THE WAR ON TOBACCO.

• Author: PRICE, SEAN
• Position: Brief Article

CIGARETTE MAKERS ARE NOW UNDER ATTACK ON SEVERAL FRONTS

When Florida officials needed ideas for an antismoking campaign aimed at teenagers, they sought ideas from an unusual source: teenagers themselves.

They asked teens to create antismoking ads as effective as the enticing cigarette ads on billboards and in glossy magazines. The kids met the challenge with a series of in-your-face TV commercials. In one hard-hitting spot, two teens drive up to a Philip Morris cigarette plant in search of the Marlboro Man. "He passed away some time ago," the guard tells them.

The ad campaign, now on the air in Florida, represents one front of what has become a many-sided war against cigarette companies. Today, the tobacco industry is under attack not just on the tube, but in state legislatures and in the courts--including the Supreme Court. The Court will decide whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be allowed to regulate tobacco like a drug. If the Court rules in favor of the FDA, it would give a government agency power--for the first time--over the tobacco industry.

The FDA wants the authority to set rules for how tobacco is advertised and sold, especially to young people. To make them less attractive to kids, the agency wants to strip the color from cigarette ads on billboards and in youth-oriented magazines, making the ads black and white. The FDA also proposes rules that would ban cigarette vending machines and outdoor advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.

Antismoking activists contend that the case is critical because young people are especially susceptible to advertising. Studies show that teens are more likely than adults to buy the most advertised brands. Also, kids who own tobacco-company promotional items, such as hats or T-shirts, are four times more likely than other kids to smoke.

Until the FDA acted, says Matthew Myers, executive vice president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "tobacco was both this nation's most dangerous product and its least-regulated product." If the Supreme Court upholds the FDA regulations, he says, "the tobacco industry will be required to play by the same rules and standards as all other manufacturers."

TOBACCO RESPONDS

Tobacco companies argue that the FDA has no authority over cigarettes. As long as they are sold without medical claims, the industry says, they are not legally a drug. The proposed restrictions on advertising, the companies contend, violate their First...