Date: Mon, 6 Jun 1994 17:21:52 -0700
From: Topic Tracker <[t--p--c] at [liberty.net]>
Subject: LN-TOPIC: tobacco


	 NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuter) - U.S. tobacco companies have
launched a major public-relations campaign to counter the latest
attacks on smoking by state and federal lawmakers.
	 R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co opened a national advertising
campaign last week aimed at persuading Americans that the
hazards of second-hand smoke have been overstated.
	 Reynolds, maker of Winston, Salem and Camel cigarettes,
called in the ads for peaceful coexistence between smokers and
nonsmokers and said people want smoking turf wars resolved
without government interference.
	 Michael Kamins, marketing professor at the Universtiy of
Southern California, said the publicity campaign was a good
strategic move for the tobacco companies, especially for those
with big packaged-goods operations such as RJR Reynolds and
Philip Morris Cos Inc.
	 ``If you get a bad image in one part of your company, it
hurts the other parts and you have to deal with it,'' he said.
	 Consumers hearing only the anti-smoking side might boycott
RJR's biscuits or Philip Morris's beverages, he said. ``I think
it's wise as a defensive strategy,'' he said.
	 William Finnie, a marketing professor at Washington
University's Olin School of Business, said tobacco companies had
to talk to people not rooted in the anti-smoking camps.
	 ``Maybe RJR is swimming upstream -- or even up Niagara Falls
-- but it's important for them to get out their message ..., ``
he said.
	 Ads ran in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA
Today, Washington Post and smaller publications widely read in
Washington. Reynolds refused to say how much it was spending for
the ad campaign.
	 Late last month Brown & Williamson tobacco company, owned by
Britain's B.A.T Industries Inc, took out an ad in the Wall
Street Journal, attacking The New York Times's handling of a
correction to a story on the hazards of smoking.
	 The company said the Times made a mistake in a front-page
story about internal documents alleging the company knew of
tobacco hazards while it denied it publicly.
	 The New York Times ran a correction to the May 7 story on
May 21, saying while there was evidence company executives were
debating whether to disclose what they knew of smoking risks, a
company document was misquoted.
	 ``Two weeks ago it was front-page news. This week it's a
minor Editors' Note,'' the Brown & Williamson ad said.
	 The Reynolds ads argued that someone who lives with a smoker
is exposed to the equivalent of 1.5 cigarettes a month. An
office worker whose co-worker smokes gets the equivalent of 1.25
cigarettes in a month.
	 But these calculations were quickly dismissed in testimony
by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who is
among the tobacco industry's most visible and vocal critics. He
branded the campaign ``slick propaganda'' designed to interject a
``wisp of uncertainty'' about a health debate that scientists have
long settled conclusively.
	 He said the data cited in the ad was funded by tobacco
interests and used ``misleading methodology'' to compute
``cigarette equivalents,'' methodology he said the Surgeon
General's office rejected nearly a decade ago.
	 In another strike against the tobacco industry, the chairman
of the Council for Tobacco Research admitted to a House
subcommittee that the group had conducted research that was
influenced by tobacco company lawyers. The head of the Council,
which identifies itself as an independent research organisation
run by distinguished scientists, said he did not believe smoking
caused cancer or was addictive.
	 Also, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles signed into law a bill
that enables the state to sue tobacco companies in order to
recover millions of dollars in government Medicaid payments for
health problems related to smoking.
	 By some accounts, tobacco companies could face nearly $1
billion a year in potential repayments to Florida residents from
the landmark Medicaid legislation.
	 This followed a recent move by Mississippi, which filed suit
against 13 tobacco companies seeking to hold them legally
responsible for the health consequences of smoking.
	 Philip Morris Cos Inc, makers of Marlboro, the nation's
leading brand, meanwhile took no action on a widely speculated
move to separate the company's food and tobacco businesses.
Anticipation of such a move had been based on increasing fears
of corporate liability in potential lawsuits against cigarette
manufacturers and the drains on its stock value.