Raleigh News and Observer

September 23 2004
Mark H. Creech

RALEIGH — There’s an old Indian myth that says in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco.

In the early 17th century, England’s King James I had a different take on tobacco use. “Smoking,” said the king, “is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembles the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”

Objective consideration of today’s health statistics would incline one to believe tobacco use is more hell spawn than a gift from heaven. With more than 400,000 tobacco-related deaths every year in this country, no habit has had a greater impact on our health. The list of disorders induced or worsened by tobacco products seems almost endless: cancers of the lungs, mouth, vocal cords and other organs; chronic lung disease; asthma; ulcers; clogging of the arteries, heart attacks, strokes, amputations, etc.

Last July, the U.S. Senate voted 78-15 to approve legislation that would include Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco products. The legislation, which was approved as an amendment to a tax bill known as the Foreign Sales Corporation, or FSC, bill, also includes a tobacco grower buyout that would be paid for by the tobacco companies.

In contrast, the House of Representatives approved a version of the bill that rejects FDA authority over tobacco products and provides for a tobacco grower buyout paid for by taxpayers. The legislation is currently in a conference committee for negotiation on a final bill.

FDA oversight of the tobacco companies is essential to reducing the toll of tobacco. The companies like to portray themselves as any other American business, but evidence uncovered in the tobacco litigation of the 1990s clearly demonstrates that they have deliberately deceived the public into believing their products were safe and non-addictive. They manipulated the nicotine content of their products to better addict consumers, and targeted children with their advertising.

What is more, since the 1998 state tobacco settlement, they haven’t stopped their shenanigans. They’ve introduced tobacco products with bogus claims of “reduced risk,” and continued aggressive marketing at reaching kids in the magazines they read and at the convenience stores where they hang out. They’ve even introduced cigarettes that have candy and fruit flavors, with packaging that blatantly appeals to kids. This is immoral and needs to stop.

Granting the FDA effective, meaningful authority over the tobacco companies would prevent marketing to children and subject tobacco products to the same consumer protections applied to other goods. (It’s ironic that the FDA is required to ensure the safety of foodstuffs as seemingly benign as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but cigarettes, which contain ammonia, formaldehyde and arsenic, remain unregulated.)

It should also be noted the Senate version of the FSC bill is a compassionate response to tobacco farmers, their families and communities. It would eliminate the current tobacco program and all government price supports, but it would also limit where tobacco can be grown to traditional tobacco-growing areas, place some constraints on the total amount of tobacco farmed in the United States and provide for tobacco to be grown in new locations only when currently active tobacco farmers are unwilling or unable to supply existing demand.

Most important, the Senate bill would provide economic development assistance to certain impacted tobacco-growing areas and help growers diversify to other crops or otherwise reduce their reliance on tobacco farming.

None of these provisions that aid tobacco farmers are in the House version of the FSC bill. The Senate version would effectively protect and provide for the interest of tobacco growers while keeping the FDA off the family farm.

Tobacco products are not ever likely to be banned, but Christians everywhere still ought to support and encourage efforts that diminish the scope of tobacco’s harmful effects. Getting in behind the Senate’s version of the FSC bill is certainly one important way to protect the public from that “stinking fume,” which indeed is most like “the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”

(The Rev. Mark H. Creech is executive director of the Christian Action League of N.C., Inc.)