Tobacco Companies

THE PHILIP MORRIS tobacco company has just made America an offer it cannot refuse. In exchange for controlling advertising to teenagers, the company wants the Food and Drug hTC Agency to stop regulating cigarettes.Philip Morris is not the only one anxious to make a deal with the government. The Charlie Choke Cigarette Company also has offered to get in the picture.Charlie Choke's spokesperson, Rufus Dare, has just announced that the Choke Company is willing to cut down on children breathing "secondary smoke."

IS BIG TOBACCO this sneaky? Could a tobacco company move into the hearts, pocketbooks and lungs of potential consumers in such subliminal fashion that you don't even see its name? Like a Muhammad Ali right that many an opponent never saw coming? Like smoke, if not mirrors? Absolutely. Although foreign sales of tobacco products are growing, manufacturers have hardly given up on U.S. consumers, in spite of the multibillion-dollar legal settlement with states. So tobacco companies have a financial incentive to craft a positive image.

John Pershing Woods, a retired tobacco company foreman, died of complications from a stroke Oct. 15 at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 83. Mr. Woods, a Cockeysville resident since 1980, was born and raised in Durham, N.C. After graduating from high school in 1937, he began working for American Tobacco Co. in Durham. During World War II, he served in Europe as an infantryman in Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army. He was discharged with the rank of private in 1945 after he was severely wounded in combat.

While Maryland and Baltimore have been battling smoking -- with measures ranging from a state ban on smoking in workplaces to a city restriction on billboard ads -- their employee pension funds have been holding tens of millions of dollars in tobacco company investments.The state fund has $112 million in stocks and bonds in tobacco companies such as Philip Morris Cos., the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., which produces Camels. Baltimore's pension fund holds more than $23 million in similar investments.

Thirteen chiefs and commissioners of fire departments around the country, most representing major cities, have called on the tobacco industry to manufacture fire-safe cigarettes, making use a simple technology that, they say, could save hundreds of lives each year.The coalition, forged by New York's City Fire Commissioner Howard Safir, includes the chiefs of the Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston and Miami departments. Also joining the call is the International Association of Fire Chiefs, representing 32,000 departments.

Tobacco companies and their allies have contributed $443,325 to candidates for elected office in Maryland since 1995, and those donations have generated favorable votes for the industry, according to a study released yesterday by the Common Cause Education Fund. The study found that six large tobacco companies -- including Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and Brown & Williamson -- have spent an additional $1.7 million on lobbying fees and expenses since 1997. "This industry has so much power and so much influence," said Eric Gally, a lobbyist who has represented anti-smoking interests in Annapolis and is the principal author of the report.

A Minnesota state judge has ruled that cigarette companies must turn over thousands of scientific documents and other papers for court inspection and possible release to the public.Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick said on Friday that lawyers for Minnesota had made a preliminary showing that the legal privilege that bars disclosure of communication between a lawyer and a client should be dropped, because a crime or fraud might have been committed.The procedural ruling does not mean that Fitzpatrick found that the companies had committed fraud.

WASHINGTON -- A handful of lawyers from the tobacco industry stacked up 47,000 pages of documents yesterday, challenging the Food and Drug Administration's attempt to regulate cigarettes and smokeless tobacco as an illegal "power grab."The anti-smoking forces countered with two kids from Kensington, Md., who said they bought cigarettes to show how easy it is for children to get them.This was part of a battle on the last day for public comment on an FDA proposal intended to slash underage smoking in half over the next seven years.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, deeply split over the right of smokers or their families to sue tobacco companies for harm done by lung cancer, indicated yesterday that new Justice Clarence Thomas may have to cast the deciding vote in that dispute.After talking over in private a major case it heard two weeks ago, the court told lawyers they would have to argue it all over again in January.The justices issued that order and others in their last public session before Justice-designate Thomas joins the court.

SILVER SPRING -- Maryland plans to sue the nation's tobacco manufacturers to recoup the almost $50 million it spends annually treating smoking-related illnesses among the poor, the governor and attorney general announced yesterday.At a news conference at Holy Cross Hospital, the two said they have launched a search for private law firms that would handle the suit -- and its hefty costs -- in exchange for a portion of any winnings.When the lawsuit is filed, probably in the spring, Maryland would become the fifth state to sue cigarette companies to recover money spent treating smoking-related illnesses under the Medicaid program.