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472516549
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Federal Building Executive Order
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472516549
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Federal Building Executive Order
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Records of the Office of the Chief of Staff (Clinton Administration)
Jennifer O'Connor's Subject Files
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2800759-20240267S-051-006-2024
[Tobacco]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL
PHONE: (202) 690-6318
FAX: (202) 690-7998
DATE:
September 11, 1996
TO:
JEN O'CONNOR
FROM:
ANDREW D. HYMAN
Special Assistant to the General Counsel
Office of the General Counsel, Room 707F
Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Ave., SW
Washington D.C. 20201
COMMENTS:
Attached is the AP story we've been waiting for on the status of the Exec Order.
No. of Pages (including cover):
3
E / I #: 94565820
9-11-96 ; 9:28 :OGC IMMEDIATE OFFICE-
SENT BY:
PASSIVE SMOKING:
Smoke Free Initiative Stalled
09-11-96 0209EDT
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) When President Clinton targeted teen-age smoking,
the other half of the government's tobacco war fighting
secondhand smoke appeared to get sidetracked.
Tobacco foes say that left millions of Americans breathing other
people's smoke in the workplace, and now they're renewing the
attack: asking a federal appeals court to order the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration to speed up workplace smoking
rules.
At the same time, health officials acknowledge they're
considering asking Clinton to sign an executive order they
drafted last year that would ban smoking in every federal office
building.
Still, it's unlikely any action on the politically charged issue
of secondhand smoke would come before November's election.
'There's been a general retreat on the part of the federal
government about clean indoor air, said Stanton Glantz, a
University of California, San Francisco, expert on secondhand
smoke. ''That's unacceptable.'
Clinton administration officials are angered by such criticism.
They point to last month when the Food and Drug Administration
unveiled the nation's most sweeping tobacco regulation,
attempting to cut in half teen-age smoking by restricting
advertising and blocking minors from buying tobacco. Clinton
quickly approved the rules.
'Without apology, the children's tobacco initiative was the
administration's priority,' said Victor Zonana, spokesman for
the Department of Health and Human Services.
But whether there is harm in breathing someone else's smoke is a
different controversy, one that the Environmental Protection
Agency ignited in 1993 when it declared that secondhand smoke
kills 3,000 Americans a year from lung cancer alone.
Infuriated tobacco companies insist scientists have not proved
that secondhand smoke is dangerous.
The EPA report '`has been the justification for smoking bans all
across this country, said Peggy Carter of R.J. Reynolds, one of
several tobacco companies that sued the EPA to get its data
retracted. ''It's not accurate.
OSHA is required to regulate workplace exposure to carcinogens,
so it proposed a smoking ban in 6 million workplaces, from office
buildings to bars.
Labor Secretary Robert Reich insists OSHA is hard at work
finalizing that ban.
94565820 # 2/ 3
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: 96-II-6
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''It's still very much alive, Reich said. ' 'We still believe
that smoking in the workplace is an issue that must be dealt
with, and we are intent on making workplaces safer.
But OSHA's proposal was made in the same week in 1994 that FDA
Commissioner David Kessler began considering whether to regulate
tobacco as a drug. Two years later, those regulations to cut teen
smoking have been written. But OSHA battered by congressional
attempts to shut it down and operating under a tighter budget
hasn't completed its regulations and can't estimate when it will.
Only one OSHA employee is working on the rules full time,
slogging through the 110,000 public comments the agency received
about the proposed ban. That task alone could take an additional
six months.
OSHA officials won't move forward on the regulations because
'`they don't want to have to take on the tobacco industry, they
don't need a new big powerful foe, contends attorney John
Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health, who has petitioned the
federal appeals court to make OSHA speed up its rulemaking. A
hearing on the petition is scheduled for Oct. 1.
Despite delays at OHSA, tobacco foes are pushing HHS to dust off
an executive order the agency quietly drafted a year ago that
would ban smoking in all federal buildings.
The executive order is still under consideration'' at HHS,
confirmed Dr. Michael Eriksen, tobacco chief at the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the government's
''primary focus right now is prevention of nicotine addiction
from occurring in the first place.
Smoking bans aren't the only battleground.
EPA scientists complain that since the agency was sued by the
tobacco industry, they are not being allowed to study any
relationship between secondhand smoke and heart disease. An EPA
official, who spoke on condition on anonymity, would say only
that the agency couldn't justify spending limited resources when
efforts against secondhand smoke already have ''enough
momentum.
Glantz, however, questions whether that momentum is real.
'There's all this rhetoric about providing a safe workplace,
when a smoke free workplace is the easiest, simplest, cheapest
and one of the most effective things you can do, he said.
94565820 3/ 3
9:29 ;OGC IMMEDIATE OFFICE-
: 96-II-6
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