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Non-Tech : Philip Morris - A Stock For Wealth Or Poverty (MO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: md1derful who wrote (6184)	3/29/2001 8:08:55 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6439

Thompson Talks of Regulating Cigarettes HHS Chief Favors Giving FDA Authority Over Smoking as Toll on Women Is Reported Los Angeles Times Wednesday, March 28, 2001; Page A07 Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson, releasing a surgeon general's report describing the toll smoking has taken on women, said yesterday that he personally favors giving the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over cigarettes. The Bush administration has not taken a position on the issue and had chided Thompson recently for speaking out on it before the president does. But Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin, is accustomed -- like other former governors and chief executives in the new Cabinet -- to being his own boss. "Speaking for myself, I think tobacco should be regulated," he said during a news conference with Surgeon General David Satcher. The fodder for Thompson's remarks was the surgeon general's annual report on smoking -- this year devoted to women -- which found that since his office's last report on the subject in 1980, 3 million women have died from smoking-related diseases. "Lung cancer was once rare among women. Now it's far ahead of breast cancer in cancer deaths among women," Satcher said. Women now account for 39 percent of all smoking deaths, more than double the rate in 1965, when the first landmark smoking report was released, he said. While a smaller percentage of women smoke today than in 1965 -- 22 percent now, compared with 33.9 percent then -- the drop is minor compared with that which occurred among men during the same period -- from 51.9 percent to 26.4 percent. Also troubling, Satcher said, is that smoking increased among both boys and girls in the 1990s. In 2000, 29.7 percent of high school senior girls and 32.8 percent of high school senior boys reported having smoked within the past month. The lone exception: African American teenage girls, whose cigarette usage remains "significantly lower" than those of other teenage groups, Satcher said. "We wish we knew why," Satcher said, because then researchers could apply that knowledge to approaches aimed at keeping other teens from smoking. Thompson, who was criticized during his confirmation by anti-smoking groups for having financial ties to tobacco companies, has sold his tobacco stock since becoming secretary and has taken a hard line against cigarettes, frequently denouncing, in his words, "the evils of smoking." The controversy over the regulation of tobacco as a drug began during the Clinton administration, when FDA Commissioner David Kessler promulgated rules to control cigarettes. But the tobacco industry took the matter to court. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided on a 5 to 4 vote a year ago that the FDA overstepped its bounds and did not have the statutory authority to regulate tobacco or restrict tobacco advertising.