SMOKING OUT THE CIGARETTE INDUSTRY

Author: By Mark Pendergrast

Date: SUNDAY, March 8, 1998

Page: E3

Section: Books

Aside from a ban on television advertising of tobacco (which the companies accepted in order to prevent ``equal time'' ads warning against cigarette health hazards), legislation to mandate warning labels on cigarette packs, and airline smoking bans, the industry had remained largely exempt from oversight. Big Tobacco had never lost a court case, at least not on appeal.

But as amply documented by Peter Pringle's ``Cornered'' and ``The People vs. Big Tobacco'' by several writers from the Bloomberg business-news service, a remarkable change has occurred during the 1990s, precipitated by a rash of whistle-blowers, leaked documents, detective work, and legal cases.

By the time those seven chief executive officers lined up before Congress and denied that nicotine was an addictive drug, the heat was on. David Kessler, the crusading commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, had just announced plans to consider the regulation of tobacco as a drug. A few weeks after the congressional testimony, secret internal documents leaked to the media clearly indicating that the tobacco companies had known all along that nicotine was addictive and that smoking caused cancer. But that April, under the glare of television lights, the CEOs calmly denied it all.

Behind their public display, the tobacco companies were badly shaken. The previous month, a group of aggressive plaintiffs' lawyers had filed a gigantic, well-financed, class-action suit known as the Castano case, after its primary claimed victim. The next month, in May 1994, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed suit against the tobacco companies, seeking to recoup nearly a billion dollars, saying it had been spent to treat the victims of smoking-related illness. Many other states' attorneys general quickly filed similar suits.

Over the next three years, the legal assaults on tobacco lurched forward through the system, while other developments kept the tobacco companies in the limelight. In 1996, a federal appeals court dismissed the Castano class-action suit, but mini-Castanos were quickly filed at the state level.

Finally, after much back-room negotiation, Moore announced on June 20, 1997 a dramatic proposed resolution in which the tobacco companies agreed to eliminate vending machines, to abandon Joe Camel and other strategic advertising devices, to pay for treatment programs, to strengthen warning labels, to dramatically reduce teenage smoking, and to pay an estimated $368.5 billion over the next 25 years -- in return for limited immunity from civil suits and weak FDA supervision. Although legislation reflecting this agreement has yet to pass Congress -- and may never do so, even in modified form -- it was a climactic conclusion to Round One in the tobacco wars that appear destined to usher out the 20th century.

Pringle's ``Cornered'' casts the broader net and is the better book about this recent history on a number of levels. For one thing, it is exceedingly well researched and well written. Pringle, a veteran British journalist who has lived in the United States for more than two decades, does a fine job of portraying the lawyers and assorted other characters in his story. Plaintiff's lawyer Ron Motley, for instance, is ``a not entirely benign dictator who inhabited a strange Southern retreat of gated compounds, beach houses, garish motor yachts, and private jet planes.''

Pringle also weaves entertaining and informative background material throughout his saga. He covers some of the same ground as ``Ashes to Ashes,'' Richard Kluger's monumental 1996 cigarette history, on whose shoulders Pringle admits to standing. (The slight overlap is forgivable not only because Pringle acknowledges it, but also because some readers may not plow through Kluger's nearly 800 pages.) Finally, ``Cornered'' is evenhanded.

For a breathless, straightforward account of the negotiations that led to last summer's settlement proposal, readers may prefer ``The People vs. Big Tobacco.'' Although the book suffers from written-by-committee prose, replete with the short, choppy paragraphs familiar to newspaper readers, it offers an almost fly-on-the-wall insight into the protracted discussions. The narrative concentrates almost solely on the attorneys general, hardly giving Kessler, the Minnesota case, or the Castano lawyers their due. Unlike Pringle, the Bloomberg reporting team was granted interviews by the tobacco lawyers and CEOs. The level of detail can be tedious, however. Who cares for a description of every hotel they stayed in? And who needs to know that Moore snagged Tiger Woods's autograph or lifted M & Ms from the White House for his son?

Ultimately, the Bloomberg effort fails to offer much context or deep analysis -- but it does tell a good story.

The story gets better with the news of almost every day. Minnesota's Medicaid case has unearthed important new material embarrassing to the tobacco industry. In an epilogue titled ``An Illusion of Surrender,'' Pringle correctly notes that while the 1997 settlement proposal (still being hotly debtated in Congress and elsewhere) may appear to be harsh, it would actually favor Big Tobacco in several ways. The companies could pay the penalties simply by raising the price of cigarettes, and they would gain a large measure of freedom from future legal or legislative woes. If they sell fewer cigarettes, their penalty payment would go down. In addition, they would save billions of dollars yearly in advertising and marketing fees. Individual smokers, as both books point out, would not receive much from the settlement, other than smoking-cessation classes. And, of course, the settlement would leave the companies free to exploit the Third World market. It is little wonder that the tobacco companies' current CEOs, while screaming how much it hurts, are lobbying hard for the settlement, rather like Br'er Rabbit begging not to be thrown into the briar patch.

While these two books bring the story up to date, this struggle is far from finished -- and there will undoubtedly be more books to come in the next few years.