Tobacco Industry

PETER G. ANGELOS has apparently had enough of Gov. Parris N. Glendening for a while. The Baltimore lawyer and Orioles owner has been one of the governor's top financial backers. He gave to Glendening's re-election campaign last year and to his post-election political "viability" fund this year. He also gave $50,000 to help publish a historical book being overseen by the governor's wife, Frances Hughes Glendening. If that weren't enough, Angelos gave another $50,000 recently to a foundation that pays for upkeep at the governor's mansion in Annapolis.

WASHINGTON -- Days of reckoning seem to arrive so regularly for the nation's tobacco companies that potential legal catastrophe is almost routine.As the tobacco companies face an ominous government lawsuit while paying out millions of dollars in state tobacco settlements, a confrontation this week at the Supreme Court could decide the beleaguered industry's future.In a hearing set for Wednesday, the justices will examine a legal question that on the surface seems simple: Does the Food and Drug Administration have the authority to regulate nicotine as a drug, and cigarettes as a device for delivering nicotine into the human body?

THERE IS BIG news in the War on Smoking. The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the cigarette industry, boldly charging that the industry was lying -- and knew it was lying -- when it claimed that it never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. Whoops! Wrong lie! The Justice Department is charging that for many years the tobacco industry, on purpose, did not tell people that cigarettes were bad for them. To mention just one blatant example, on numerous documented occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, R.J. Reynolds deliberately failed to run an advertising campaign using the slogan: "Winston Tastes Good, and Gives You Lung Cancer!"

Orioles' owner Peter G. Angelos writes some hefty paychecks to his ballplayers. But his own payday for handling Maryland's tobacco lawsuit might make those millions look like pocket change.All he wants, Angelos says, is a reasonable fee. But as the squabble over fees for tobacco lawyers has shown, in state after state, one lawyer's reasonable is another's outrageous.If the Baltimore attorney insists on enforcing his contract for 25 percent of Maryland's tobacco settlement -- which some legal experts say he has a right to do -- his firm could collect $1.1 billion.

EVEN before the school shootings in Littleton, Colo., the U.S. gun industry was in trouble. Recently, a Brooklyn, N.Y., jury handed down the first verdict in U.S. history holding gun makers collectively liable for deaths and injuries to private parties.The Brooklyn case bodes ill for a shaky industry, and the worst is yet to come. Five cities have already filed lawsuits based on a variety of legal and factual arguments. More cities, several states and groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, are considering similar lawsuits.

NEW YORK -- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp., the No. 2 U.S. cigarette maker, said its first-quarter profit fell 54 percent on falling domestic sales, bigger discounts and a payment tied to the tobacco industry's $206 billion settlement.Profit from operations at the maker of Winston, Salem and Camel cigarettes fell to $83 million, or 24 cents a share, from $179 million, or 52 cents, a year earlier. Analysts had expected the company to earn 28 cents a share.RJR and industry leader Philip Morris Cos., the maker of best-selling Marlboro cigarettes, offered a 55-cent-a-pack discount on their major U.S. brands to try to keep smokers after prices were raised by 70 cents last year to pay for the industry's $206 billion legal settlement with the states, but that helped RJR's rival more, analysts said.

Unhitched by riggers, the vinyl billboard in Times Square advertising Kool Natural cigarettes slid down like a curtain last week and was quickly carted away. By midnight Thursday, every cigarette billboard in the country must come down as part of the $206 billion agreement reached last year between tobacco producers and 46 states to resolve all state claims over health costs related to smoking. Over the last month, cigarette makers and outdoor advertising companies have been scrambling to meet the deadline.

When April sweetens the air in Annapolis, legislators usually turn eager to endorse the proposals of Maryland's powerful governors. But this year, the power of the state's chief executive was very nearly blunted by a team of Republicans and independent Democrats who wondered how they could explain a $150 million tax increase to tax-weary constituents. In the end, they gave Gov. Parris N. Glendening his tobacco tax -- though it was cut by almost three-fourths to 30 cents a pack.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. governors, displaying a united front on an issue critical to their state budgets, plan to urge President Clinton today to halt attempts by the federal government to claim a portion of more than $200 billion that states captured last year in a landmark legal settlement with the tobacco industry.One after another, governors who are here for a four-day conference indicated their resolve yesterday to defend their share of the tobacco settlement, even though the president has included a major chunk of that money in his proposed budget.

After a cigarette ignited a fatal fire that roared through a Baltimore high-rise Feb. 5, Maryland Fire Marshal Rocco J. Gabriele cautioned smokers, noting that careless smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths.But Gabriele did not mention one reason smoking remains such a fire hazard: For 20 years, the tobacco industry has defeated attempts to require that cigarettes be redesigned to make them less likely to start fires. The industry's main tactic has been to weaken support for such regulation by courting key fire officials such as Gabriele with hefty donations.