Representative Henry A. Waxman 30th District of California

Background

Rep. Waxman's battles on tobacco have been the cornerstone of his commitment to improving public health. Tobacco use is the most serious health problem facing America, and Rep. Waxman believes that the single most important step we can take to improve public health is to reduce tobacco use.

From 1979 through 1994, Rep. Waxman served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (now the House Commerce Committee). During those years, the Subcommittee had legislative and oversight jurisdiction over a wide range of health issues. Rep. Waxman used that opportunity to conduct scores of hearings on tobacco and to investigate the tobacco industry.

Tobacco Warning Labels

In the early 1980s, Rep. Waxman chaired a series of hearings that led to the first reform of tobacco warning labels. With his trademark tenacity, Rep. Waxman pushed to update the vague and timeworn warning label on cigarette packs. For nearly twenty years, the label had remained virtually unchanged, cautioning only that smoking was "dangerous" to one's health. Rep. Waxman's legislation mandated sharp new warning labels linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, heart disease, and emphysema. His bill created several new, larger warning labels and required tobacco companies to switch the labels regularly so they could attract more attention. The legislation extended the new warning label requirements to billboards, newspapers, and other advertisements. It also required tobacco companies to disclose their secret lists of ingredients to the federal government.

Rep. Waxman extended warning labels to smokeless tobacco products as well. While warning labels had been required for cigarettes since 1966 and cigarette advertising had been banned from broadcast since 1970, smokeless tobacco had been exempt. Rep. Waxman held hearings which disclosed that teenagers were turning to snuff and chewing tobacco in the mistaken belief that the lack of advertising restrictions and warning labels meant such products were safe. He authored legislation requiring health warning labels to appear on smokeless tobacco products and in advertisements, and he banned advertisements of smokeless tobacco products from radio and television.

Advertising and Marketing Restrictions

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Rep. Waxman introduced legislation that would impose stricter controls over the marketing and selling of tobacco to children. He sponsored legislation to limit tobacco advertisements to the "tombstone" format -- written text in black and white with no human figures or imagery allowed other than a picture of the cigarette brand. His legislation would have prohibited cigarette sponsorship of sporting events and public entertainment, banned most cigarette sales by vending machines, and ended public distribution of free tobacco product samples. Although this legislation was not enacted into law, many of its provisions were incorporated into the FDA's landmark 1996 tobacco regulation.

Over the years Rep. Waxman used his influential post as Chairman of the House Health and Environment Subcommittee to conduct dozens of well-publicized hearings on the hazards of smoking and tobacco advertising. This happened at a time when no other committee in the House or Senate was holding hearings on these issues. In one of these hearings Surgeon General C. Everett Koop first released his report that unequivocally branded nicotine an addictive substance, putting to rest any claims that smoking was simply a habit. Rep. Waxman formed a close alliance with Dr. Koop and worked to give him a national platform from which to speak out on the dangers of tobacco. In 1986, Rep. Waxman held the first congressional hearing on the hazards of environmental tobacco smoke, with Surgeon General Koop testifying, eight years before the EPA released its comprehensive report on environmental tobacco smoke.

To help focus public attention on the dangers of tobacco, Rep. Waxman had movie stars and celebrities appear before his committee. These hearings contributed to the vast change in public opinion about smoking.

The Synar Amendment

Rep. Waxman worked closely with Rep. Mike Synar, a member of his Subcommittee, to assure passage of legislation that would prohibit the sale of tobacco to minors. The legislation first required that every state ban the sale of tobacco to minors. If states failed to adopt such laws or failed to enforce the law, they would lose up to 40% of their federal substance abuse funds. This legislation was an important step towards the establishment of higher minimum ages nationwide and in encouraging states to enforce the law more rigorously.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke

Rep. Waxman also authored legislation to require smoke-free public areas and workplaces. His legislation would have restricted smoking to separately ventilated rooms in virtually all non-residential buildings in the nation. The legislation passed out of the Health and Environment Subcommittee, but never moved further. Given the political strength of the tobacco industry, it was a tribute to Rep. Waxman's legislative skill that the bill moved at all.

In 1994, Rep. Waxman chaired a critical series of hearings on tobacco. Most significant was the one at which Chief Executive Officers of the nation's tobacco companies testified. This hearing put a human face on the tobacco industry for the first time. When the CEOs swore under oath that smoking was not addictive and did not cause any disease, it became clear to the American people that they were lying. This was the turning point in the battle against the tobacco industry. Please review excerpts of testimony at Rep. Waxman's hearings.

Hearings on Internal Industry Documents

Other hearings by the Waxman subcommittee exposed the secret activities of the tobacco industry, both through the testimony of industry insiders and internal tobacco company documents. Victor DeNoble, a former scientist with Philip Morris, testified that the company had quashed internal research in the 1980s that proved that nicotine was addictive. Internal documents of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation revealed they had manipulated nicotine levels and suppressed scientific evidence that cigarettes were intended to affect the structure of function of the body. The evidence uncovered through the Waxman hearings contributed significantly to the landmark 1996 FDA tobacco regulations.

104th Congress (1995-1996)

The House of Representatives passed to Republican control in November 1994 and Rep. Waxman became the Ranking Minority Member rather than Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. In spite of this change, Rep. Waxman continued his battle against tobacco. In July and August 1995, Rep. Waxman took to the House floor to read from secret tobacco company documents. These documents revealed that Philip Morris had conducted an extensive research program into nicotine manipulation and pharmacology -- and had even studied third graders to determine if hyperactive children were a potential market for cigarettes.

105th Congress (1997-1998)

Rep. Waxman continued to play a critical role in shaping tobacco policy. When the Attorneys General and the tobacco industry set out their original June 20, 1997 proposal, Rep. Waxman created an independent public health committee -- the Koop-Kessler Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health -- to lay out what good tobacco control policy should include. This advisory committee played a critical role in convincing the American public and the Clinton Administration that the proposed tobacco settlement was fundamentally flawed and had to be strengthened in order to protect public health.

Along with Rep. Jim Hansen (R-UT) and Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA), Rep. Waxman asked the FTC to prepare a comprehensive economic analysis of the June 20 tobacco settlement. This analysis showed that the settlement was even a better deal for the tobacco industry than anyone had imagined. It not only immunized the tobacco industry from liability, but provided them with a $123 billion exemption from antitrust laws.

Rep. Waxman also continued to expose tobacco companies' efforts to market to children. With the cooperation of the plaintiffs and their attorneys in the Mangini litigation in California, Rep. Waxman released over a thousand pages of previously secret documents from R.J. Reynolds. These documents provided the first detailed window into RJR and first detailed revelations of a tobacco company's efforts to exploit children. Because information in these documents contradicted some statements that RJR executives had made before Congress, Rep. Waxman forwarded the documents to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. Rep. Waxman also obtained and released documents from Philip Morris showing that they also targeted children.

To pass bipartisan tobacco legislation, Rep. Waxman continued his collaboration with Reps. Hansen and Meehan. They introduced comprehensive tobacco legislation designed to reduce youth smoking by 80% within ten years. The legislation raised cigarette prices to discourage youth smoking. It gave FDA full regulatory authority over tobacco products. It provided comprehensive protection from involuntary exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. It funded essential tobacco control initiatives including a nationwide public education campaign. And it did not give any immunity or special legal privileges to the industry.

Concerned that the tobacco industry might wield undue influence over Congress, Rep. Waxman commissioned a study on the tobacco industry's practice of providing corporate aircraft to congressional leaders for campaign activities. The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Government Reform handled the investigation. Titled Air Tobacco, their report found that the tobacco industry provided more subsidized campaign travel to congressional leaders and political parties than any other corporate special interest, and the beneficiary of subsidized campaign travel from the tobacco industry was the Republican congressional leadership and Republican party organizations.