For anti-smoking activists, it's a tough choice: Compromise with tobacco companies and go after teen smoking now - with the industry's money - or take them on in court over the government's right to regulate nicotine.
But they're ready to turn down $100 million in tobacco funds to keep President Clinton from compromising away a long-awaited Food and Drug Administration crackdown."We would rather go through that process of fighting it out in court rather than trust this industry at all," said Scott Ballin of the Coalition on Smoking Or Health, which is rallying thousands of people to lobby the White House this week against the proposed deal.
"It is once in a generation that a public official has an opportunity to save the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of children. You have that opportunity now," a coalition of congressmen led by Reps. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., and James Hansen, R-Utah, wrote Clinton Friday.
Anti-smoking activists want Clinton to allow the FDA to regulate nicotine as a drug and use that authority to fight teen tobacco use, by banning vending machines and curtailing youth-oriented advertising.
The tobacco industry strongly opposes FDA regulation, pledging to spend years in court to block any such move. And powerful tobacco friends in the anti-regulatory Republican-led Congress stand ready to help.
Clinton was looking for a middle ground, and a longtime public health advocate teamed with a tobacco ally to offer him one last week.
Reps. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Charlie Rose, D-N.C., proposed that tobacco companies sign a government contract to ban vending machines and teen ads - in addition to giving the states $100 million to begin enforcing largely ignored laws against selling tobacco to minors.
"Let's look at the political realities," Rose said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." He said imposing regulations on the tobacco industry would be "real bad news for Democrats in the South." Instead, he said, "Let's take the cigarette companies, let's negotiate with them in a tough stance, and if they don't agree to it, move on with FDA regulations."
Anti-smoking activists may be willing to wait years for the courts to clear FDA action, but every day 3,000 teens begin smoking, said Wyden.
"I was willing to go out on this tightrope because I think there's a chance to rescue a generation of kids from this legal jamboree," Wyden said. "And there is tremendous populist appeal in this idea of forcing the tobacco companies to put up a substantial sum of money" for the fight.