A lot of strange people are hopping into bed together with the recent passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of a bill to let the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration regulate tobacco.
Richmond-based firms Philip Morris USA and parent Altria favor FDA oversight while tobacco competitors Lorillard and R.J. Reynolds do not. Ultraconservative Congressman Eric Cantor, a big-time magnet for tobacco campaign funding, favors FDA regulation while even more conservative Congressman Randy Forbes does not. Stacking weird upon weird, both The New York Times and the retrograde Richmond Times-Dispatch favor FDA regulation on their editorial pages.
Are you having trouble figuring this all out? I am.
From what I can make of this, the bill would not allow the FDA to ban tobacco products but would have authority over the manufacturing, marketing and sale of them. It could, for instance, ban the sale of such oddities as candy-flavored cigarettes. Big Whoop.
The real point, however, is that Big Tobacco is once again dodging the Big Issue. Deadly, cancer-causing cigarettes, which killed something like 100 million people in the 20th Century according to The Washington Post, will emerge largely unscathed. One result of FDA regulation is that it lets Philip Morris USA maintain its No. 1 brand, Marlboro, in the U.S. while, somehow disingenuously, urging you not to buy Marlboros. Meanwhile, FDA regs will do nothing to stop its sister firm, Philip Morris International, from spreading its death sticks around the world with a growth rate of 18 percent a year.
And as present and former members of the Altria tribe do their thing, nice boy politicians like Eric Cantor, now under consideration as John McCain’s running mate, continue to rake in scores of thousands of dollars in campaign contribution from Altria and PM USA. But that’s just fine and dandy with the Richmond establishment, including the Times-Dispatch. Cantor’s wife is on the board of the parent firm, but, hey, that’s OK, they always mention that when they run another glowing story about the brilliant Cantor.
But does Cantor realize he could be partly responsible for one billion dead worldwide in the 21st century? That’s the death toll predicted by the Post if global tobacco sales continue to go on unchecked.
–Peter Galuszka