Wednesday, 22 March 2000
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/LA0795.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The government lacks authority to regulate tobacco
as an addictive drug even though tobacco use may be ``the single
most significant threat to public health,'' the Supreme Court
said yesterday, throwing out the Clinton administration's main
anti-smoking initiative.
The 5-4 ruling, a victory for an industry under pressure from
numerous lawsuits, said Congress did not authorize the Food and
Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. President Clinton and
others immediately said Congress should pass a law letting the
FDA reinstate its rules cracking down on cigarette sales to minors.
``If we are to protect our children from the harms of tobacco,
Congress must now enact the provisions of the FDA rule,'' Clinton
said in a statement issued while he was traveling in India.
But Mark Smith, spokesman for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.,
welcomed the ruling. ``Business and industry throughout the nation
ought to breathe a sigh of relief. The highest court in the land
has confirmed that a federal agency cannot on its own go beyond
its limits of authority set by Congress,'' he said.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court, said, ``By
no means do we question the seriousness of the problem that the
FDA has sought to address.'' She said, ``The agency has amply
demonstrated that tobacco use, particularly among children and
adolescents, poses perhaps the single most significant threat
to public health in the United States.''
However, she said, ``We believe that Congress has clearly precluded
the FDA from asserting jurisdiction to regulate tobacco products.''
The tobacco industry has been under increasing pressure for selling
a product the American Cancer Society calls the leading cause
of cancer. Cancer Society head John R. Seffrin said he was disappointed
by the ruling.
The Justice Department also has a lawsuit pending against the
industry, which has agreed to pay the states $246 billion for
the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses. Cigarette billboards
around the country were taken down last year as part of that agreement.
O'Connor's opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
Dissenting were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, John Paul Stevens,
David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Writing for the four,
Breyer said the 1938 federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act's ``basic
purpose - the protection of public health - supports the inclusion
of cigarettes within its scope.''
The ruling throws out the FDA's rule requiring convenience stores
and other places that sell cigarettes to require identification
from anyone under age 27 seeking to buy tobacco products.
Other FDA rules put on hold earlier would have limited vending-machine
cigarette sales to adults-only locations, such as bars, and would
have limited cigarette advertising. All 50 states already ban
tobacco sales to anyone under 18, and the FDA adopted that rule
nationwide.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said: ``I ask the convenience stores,
I ask our drugstores, I ask our gas stations, other places where
kids can buy cigarettes to not pull back. . . . I urge this community
to keep the cigarettes behind the counter, to keep that ID check
sign up'' while lawmakers push for federal legislation allowing
FDA regulation of tobacco.
Vice President Al Gore and several Democratic members of Congress
also called for such legislation. Attorney General Janet Reno
said, ``Nobody can reasonably question the fact that tobacco is
harmful to children, and nobody should reasonably question these
protections.''
------------------------------------------------------------------------