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Clinton's plan, by focusing on both law enforcement and advertising, follows successful steps already being taken by local governments. In San Jose, California, an antismoking group talked the city into outlawing cigarette vending machines in all public places and sanctioning sting operations against vendors selling to kids; sales to minors dropped an estimated 60% over three years. In Seattle similar measures reduced overall sales of cigarettes to minors 45% in a three-year period.
In Massachusetts state officials hoping to counter the effect of marketing ploys like "Marlboro Miles," in which consumers send collected labels in to get such popular items as CD players and hooded sweatshirts, have set up competing incentives. In April, Massachusetts tobacco-control officials persuaded 200 retailers, including McDonald's and Footlocker stores, to give discounts to teens who take a smoke-free pledge. So far, more than 25,000 children have signed up. The state has also spent $14 million on antismoking ads. Since 1994, cigarette sales to teens in the state have dropped some 40%. Said Dr. Lonnie Bristow, president of the American Medical Association: "If you hamper their ability to market effectively to children, you've really put your hand on [the tobacco companies'] jugular."
Already feeling the government's hands around their throat, tobacco-industry leaders took immediate steps to thwart Clinton's plan. The five largest cigarette manufacturers filed a lawsuit claiming that the FDA has no jurisdiction over cigarettes and that the advertising restrictions violate their First Amendment rights. But Clinton has tried to entice the tobacco companies into backing a law that would directly impose the restrictions he seeks. California Democrat Henry Waxman, the leading antismoking figure in the House, predicts that the new Republican majority might pass these reforms rather than let their nemesis, the FDA, regulate the industry.
The greatest fear of the tobacco industry, of course, is that the new moves on teen smoking are just opening skirmishes in an assault on smoking by adults as well. Though Clinton denies this, the Administration is being lobbied to go even further. Officials at the A.M.A. would like to see a total ban on tobacco advertising. At the same time, they want politicians to refuse money from tobacco PACS and believe that medical schools and other research organizations should refuse all funding by tobacco companies. "No right-thinking individual can ignore the evidence" about nicotine addiction, an A.M.A. report proclaimed last month. "We should all be outraged, and we should force the removal of this scourge from our nation." But the politics of tobacco have never been as clear-cut as the medical evidence.
--Reported by J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Jenifer Mattos/New York