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

To: don kramer who wrote (1885)	6/25/1998 5:56:00 PM
From: AgAuUSA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6439

House Republicans offer "goals" for teen smoking 06/25 15:30 RJR CEO says activists helped kill tobacco bill By Greg Frost SAN FRANCISCO, June 25 (Reuters) - Anti-tobacco activists' stubborness and a lack of leadership by politicians helped kill the landmark anti-smoking legislation last week, Steven Goldstone, chairman of RJR Nabisco, said on Thursday. "The self-appointed leaders of our public health community, to whom politicians ceded their responsibility of office, turn out to have an agenda which excludes mutual resolution, at any cost, whatever the public health consequences," Goldstone said in a speech prepared for delivery to the Commonwealth Club of California. The Senate last week jettisoned legislation intended to curb teenage smoking. The bill, whose chief sponsor was Republican Sen. John McCain, would have raised the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack. Goldstone said former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop along with other foes of tobacco refused to compromise on their demands, thereby scuttling the settlement that the tobacco industry reached last June with 40 state attorneys general. Goldstone said the activists managed to convince lawmakers in Washington that the only way to stop kids from smoking was to "raise prices through the roof" for adult consumers. "We witnessed a sorry spectacle of politicians trying to tax a legal industry and 47 million American smokers into oblivion, all under the guise of protecting the nation's youth," Goldstone said. The RJR Nabisco chief said that with the legislation now dead, the only way to move forward was to go back to square one and work out an agreement similar to the one the industry reached with the attorneys general last year. "I continue to think that a balanced, comprehensive approach, along the lines of the June 20th agreement, would do the most to resolve the controversies and move the country forward to a new era of responsible tobacco legislation," Goldstone said. Goldstone said that in the meantime, his duty to RJR Nabisco shareholders is to engage in a public policy discussion until Washington "gets real" on tobacco. Despite the bill's demise, the tobacco industry still faces lawsuits filed by 36 states and Puerto Rico, which are seeking to recover costs related to treating smoking-related diseases. It also faces other lawsuits stemming from internal documents that are said to support allegations that tobacco companies hid the dangers of smoking from the public.