch Zeller, the FDA's deputy associate commissioner for policy, "as long as it was as comprehensive and effective as the FDA proposal."

Indeed, the FDA last year made a landmark declaration that cigarettes are a drug-delivery device and the agency should regulate them.

The industry's attempt to steer regulatory authority away from the FDA is the most likely deal-breaker. Although the Philip Morris plan would allow the FDA's parent agency, the Health and Human Services department, to oversee the industry in conjunction with the FTC and the Justice Department, an administration official said the tobacco giant's plan didn't appear to give these agencies much authority. New cigarette products "would go straight to market" without prior government approval, he said.

Philip Morris's proposal was seen by some as a signal that it's willing to haggle with the White House and Congress to make significant concessions.

But even Rep. Thomas Bliley (R., Va.), big tobacco's most influential ally in Congress -- his Richmond district includes many Philip Morris employees -- indicated yesterday that he wouldn't press legislation on the Philip Morris plan. Because it has "little chance of passage, especially in the Senate," he said, "it would be pointless" to push it through the House.

EXCERPT FROM SECOND ARTICLE:

"Cigarettes are a delivery system for the drug nicotine. They ought to be regulated by the FDA," said Mr. Waxman, adding that the agency should "have the power to adjust" antismoking regulations, "or to adopt new ones as they may be needed in the future."

Despite White House insistence that this issue will be decided on substance, not politics, the presidential campaign will nevertheless enter the equation. Surprisingly, Mr. Clinton has made fighting the tobacco companies a political plus, not a minus. At the outset, even his own aides thought the stance might be unpopular. But the president now enjoys a 14-percentage-point lead, in some polls, over Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole in Kentucky, a tobacco state. The problem for the White House is: What happens if Mr. Clinton switches gears and negotiates a deal? Will he look like a waffler?

The antismoking community believes strongly that the president has more to lose than gain. It argues that voters upset with the president over his tough stance on smoking won't be at all appeased if a legislative agreement is struck, while those who see his antismoking crusade as courageous might see him as buckling.

Lobbyists for Philip Morris were meeting with members of Congress yesterday to try to sell them on their bill. Rep. Thomas Bliley (R., Va.), who was briefed on the Philip Morris plan before it was unveiled Wednesday, has indicated he won't push the bill in the House "unless and until" the Senate passes it.

That approach, however, poses problems. Seven Democratic senators, including Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Paul Simon of Illinois and Barbara Boxer of California, pledged in a letter to Mr. Daschle in March that they would filibuster any bill "to overturn any element of the president's proposal." Sen. Lautenberg renewed that threat yesterday, citing as a deal-breaker Philip Morris's rejection of the FDA as a tobacco regulator.

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