Tobacco Industry United States

Tobacco companies got a break late Friday as an Indiana jury found four cigarette makers were not responsible for a longtime smoker's cancer death, a case viewed as a key test for an industry battered by litigation and brand-new federal regulations. The verdict comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit, which the industry lost two weeks ago, and trailed by only hours the signing by President Clinton of legislation that places new restrictions on the sale and advertising of cigarettes.

In the midst of the most ambitious regulatory undertaking in the Food and Drug Administration's 90 years, FDA officials found themselves bitterly divided over one key question: Which word-processing program should the agency use to draft its precedent-setting regulation of tobacco? The standoff was resolved only when FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler stepped into a computer bookstore during a trip to Los Angeles and asked the sales staff to recommend the best program for a big job.

President Clinton's plan to further curb tobacco sales is one more headache for the besieged industry but, as a financial threat, the rules are a sideshow to the menacing litigation facing the $45-billion business. Experts said the prospect of expensive verdicts against the tobacco companies remains strong even though an Indiana jury late Friday decided in favor of the industry in a case brought by a smoker's family.

Reversing more than two centuries of hands-off policy toward the nation's tobacco industry, President Clinton declared Friday that nicotine is an addictive drug and gave the Food and Drug Administration broad jurisdiction to regulate cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.

A working group of attorneys general from several of the 14 states that have filed massive lawsuits against the tobacco industry will attempt to refine and win support for a proposed global settlement of tobacco litigation.

President Clinton is poised to declare that the Food and Drug Administration will regulate tobacco as an addictive drug, a move that could clear the way for broad government controls over the manufacture, marketing and distribution of cigarettes, White House officials said Wednesday. The president's announcement could come as early as Friday, said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

Four days after President Clinton announced a historic crackdown on the nation's tobacco industry, the White House said Tuesday that it is willing to allow cigarette makers to escape regulation by the Food and Drug Administration if they adhere to other tough measures proposed by the president to curb teenage smoking.

When President Clinton made history a year ago this month by calling for the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug, he injected a new term into the national lexicon. He called cigarette smoking "a pediatric disease." It was a brilliant political stroke. By framing his controversial crackdown on tobacco as protection for children, the president delivered his opposition a slicing blow. Who, after all, could argue with saving the lives of kids?

A consortium of lawyers will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a ruling that barred them from proceeding with an anti-tobacco lawsuit that would have been the largest class-action case in history, an attorney with the group announced Tuesday. Speaking at a tobacco litigation conference in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole opened a new front in his electoral battle with President Clinton on Thursday, criticizing the administration's plans for regulating tobacco and suggesting that smoking is not necessarily addictive.