The measures, which even tobacco executives acknowledge as nearly inevitable, are ones that the Bush administration opposed, vetoed or declined to act upon but that President-elect [image-nocss] Barack Obama, himself an intermittent smoker, supported as a senator, the report said.
The steps include legislation giving the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) broad authority over cigarettes for the first time. "We hope for early action on the bill in the new Congress," Melissa Wagoner, a spokesperson for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), said of the landmark legislation, which Kennedy has promoted for years.
Robert Gibbs, Obama's incoming press secretary, said Obama supported the measures when he was in Congress, but had not made any decisions yet about actions on them in the White House.
Matthew L. Myers, the head of a nonprofit antismoking group, told the newspaper, "The election of Barack Obama changes everything."
Myers, who is president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington group that has taken a lead in promoting the legislation, added, "I think that 2009 has the potential to be the most historic year in making progress on tobacco at the federal level since the first surgeon general's report in 1964."
In the House, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee, plans to move quickly with the FDA legislation, spokesperson Karen Lightfoot told the paper. A majority of House and Senate members are co-sponsors, and Waxman's former chief of staff, Philip M. Schiliro, has been named Obama's White House liaison to Congress.
Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress have also said they hope to pass legislation to raise federal cigarette taxes by 61 cents, to $1 a pack. That may even be among the economic measures awaiting Obama's signature as soon as he takes office January 20, according to Congressional aides and antismoking lobbyists cited by the Times.
President Bush vetoed the cigarette tax increase in 2007. The projected $35 billion in new tax revenue over five years would help finance the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). As a senator, Obama co-sponsored the measure, and his campaign lists it among planned actions for revamping health care.
"That should go quickly," Edward L. Sweda, senior lawyer with the Tobacco Products Liability Project at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, told the paper.
The legislation empowering the FDA to regulate tobacco had passed by wide measures in the Senate in 2004 and in the House last July, but faced opposition from the Bush administration. The proposal's broad range of supporters includes the industry sales leader, Philip Morris, although other cigarette makers oppose it. "They're anticipating it going through reasonably soon, after many years of battle," Clifford E. Douglas, executive director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, which opposes smoking, told the paper.
As a third step against smoking, Congressional aides and lobbyists on both sides expect the new president to submit an international tobacco control treaty to the Senate for ratification. Although the Bush administration signed the treaty in 2004, it opposed some of the limits on marketing and did not send it to the Senate. The United States is one of only two populous countries-the other is Indonesia, another major tobacco producer and consumer-that have not yet ratified the treaty, known as the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The pact's main provisions-advertising restrictions, health warnings, tobacco taxes-are already in place in the United States. But the tobacco pact, which is the world's first public health treaty, would go further to exclude industry executives from policy making.
The treaty would have much less impact on Altria than the FDA legislation would, David M. Sylvia, an Altria spokesperson, told the paper. But Altria objects to the treaty's calls for higher taxes and less participation by the industry in regulatory discussions. Altria also opposes the cigarette tax increase as an unfair and inefficient way to finance children's health, he said.
The Democrats who are expected to help reinforce the efforts against tobacco include Tom Daschle, the president-elect's choice for health and human services secretary, who has been an ardent opponent of the cigarette industry.
And among those whose names are being circulated as candidates to head the FDA is Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the antismoking health commissioner for Baltimore and a former investigator for Waxman. It was Waxman who convened the memorable 1994 hearing where seven tobacco executives swore under oath that nicotine was not addictive, the report said.
The FDA legislation would set up a new office to deal especially with tobacco, financed entirely by new industry fees. A director would have to be named, a staff hired, procedures written. The legislation allows further restraints on sales and marketing to young people and provides for stronger warning labels, similar to ones in Canada with graphic depictions of smoking-related illnesses. But the legislation does not ban cigarettes entirely, which is widely viewed as a Prohibition-style impossibility. Nor, despite outlawing various cigarette flavorings, would it ban menthol. A legislative compromise reached last year would leave it up to the FDA to decide whether menthol should be restricted.
Altria supports the FDA regulation because "from a pure business standpoint, it will bring predictability to regulation over the tobacco industry," Sylvia told the paper.
But all the other major cigarette makers oppose the legislation, saying the marketing restrictions would help Philip Morris lock in its 50% share of the domestic market. The law would not allow the introduction of any new tobacco products unless they were ruled "appropriate for the protection of public health."
Industry executives also say they object to the cost of regulating tobacco. "The FDA office would cost $6 billion over 10 years in hopes of reducing smoking by 2%, a use of government resources that some might see as inefficient," Michael W. Robinson, a spokesperson for Lorillard, the nation's third-largest tobacco company, told the Times.
More generally, the industry is hoping the Obama administration adopts a "harm reduction" strategy toward cigarettes, rather than a policy of strict cessation. Such an approach would be in contrast to earlier strategies like the smoking-cessation goal set forth in 1984 by Dr. C. Everett Koop, then the surgeon general, which envisioned a tobacco-free society by the year 2000.
Harm reduction, a phrase promoted by tobacco companies, would allow the government or industry to promote some products as safer than others. "We think we should work with the FDA on that," Sylvia said.
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