Cigarette Companies’ Ads Come Under Fire by Clinton

WOODBRIDGE, N.J. — President Clinton, continuing to provoke the tobacco industry, demanded on Tuesday that cigarette makers stop marketing their products to teenagers.

At an anti-smoking rally at a New Jersey high school marking a nationwide “Kick Butts Day,” Clinton told tobacco companies to “do the right thing” and end all advertising designed to lure young people into smoking.

“I urge you: Be responsible,” Clinton implored the tobacco companies. “Play your role in stopping this problem before it starts for millions and millions and millions of young Americans.”

Smoking is one of a cluster of issues that Clinton has taken up in recent weeks to appeal to middle-class families and conservative voters who might be lured away from the Republican Party.

On Monday, the president endorsed a GOP-sponsored measure to provide a tax subsidy for families who adopt. On Saturday, he proposed tightening eligibility requirements for welfare.

And late last week he turned the veto of a bill limiting damage awards in product-liability suits into a pro-consumer event, complete with Oval Office testimony from people who had been injured by defective products. The veto was sought by trial lawyers, who have been among the most generous contributors to Clinton’s political campaigns.

Taking on the tobacco lobby carries virtually no political risk for Clinton. It allows him to portray himself as an advocate for the nation’s health while portraying an industry that gives most of its support to Republican candidates as a demon.

Last year, he authorized the Food and Drug Administration to promulgate new regulations that would make tobacco advertising aimed at minors illegal, halt giveaways of cigarettes and restrict access of young people to cigarette vending machines.

Tobacco industry officials said Tuesday that they already have undertaken a voluntary multimillion-dollar advertising and public relations campaign designed to discourage youths from smoking.

A tobacco industry spokesman took Clinton’s attack in stride as predictable election-year politics.

“We have the hide of a rhinoceros,” said Tobacco Institute official Tom Lauria. “It comes with the territory.”

Clinton told about 3,000 students, teachers and parents in the gymnasium of Woodbridge High School that they have an obligation to safeguard their own health.

“That’s what this anti-teen-smoking campaign is all about,” Clinton said. “We now know what the health dangers are. We now know that, advertising notwithstanding, it is not a glamorous thing to risk your health and your life.”

He noted that 3,000 teenagers take up smoking every day and statistics show that a third of their lives will be shortened because of it.

“We should control those things which we can control about our lives,” Clinton told the group. “We should not be self-destructive. We should do no harm.”

He also spoke of the ease with which underage buyers can purchase cigarettes. Two 16-year-old Woodbridge students who met with the president before the rally told him that they had tried on 15 separate occasions to buy cigarettes, despite a state law prohibiting sales to those under age 18.

“They were 15 for 15 in buying cigarettes and not even being carded,” Clinton said.

Lauria of the Tobacco Institute said that the organization had initiated a program with 250,000 retailers across the country called “we card” to stem sales to minors. He also said that Philip Morris had started its own program to limit sales to teenagers.

Clinton commended the A&P; grocery chain for a proposal to eliminate cigarette vending machines in its stores and 3M Corp. for agreeing to accept no more tobacco advertising on its billboards.