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Darts and Laurels
* LAUREL to The Wall Street Journal and staff reporter Alix M. Freedman, for a matchless story on smokeless tobacco -- and how malignant strategies in its manufacture and marketing have made it the only product of the dangerous weed whose use is growing, particularly among the young. Drawing on internal memorandums, financial records, and federal documents, as well as on interviews with former industry employees, health officials, and juveniles hooked on the stuff, Freedman's 4,000-word page-one leader (October 26) alleged, among other things, that (1) while U.S. Tobacco, which controls 84 percent of the $1.6 billion snuff and chewing market, may be technically correct in denying that it manipulates the levels of nicotine in smokeless tobacco to make it more addictive, it in fact achieves that profitable result by varying other chemicals -- chemicals that regulate the amount of nicotine released in a user's mouth; and that (2) U.S. Tobacco designs its products to deliver four different levels of nicotine, easing users along from the candy-flavored "kindergarten" brands to, at the graduate level, the bestselling, unflavored Copenhagen, described by one government scientist as "the heroin of smokeless tobacco." Although last spring's congressional hearings failed to establish that tobacco companies manipulate the levels of nicotine, those hearings focused primarily on cigarettes and not on smokeless products; the establishment of such manipulation could provide the FDA with a basis on which to regulate tobacco as a drug.
^ DART to KABC-TV, Los Angeles, and KBHK-TV, San Francisco, for snuffing out a perfectly legitimate antismoking commercial when a tobacco-company chief started breathing fire. Sponsored by the California Department of Health Services and relying on news footage of congressional hearings at which c.e.o.s of American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, and R.J. Reynolds testified under oath that they do not believe nicotine to be addictive, the commercial -- which challenged the industry's credibility in denying the dangers of secondhand smoke -- apparently gave Reynolds's James W. Johnston such jitters that his lawyers demanded it be withdrawn under the strongly implied threat of a libel suit. In a strong response, health department director S. Kimberly Belshˇ rejected the "attempt to coerce individual stations to remove these commercials from the air," characterizing "this strong-arm tactic to subvert the intent of the voter-approved media campaign" as "an objectionable act of desperation." Her principd firmness notwithstanding, both KABC and KBHK gave in and dropped the ad. At least nineteen other stations in the state, including Fox's KTVU in Oakland, did not; since then, the threat of legal action seems to have drifted away, like a wisp of smoke.
* LAUREL to Consumer Reports, for cutting through the smokescreen of industry p.r. In its May report on the unsettling proliferation of so-called citizen or consumer alliances, coalitions, and councils that appear to be working for the public interest but that are in fact deceptively named groups pushing the agendas of, among others, automobile, oil, and pharmaceutical companies, CR showed how the tobacco industry "plays the public-interest pretender game" best of all, organizing taxpayer's groups and restaurant associations to oppose tobacco taxes and bans on smoking in public places. As a case in point, the article focused on seemingly objective (but unquantifiably anecdotal) surveys, sponsored by the likes of the (tobacco-seeded) "Beverly Hills Restaurant Association," "California Business and Restaurant Alliance," and "Restaurants for a Sensible Voluntary Policy," which claimed to prove that restaurants in California communities lose an average of 30 percent of their revenues after smoking bans go into effect. This is a mythical statistic that continues to smolder in news accounts (Time, the Los Angeles Times) as well as in restaurant industry publications despite the fact that more scientifically grounded studies, based on actual receipts, have found no significant drop at all -- and that, indeed, in some thirteen communities in the state, restaurant revenues actually rose.
^ DART to the Observer Group Newspapers, publisher of three African-American papers in southern California, for selling its brothers and sisters down the tobacco-country river. While just about every other news organization was alerting the public to the true intent of Proposition 188 -- a November ballot initiative that appeared to support "statewide smoking restrictions" but that in fact had been organized by Philip Morris to reduce antismoking laws already in effect -- the Observer weeklies regularly carried full-page ads supporting the proposition, along with articles promoting the Philip Morris (and only the Philip Morris) point of view -- for example, that voting against 188 would be "disastrous for minority business." As one of the few news outlets in the state to have editorialized in favor of the (ultimately defeated) proposition, the Observer group seemed unconcerned that, with cigarette smoking in such wide decline, the African-American community in America, together with third-world communities abro, represents nothing less than the tobacco industry's great black hope.
^ DART to the schoolchildren's newspaper Weekly Reader, for demonstrating that education may be hazardous to your health. Its October 14 article, "Do Cigarettes Have a Future?" smelled like second-hand smoke from the industry's recently fired-up p.r. campaign for so-called smoker's rights, with a four-color cover photo of out-of-work tobacco farmers at a Washington demonstration for "Freedom of Choice"; with a text that focused on the "unfairness" of antismoking laws (subhead: the fight for rights) as well as on the economic impact of those laws (subhead: bad for business); and with a subliminal appeal to its hundreds of thousands of young captive readers to join the pack (black-and-white inside photo of cool-looking kid being "forced by antismoking laws . . . to light up outdoors," as he stands in the shadow of a Joe Camel billboard that reads it pays to be smooth). As fuming health activists, unappeased by the publication's more responsible insert poster for teachers or by its previous pieces on the relation of smoking and health, were swift to point out, Weekly Reader is owned by K-III Communications, a unit of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, which is the controlling shareholder in RJR Nabisco, the nation's largest maker of cigarettes (including Camels). Among K-III's other holdings, added the Chicago Tribune in an October 17 editorial, are Seventeen magazine, the Channel One school satellite network, and various school newspapers and book clubs; it is also the largest distributor of high-school video and film strips. "Sophistication does not require us to turn a blind eye to such outrageous breaches of decency as the Weekly Reader's," asserted the Trib. "In fact, it requires us to be far more observant in the future."
* LAUREL to The New England Journal of Medicine, for providing some much-needed comic relief. When seven-year-old Sammy Blum wrote a letter to the editor wondering why some of his Marvel Masterpiece trading cards showed "villains and heros" smoking, editor Jerome P. Kassirer didn't laugh, or even smile. Instead, he held on to Sammy's letter while pressing the Marvel Entertainment Group -- "the leading publisher of comic books in North America," which had once boasted in Advertising Age that its "spokespeople will never smoke, drink, take drugs . . . or do anything to embarrass a client" -- for a response. The Journal's May issue told the tale: "Sammy's question . . . has raised our awareness that these images may be subject to misinterpretation by young card enthusiasts," wrote Marvel president Terry Stewart. "Hence, we have decided to omit smoking materials from all future Marvel trading cards."
^ DART to The Dallas Morning News, for its phlegmatic treatment of the filthier aspects of the Kleenex company's business. The paper pays plenty of attention to financial news of locally based Kimberly Clark, which it consistently identifies as the giant maker of such godliness-granting products as diapers, tissues, and paper towels, but it wipes away any mention of the company's work in processing tobacco. Only those Morning News readers who also subscribe to the alternative weekly Dallas Observer would know, for example, of a unique lawsuit filed this fall against the company for medical expenses incurred from smoking-related illnesses -- a lawsuit based on a series of Kimberly Clark ads in tobacco trade journals promoting the use of its tobacco sheets. "Nicotine levels are becoming a growing concern of designers of modern cigarettes," the Observer quoted one such ad as claiming under the banner headline more or less. "The Kimberly Clark tobacco reconstitution process used by [French subsidiary] LTR Industries permits adjustments of nicotine to your exact requirements . . . . Get more tobacco from all your tobacco."
^ DART to CBS and America Tonight, for failing to filter out an impure source. In a flagrant attempt to stamp out the Clinton administration's "politically correct" proposal to help defray the cost of health-care reform by increasing taxes on cigarettes, the network newsmagazine presented ("before you make up your mind") an "undercover investigation" of the experience in Canada, where a similar policy had been in effect since 1982. Guided by one Rod Stamler, identified as a "former top officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police" who was also "investigating" the issue, reporter Bob McKeown found only bad news: an increase in smoking, no increase in government revenues, and a billion-dollar smuggling industry marked by criminal gangs, organized crime, illicit money, and guns -- "exactly what took place in the bad old days of Prohibition," voiceovers observed against a background of 1920s footage of gangland wars, "except it's cigarettes instead of booze." After yet another ominous reminder that raising taxes on cigarettes is "still an importt part of the Clinton plan," the segment concluded, "Don't do it. . . . Don't even consider it." Viewers trying to "make up their minds" might have benefited from knowing that -- as the newsletter Extra! later pointed out -- the former Mounty's then-employer was a Canadian consulting firm researching the smuggling issue for Imperial Tobacco and the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council and that, according to government and industry reports, between 1982 and 1992 Canadian cigarette tax revenues went considerably up; cigarette consumption, down.
^ DART to The New York Times, for tobacco-stained journalism. Lighting up the paper's Sunday, October 9, Styles section was a tasteful plug for the Fashion Designers of America's campaign to mark October as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, accompanied by seven candid photos of Ralph Lauren employees out and about in campaign T-shirts designed by their boss. For some readers, however, the "good-cause" message quickly turned to ashes when they noticed that several of the models the Times chose to feature were also sporting cigarettes. Two Sundays later, on October 23, the Times's very same Styles section indulged in a 95-column-inch piece on the rediscovered "glamour in social smoking." What lip service the piece gave to the less glamorous aspects of the habit was undercut by three enormous photographs of young men and women taking a drag; by the sidebar on Philip Morris's new campaign for "tolerance," complete with a three-by-five-inch reproduction of that campaign's "accommodation" symbol; and by the overall tone of the piece, summed up in the final, unambiguous quote: "It just seems cool." Then, on December 1, the Times chose to illustrate a Consumer's World article on the latest developments in cordless phones with a totally uncalled-for photograph of a man using such a phone outdoors while smoking a cigarette. "Anthony Roberts of Jersey City can't smoke at home," ran the curious caption, "so he goes outside and phones, too." (Even the Times's Sunday magazine crossword puzzle (November 6) was tarred with nicotine: 43 Down: "Alternative to Viceroys." Answer: "s-a-l-e-m-s.")
* LAUREL to The New York Times and cultural correspondent Paul Goldberger, for illuminating the link between art and life. In a page-one October 5 story, Goldberger revealed that the many cultural institutions in New York City that over the years have been the lucky beneficiaries of Philip Morris's artful largess were currently being pressured by their patron to support its lobbying campaign against the city's proposed new antismoking bill. So addicted to cigarette money are these museums, music academies, and dance companies, the Times's report made clear, that officials and board members of the various organizations were afraid to speak on the record about Philip Morris's implied threat to remove itself -- and its funding -- from New York if the bill should pass; what's more, it turned out, organizations were indeed following the company's suggestion that they urge the city council to keep the cigarette maker happy. On November 30, the paper reported that city council members had apparently got the message: portions of the bill were being reworked to make them considerably milder. Thus has an age-old adage acquired new and noxious meaning: ars longa, vita brevis.
