THERE is no longer much question that cigarette smoking is a hazard to health; the medical evidence is overwhelming. The real debate now centers on what to do about it. That debate involves some fundamental issues, and they affect not only an industry that likes to call itself the nation's oldest—tobacco—but also several other major lines of business, notably advertising and broadcasting. More basically, the issues go to the heart of the concept of freedom at a time when personal freedoms are being expanded.
Should an industry be at liberty to promote a product that 70 million U.S. smokers want, even if it endangers life? What is the responsibility of the cigarette makers to the public? And what restrictive actions, if any, should the Government take against them? These questions are crucial in the growing controversy over cigarette smoking and selling.
A Confrontation
Last week the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee opened hearings aimed at providing some of the answers. Congress will need the answers soon. The Federal Communications Commission has voted 6 to 1 to ban cigarette advertising on radio and television, which it regulates, but it needs congressional approval to enforce such an act. The Federal Trade Commission wants to strengthen the current ineffectual warning on cigarette packs, which now reads
Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be
Hazardous to Your Health.
If the FCC has its way, the new label will be
Warning: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Health and May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Diseases.
Both the FTC and the FCC also urge that this warning be appended to all cigarette advertisements and commercials. This week Joseph L. Cullman III, chairman of Philip Morris Inc., will testify for the nine companies that make U.S. cigarettes. He plans to say that, should the mandatory warnings be extended to all ads, the industry will abandon advertising entirely.
Why do critics go after cigarette advertising rather than attempt to outlaw the product itself? In practical terms, any sort of Volstead-style prohibition of cigarettes would be impossible to legislate, and any such legislation impossible to enforce. For all the difficult moral and legal questions involved, the anti-tobacco forces consider a drive on marketing to be the best way to confront the cigarette.
The federal regulatory commissions would have the power to do what they want without congressional approval if Congress had not passed a cigarette-labeling act in 1965, which obliged cigarette companies to put the current warning sign on all packages. As a concession to legislators from the tobacco-growing Southeast, a clause was added that specifically "preempted" for Congress the right to rule on cigarette advertising. That was a lucky stroke for the industry, which has been shielded from further action not only on the part of federal agencies but also by a number of state legislatures where antitobacco bills are now pending. The preemption clause will expire on June 30, however, and Congress must then decide where to go from there.