Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars

Introduction

1 Introduction Movements born of adversity have a hard time with success. And movement leaders, hardened to decades of lost battles, do not easily adapt to the prospects of victory. This is not exactly a new story. It happens to the best of movements, and it happened to the tobacco control movement in 1997 and 1998. To many Americans outside the tobacco control movement, the year 1997 seemed to hold the promise of a triumphant ending to the thirty-year war against the tobacco companies . On June 20, 1997, Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore stood before a bank of microphones and news cameras, flanked by a phalanx of allied state attorneys general, and proclaimed proudly that an agreement had been reached among the state attorneys general, representatives of the public health community, and the tobacco industry. The agreement set forth the terms of comprehensive tobacco control legislation , a “global settlement,” which all parties would harmoniously entreat Congress to enact. This legislation would, Moore averred, transform the tobacco industry from one of the least to one of the most tightly regulated industries in America: “We are here today to announce what we think is—we know, we believe is—the most historic public health agreement in history. We wanted this industry to have to change the way it did business, and we have done that. This is really the beginning of the end for the way the tobacco industry has treated the American public.” The attorney general of Florida, Bob Butterworth, exuberantly wrapped Moore’s claim to history in a metaphor: “The Marlboro Man is riding off into the sunset on Joe Camel.” Within a year, Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, invoked history again on April 1, 1998, after shepherding a bipartisan 19–1 vote of his committee’s members in favor of a tobacco control bill that not only built upon but also mark- 2 Smoke in Their Eyes edly strengthened the public health provisions of the June 20, 1997, settlement. Senator McCain looked upon his work and pronounced that, in it, “Congress has a rare and historic opportunity to put an end to what the American Medical Association calls a ‘pediatric epidemic.’ ” And, in that most rare of conditions for that most partisan of Congresses, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, on behalf of the committee’s Democrats, fully agreed with the Republican McCain: “This is not just the opportunity . . . for a historic debate; it is an extraordinary opportunity for historic action by the U.S. Senate.” President Bill Clinton praised McCain and the bill and joined the chorus of amateur historians: “Over the next five weeks, this Congress has an historic opportunity to pass bipartisan comprehensive legislation to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco. It is time for the kind of comprehensive approach to the problem that Senator McCain’s legislation takes.” The Washington Post quoted an anonymous tobacco lobbyist who predicted: “If the vote were held today, it would be 80–20 for McCain.” This might have been the occasion to celebrate an exemplary civic movement—one whose leaders, having persevered through adversity, leapt surefooted to victory, when the moment for leaping had come. But victory did not come. Six weeks after the McCain bill surged out of the Senate Commerce Committee, the Senate failed by three votes to reach the sixty needed to end debate and bring the bill itself to a vote. Like the rigid parrot in the absurdist Monty Python skit, Mike Moore’s global settlement and the McCain bill were “Dead! Dead! Dead!” And the Congress has not since come close even to considering the bill’s like. What happened? And why? When any effort to rein in the tobacco industry fails, most attentive citizens readily assume that the malevolent economic and political power of the tobacco industry has been mobilized to defeat it. And so it was here. As former U.S. surgeon general Dr. C. Everett Koop saw it, in a talk to the National Press Club following the sinking of the McCain bill: This is a scandal of some in Congress trading public health for PAC money and believing the slick ads of the tobacco industry . . . this is a scandal of politics for sale, and to my dismay, some Republicans going to the highest bidder. The industry hired one lobbyist for every two members of Congress. The major manufacturers spent over $30 million in lobbying fees last year [18.222.108.18] Project...