The specter of tobacco regulation hasn’t been a big news story in more than a decade thanks to a settlement between state attorney generals and the tobacco industry, and the subsequent election and re-election of a Republican president. But now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, their itching for another fight with America’s tobacco titans.

Smoking killed my grandmother and has wreaked havoc on the health of my aunt and uncle, who didn’t learn enough from the suffering of their mother. Smoking also isn’t one of those bad habits that affects only the people who choose to pollute their lungs. The health impact of secondhand smoke is real. I know from childhood experience.

Tobacco’s history in my family makes me friendly toward the idea of regulation despite my general animosity toward government interference in the marketplace. The “liberty” argument against such regulation isn’t the least bit persuasive to me, either. Remember, I’m an enlightened redneck.

But my coverage of the great tobacco debate of the 1990s does make me a wee bit cynical about the new push to regulate the industry. I covered the infamous 1994 congressional hearings that featured sworn testimony of tobacco executives and the subsequent fallout. I read every tobacco-related book I could find, amassed a filing cabinet full of research and news clippings, and learned enough about the subject to ponder writing a book of my own.

My takeaway after a half-decade of covering the story is that it’s a debate that will never end.

I made that very point in an essay for The Day, a newspaper in Connecticut, after the 1998 settlement. The historical perspective seems timely now, so I’m reprinting the essay here. You can read it in the extended entry.

Attorney General Kick N. Butts and tobacco negotiator Smoke N. Ureye study the legalese closey. Both sense the end to their five-month negotiating ordeal as they read the proposed terms of a multi-state settlement. Few points of contention remain.

Finally, Ureye makes his move. “We’ll give you $206 million, several thousand teenagers to save from our cancer sticks and cartoon named Joe Camel,” he says. “You give us the Marlboro Man, all the teens we can seduce at the Winston Cup and your word that you won’t sue us for 25 years. And you have to sell this plan to your buddies in five days or no dice.”

Butts huddles with her colleagues. All have grown weary of the fight with Big Tobacco, and all realize the leverage is with their foes. They break, and Butts sidles up to the table.

“Deal,” she says. “The camera pans to the two as they shake hands.

Cue the background melody and the image of a slow-burning cigarette. Cue the announcer. “Tune in tomorrow,” the soothing voice says, “for the next episode of … ‘As The Cigarette Burns.’”

OK, maybe the final stages of the negotiation between states who want money for their tobacco-related Medicaid costs and the tobacco companies who want protection from future lawsuits didn’t transpire exactly like that. But you get the point.

The debate over the dangers of tobacco is one of the nation’s longest-running policy soap operas, and the settlement episode is just the latest plot twist. This story has not ended — and it never will.

Not that anybody wants it to, mind you. Tobacco policy has been an American addiction since colonial days, and no one, least of all a tobacco news junkie like myself, seems determined to kick the habit.

To be sure, talk of a settlement is momentous. That tobacco companies would even consider paying a dime to anyone seemed preposterous just four years ago, when tobacco executives swore to Congress that nicotine is not addictive and that smoking does not cause cancer.

But only the naive will believe the story ends here. There is too much at stake — profit for the tobacco companies, prestige for the health advocates who oppose them, easy money for the lawyers in both camps, and sensational stories for the media — to write the final episode.

The tobacco saga always has been cyclical in nature, and the cycle goes something like this:

• Tobacco foes (of which I am one) scream and holler until someone in power joins their lament against the evils of the “merchants of death.”
• Public pressure mounts to the point that something must be done.
• Big Tobacco buys time by bribing its allies to pass legislation riddled with loopholes.

It happened in the 1960s, when Congress first mandated wishy-washy health warnings on cigarette labels. It happened again in the early 1970s, when Congress banned cigarette advertising on television. And it happened in the 1980s and early 1990s, when governments at all levels started driving smokers out of airports, restaurants, the workplace and other public areas.

Now we have the tobacco “settlement.”

Implicit in the word settlement is that two or more factions have come to an understanding, but that certainly is not the case here.

No real settlement

Health advocates still believe tobacco companies are peddlers of cancer, and tobacco companies see their foes as enemies of liberty determined to revive Prohibition. Neither side is capable of trusting the other, and both sides undoubtedly are plotting their next moves.

Tobacco haters certainly are not content with this settlement to end all settlements.

President Clinton — whose administration quickly staked its claim to some of the money state attorneys general have extorted from the tobacco industry — has called the deal only a “first step” and insists that a national settlement is necessary.

David A. Kessler, the former chief of Clinton’s Food and Drug Administration and the man largely credited with forcing tobacco officials to the negotiating table, had this to say: “These are chapters. You don’t solve huge public issues in a single swipe. This is going to take a series of steps.”

Big Tobacco, meanwhile, left itself plenty of wiggle room. The deal, for instance, would disband tobacco fronts like the Council for Tobacco Research. But its language apparently would not forestall the creation of similar foundations.

The agreement also would restrict tobacco sponsorship of sporting events and make cartoon advertising characters like R.J. Reynolds’ Joe Camel illegal. But tobacco companies could, and would, lend their names and resources to events like NASCAR’s Winston Cup racing series, and the ever-popular Marlboro Man would continue to ride high in the saddle.

“Could some of these restrictions be more airtight?” Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. said the Baltimore Sun. “Yes. But if necessary, we could go into court to enforce the spirit of the agreement.”

And there you have it, the promise of another day in court.

You see, both sides know there are loopholes in the agreement, and both sides want them there. They are in this hunt not for the kill but for the thrill.

Why else would the tobacco industry give 46 attorney generals who represent a cornucopia of constituents only five days to read and accept, without debate or amendment, a 146-page document? And why would the attorney generals even concede to such a demand?

So all of you addicts of this soap opera rest easy. The proverbial fat lady has not sung — and she may not even have a place in this production.

A little more than a decade later, President Obama, ironically a smoker whose bad habit has been defended by some fawning journalists, may be asked to take the second step Clinton envisioned.

This time around, I think I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.