Tobacco bill dies in Senate battle

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WASHINGTON — Election-year legislation to curb teen smoking and bring nicotine under federal regulation perished Wednesday in the Republican-controlled Senate. The American people “won’t like what they see,” predicted President Clinton.

In the climax to a fierce, four-week struggle on the Senate floor, supporters of the measure failed on two successive votes to gain the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive.

The first effort fell three votes shy; the second seven.

Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins voted with the bill’s supporters.

“If this bill goes down today, Joe Camel wins and our kids lose,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, one of numerous Democrats who sought unsuccessfully to end Republican blocking action on the measure.

Several Democrats vowed to force the issue back onto the Senate floor before the November elections, and said Republicans were merely doing the bidding of Big Tobacco.

Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi countered for Republicans who argued that the measure had become a big-government, “tax and spend” bill. “We’ve lost sight of the original noble cause of just dealing with teen-age smoking and drug abuse,” he said.

It was a defeat for Clinton and the public health groups that had sought to give the government the power to regulate nicotine and take other steps to rein in the tobacco industry.

Moments after the final vote, Clinton expressed his disappointment. “If more members of the Senate would vote like parents rather than politicians, we could solve this problem and go onto other business of the country,” he said in the White House briefing room.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said he would try to revive some form of tobacco legislation, but only a bill “that is narrowly focused on teen smoking.”

“Our goal is to reduce teen smoking, not increase taxes,” Gingrich said in a statement.

It was a remarkable triumph for Big Tobacco, an industry that fares poorly at the polls but that invested tens of millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to sink the bill. Many of the arguments contained in those ads advanced the same arguments that Republican critics have been making on the Senate floor.

Hours before the vote, Clinton made one final appeal, calling for action to “protect the children and not the tobacco lobby.”

He said he and other Democrats had met Republican critics “more than halfway” in agreeing to amendments over the past two weeks to cut taxes and add anti-drug provisions.

“Now, if there is a move to kill or gut this legislation, there can be no possible explanation other than the intense pressure and the awesome influence fueled by years of huge contributions of Big Tobacco,” he said.

Rejection of the bill would set in motion an unpredictable chain of political and legal events.

Democrats are certain to raise the issue this fall against Republicans, while tobacco companies would be open to a fresh round of lawsuits. Left unclear would be the fate of the huge settlement several states reached with the tobacco industry a little more than a year ago to end their lawsuits.

That agreement sparked the drive to write legislation in the Senate, but election-year politics and other forces swiftly intruded.

Tobacco companies walked away from the bill when it was expanded beyond what they had agreed to with the states.

Also, a proposal to grant limited liability protection to the tobacco companies was stripped from the bill on the Senate floor as lawmakers sought a way to show voters they were willing to be tough on an industry that markets its products to teen-agers.

As drafted, the measure would raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack. The money would go to help states pay their smoking-related health care costs, finance an anti-smoking advertising campaign and pay for health research.

At the insistence of Republicans, the measure also was expanded to include an election-year tax cut for couples making less than $50,000, a series of anti-drug provisions and a cap on fees for lawyers who participated in lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

Clinton and Democrats, backed by public health groups, sought to frame the debate as a question of choosing children over cigarette makers.

Pointing to teen-age messengers who customarily sit at the foot of the Senate rostrum, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said their peer group would be targets for tobacco marketing. The industry, he said, would “consciously attempt to addict them to nicotine.”

“Three thousand kids a day will take up smoking,” added Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “One thousand of them will die prematurely.”

Republicans said that the truth was different, that they, too, favor cracking down on teen smoking, but that the bill had gotten out of hand.

On the first vote, 43 Democrats and 14 Republicans voted to choke off debate, while 40 Republicans and two Democrats were opposed.

Arlen Specter, R-Pa., recovering from recent heart surgery, was the only senator not voting.