Tobacco Industry

WASHINGTON -- A bitter, behind-the-scenes struggle in the Bush administration over America's smoking habit is deepening, posing a major test of Health Secretary Louis H. Sullivan's power to push his all-out campaign to get everyone to give up tobacco.In one of the most ambitious gestures in his high-visibility assault on smoking, Dr. Sullivan is pressing President Bush to impose a flat, government-wide ban on smoking in every building in which federal civilian employees work -- every facility the executive branch owns, leases or temporarily uses.

WASHINGTON -- The tension in the tobacco industry had been building for weeks, but 10 days ago, when a Senate committee overwhelmingly approved legislation that would raise the price of cigarettes, the company managers rebelled.Prodded by RJR-Nabisco Inc., the five tobacco industry chief executives convened a secret meeting Monday at Philip Morris' corporate headquarters on Park Avenue in New York.In a much-ballyhooed settlement last June, the companies had agreed to stop marketing to children and to kick in $368 billion to the federal government and states over 25 years to support anti-smoking education and defray the health costs of sick smokers.

WASHINGTON -- A group of the nation's largest health insurers sued the tobacco industry yesterday, seeking to recover billions of dollars they paid to treat smoking-related illnesses.Blue Cross-Blue Shield plans from more than 35 states -- including Maryland -- alleged that the tobacco industry violated a law that has long been used against the Mafia.They also accused the industry of hiding information about nicotine's addictive properties and of marketing to children.The health plans may seek as much as $10 billion in damages for every year that they had to bear the costs of smoking-related illnesses, which could be decades.

For decades, whenever an ailing smoker filed a lawsuit, the lawyers for big tobacco responded with overwhelming force. They perused plaintiffs' personal lives, swamped the courts with legal motions and blurred the links between cigarettes and sickness.That aggressive performance by some of the top law firms in America was unquestionably a success. Until the industry's shift to a settlement strategy this summer, no tobacco company had ever paid damages in a smoking suit.But what tactics lay behind that triumph of legal defense?

Democrat J. Joseph Curran Jr. won an unprecedented fourth term as Maryland's attorney general yesterday as he cruised to an overwhelming victory over Republican Paul H. Rappaport.With voting in 98 percent of the state's precincts tallied, Curran led Rappaport by a nearly 2-1 margin.Curran easily defeated the underfinanced Rappaport after a campaign that took place in the shadow of the most expensive governor's campaign in Maryland history.By winning, Curran continues a remarkable run of electoral success dating to his election to the House of Delegates in 1958.

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan coalition of senators formally unveiled sweeping tobacco legislation yesterday that would extract a half-trillion dollars from the cigarette industry but would limit how much the industry would have to pay in damages each year.The proposal would not give the companies immunity from class action lawsuits or punitive damages, as tobacco lawyers have demanded. But it would limit the industry's payouts at $6.5 billion a year, granting the embattled tobacco companies a measure of the stability they desperately want.

As the campaign to boost Maryland's cigarette tax gains support, a smokers' rights group is fighting back with a feisty mailing to 180,000 Marylanders, urging them to vote Tuesday against more than 100 candidates who back the $1.50-per-pack tax increase, beginning with Gov. Parris N. Glendening."

Maryland reacted to the Thanos execution as a once-in-three-decades event. Wait till it's monthly.If Russian industry is no good, how come everyone wants their rockets?RU-486 is coming, RU-486 is coming. If they can find an American firm willing to make it.Merrell Williams, the double agent bringing down the tobacco industry who went into hiding, is scared of more than secondary smoke.

The Republican Congress imperiled the trust bar by repealing the estate tax on the super rich, who would no longer require their lawyers to avoid it. If Al rushed in to save the game at Camp David, we might just elect him. Experts urge more summer school. If only the schools were air conditioned. A Florida jury convicted the tobacco industry for giving cigarettes to our troops, of aiding the enemy.

The downing of U.S. choppers by U.S. fighters was a tactical victory for Saddam. U.S. withdrawal would give him strategic victory.North Avenue wants to prevent the state from taking over Patterson High School by taking over Patterson High School.The tobacco industry doesn't need the U.S. market. Eastern Europe is addicted and the Third World is ripe.You know things are bad when even the Weather Bureau deserts BWI for Dulles.