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Blum opposes FDA
regulating tobacco
Article published Mar 3, 2007
By Tommy Stevenson
Associate Editor
TUSCALOOSA | While testifying before
the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last week,
Alan Blum found himself outnumbered six to one.
Blum, the Gerald Leon Wallace Chair in
Family Medicine at the University of Alabama and the director of its
nine-year-old Center for Study of Tobacco and Society, was on a panel
giving testimony in Washington on Tuesday about whether tobacco
products should be regulated by the FDA.
“I was told after the hearing that it
was the first time some of my views reached the other side of the
table to the senators themselves," he said.
Although Blum is nationally known as a
tobacco opponent, he is opposed to a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen.
Ted Kennedy,/sD-Mass., and Sen. John Cornyn,/sR-Texas, which would
mandate that the Federal Drug Administration regulate tobacco.
“That would just legitimize tobacco
and tobacco products," Blum told the senators at the hearing,
which was carried live on C-SPAN and can be viewed on the
committee’s Web site.
“You would be taking the most lethal
consumer product and, in effect, sanctioning it under the very same
agency that is charged with the safety and effectiveness of our
medicine and our food.
“You would be taking the worst poison
and say, 'Well, okay, we’re not going to take it off the market,’
because the bill would not let you prohibit cigarettes, the bill would
not prohibit you from banning advertising or anything," he said.
Blum said the bill, rather than helping
people, doesn’t go far enough.
“All it would do is stick it to
anybody that would introduce a tobacco product and claim it would make
you healthy," he said. “I said all this bill would do is change
who is committing advertising fraud -- right now it’s the tobacco
industry, under this bill it would be the government."
Not everyone agrees. Lining up against
him at the table before the Senate committee were representatives from
the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Cancer Society,
professors from Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities, the Southern
Baptist Convention and the Government Accountability Office.
“I said we already have the power to
do a lot," Blum said. “We already have this settlement against
Big Tobacco that was supposed to give billions of dollars to the
states to fight smoking.
“But the gentleman from the GAO
pointed out that of 200- and-some odd billion dollars to the states,
less than 3 percent has gone to fight smoking," he said.
“Instead, most of it has gone to help the states balance
budgets."
In Alabama, for instance, where up to
$71.24 billion has gone to the state annually, only 2.6 percent of it
has been used for anti-smoking initiatives.
“That ranks us 46th among the
states," Blum said. “It’s not totally a matter of money, but
you need to see ads every day, paid counter advertising every day,
discouraging smoking."
At times, Blum said, the hearing became
theatrical. At one point, Blum mimicked smokers in a smoke-ravaged
voice, telling the senators, “But doc, I smoke Marlboro lights,
it’s only got one milligram of tar."
He said the bill, if passed, “should
carry its own Surgeon General’s warning: 'This bill is deceptive and
it will prove devastating to the public health.’ "
Kennedy called that “a pretty strong
indictment of [the legislation]." He seemed somewhat taken aback
by Blum’s hostility toward the bill he sponsored.
For his part, Blum seemed frustrated by
his encounter with Congress, but said he will keep fighting to prevent
government from giving tobacco tacit approval by classifying it as a
product to be regulated by the FDA.
“I want to do a movie one day called
'Natural Born Regulators,’ because the people who are sponsor this
bill are those folks," Blum said. “Because the people behind
this bill are the people who think regulation is the solution to
everything, including an epidemic, and that is not going to work when
it comes to smoking.
“They pretty much admitted it’s
terra incognito -- They don’t know whether the bill would do very
much to do anything.
“They are saying it would save lives.
I’m saying it wouldn’t save any lives."
On the Web: http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2007_02_27/2007_02_27.html
Reach Tommy Stevenson at
tommy.stevenson@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0194.
This original
article
can be found online at:
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070303/NEWS/
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