October 28 1996

ARTICLE TOOLS

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In the dog days of August, President Clinton joined forces with the Food and Drug Administration to declare nicotine a drug and cigarettes a drug delivery system. Reframing the tobacco issue in this way paved the way for the FDA to regulate for the first time what 32 years ago the surgeon general declared to be a public health menace. It's about time.

The FDA has also redefined smoking as a "pediatric disease." Two kinds of evidence indicate this bad habit can no longer be considered a matter of "adult choice":

—First, the evidence reveals that youthful experimentation with smoking leads to most cases of nicotine addiction. Centers for Disease Control data show there is a 90 percent chance that a person will not take up smoking if he or she makes it to age 19 without having started.

—Second, new evidence demonstrates that tobacco marketers intend to snare vulnerable youth. "The fragile, developing self-image of the young person needs all of the support and enhancement it can get," says one leaked cigarette company report. "Smoking may appear to enhance that self-image. … This self-image enhancement effect has traditionally been a strong promotional theme for cigarette brands." Combine the appeal of Joe Camel-style advertising with manipulation of nicotine levels to cinch physiological addiction and you have a nasty form of corporate child abuse.

The portable abortion clinicTobacco not only abuses teenagers, it duplicates the abortionist's art-but without the consent of the mother. According to an April 1995 article in the Journal of Family Practice, tobacco causes approximately 115,000 "spontaneous abortions" every year. And a woman who smokes during her pregnancy increases her chance of miscarriage by 24 ...