Andy Rooney on the AG deal

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

OPINION: ANDY ROONEY: The tobacco deal

Nando News Network
Date:11/27/98

Copyright  1998 Nando Media Copyright  1998 Tribune Media Services Inc.

(November 27, 1998 10:04 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) 
-- Forty-six of our United States have just accepted a $206 billion 
deal from the tobacco industry in exchange for the states' promise 
to knock off suing the cigarette makers to get back money they've 
spent treating patients with lung cancer and other smoking-related 
ailments. Four other states have already settled with the tobacco 
companies for $40 billion.

For the states to be getting a grand total of $246 billion free and 
clear may sound like a great idea but it's a disgrace. Government 
agencies ought to be trying to eliminate the cigarette menace any 
way they can. But with all that easy money coming into their coffers 
you can't expect that state governments will want to discourage 
cigarette sales or be enthusiastic about putting the tobacco 
companies out of business. If they did, they wouldn't get all that 
money. They'd be killing the goose laying those golden billions.

While I have no idea how much $246 billion is, or why they decided 
on that figure instead of $264 billion or $426 billion, I think the 
payment is outrageous. Where do the states think the cigarette 
industry is going to get the money to pay them? They're raising 
the price of a pack by 45 cents but that isn't where they'll get most 
of it. They're going to get it by selling more cigarettes that could kill 
more people and mostly in countries other than the United States. 
They couldn't set out to kill as many people if they started dropping 
nuclear bombs at random on cities in foreign countries.

We're all proud of being Americans, but R.J. Reynolds and Philip 
Morris sell two thirds of their cigarettes in other countries. In the 
past 10 years, sales abroad have increased 250 percent. Our 
cigarette companies advertise extensively in almost every foreign 
country and it's paying off. In Russia, the percentage of male 
smokers has increased from 50 percent to 65 percent in 10 years. 
The percentage of Russian women who smoke now, compared to 
the number who used to, has tripled in 10 years. Some liberation.

Tobacco companies are promising not to use advertising in the 
United States that will appeal to children but you know they're 
going to get that $246 billion and a lot more for themselves, 
somewhere. If they can't advertise here, they'll advertise and 
attract children in China and in Russia and in Africa, enticing 
them to smoke cigarettes. Instead of killing Americans, they'll 
kill Chinese, Russians and Africans by hooking them on tobacco 
when they're young. This is the states' idea of a good thing to do?

You can bet that, as the death rate from cigarette smoking rises 
abroad, as it certainly will, the natives are going to start pointing 
an accusing finger at the source of those illnesses and that will 
be the United States. We will have given them one more reason 
to hate us. Sooner or later, those foreign countries will be suing 
the tobacco companies themselves, looking for a piece of the 
same pie the states are devouring.

The buyout was widely accepted as a victory for the anti-cigarette 
people. But if this huge payment the tobacco industry has agreed 
to is such a victory for nonsmokers and states, how come the 
tobacco people are so pleased with it? The day the deal was 
announced, Philip Morris stock went up. Someone in the 
cigarette business must have thought it was good news for them. 
And you can depend on this: if it's good news for them, it's bad
news for us and the rest of the world.

The states should be united on something other than accepting a
multi-billion dollar handout from the tobacco companies. Their total 
effort should be in working to eliminate cigarettes from our lives by 
halting their manufacture.