But an official with one anti-smoking group said he was concerned that the change was not based on public health or the law.
"The question is, is this a political decision that's been made by the Department of Justice?" said Vince Willmore, communications director for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an ardent supporter of the racketeering case.
The giant tobacco lawsuit was inherited from the Clinton administration, and there was wide speculation that the Bush administration would pull the plug. But the Bush administration eventually poured millions of dollars into the case.
Before his appointment in the Justice Department in 2001, McCallum had been a partner at Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based firm that has done trademark and patent work for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. In 2002, McCallum signed a friend-of-the-court brief by the administration urging the Supreme Court not to consider an appeal by the government of Canada to reinstate a cigarette smuggling case against R.J. Reynolds that had been dismissed. The department's ethics office had cleared McCallum to take part in that case.
Apart from the smoking-cessation program, government lawyers Tuesday asked Kessler to order an array of other anti-smoking measures. Among them:
* A ban on price-cutting promotions, such as the buy-two, get-one-free deals that have become a mainstay of brand marketing. The offers are particularly enticing to price-sensitive teens, the government said.
* Fines against tobacco companies if youth smoking doesn't decline by targeted amounts.
* Barring the use of descriptors such as "light" and "mild" on lower-tar brands, because industry research shows that smokers make up for lower tar and nicotine by drawing deeper or smoking more cigarettes.
* An industry-financed education campaign focused on the hazards of smoking and of secondhand smoke.
* So-called corrective statements by the industry that acknowledge, for example, that secondhand smoke causes cancer and other serious harm.
* Court-appointed industry monitors with the power to oversee the remedial programs and remove senior executives who skirt court directives.
Along with Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, defendants include Brown & Williamson, which has merged with R.J. Reynolds to form Reynolds American Inc; British American Tobacco; the Lorillard Tobacco unit of Loews Corp. and Vector Group Ltd.'s Liggett Group Inc.
