Tobacco Warning Labels

Tobacco ASHES TO ASHES / 542 warning Labets modating to his colleagues, assembled a crack staff of workaholic aides, ad- justed the parliamentary wheels and levers adroitly, and soon formed an un- likely cordial alliance with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the upper chamber's Labor and Human Resources Committee, holding ju- risdiction over health issues. As certifiably conservative as Waxman was lib- eral, the tall, athletically lean Hatch had a transparent yearning for recognition as a statesmanlike achiever among his antismoking constituents back in Utah. Waxman found common ground with him in mutually advantageous legisla- tive trade-offs. In the age of Reaganomics, Waxman was able to fend off the budgetary ax- wielders who sought to roll back Medicaid benefits, close community health centers in poor neighborhoods, and gut family planning programs. Inch by inch against an inrushing tide, he managed to get disability coverage expanded during the Reagan years. In 1982, he demonstrated his grit in a battle with the formidable new chairman of his parent Commerce Committee-Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who had the biggest budget and staff of any House committee boss, with jurisdiction, it was said, over anything in America that moved, burned, or was sold. While Dingell's voting record was almost as ster- lingly liberal as Waxman's, they were opposite sorts of operatives; the Michi- gander gloried in his role as power broker and loved the political process, part of which for him involved leveling a vindictive glower at anyone who defied him. The two were on an inevitable collision course because of the very differ- ent congressional districts they represented. Dingell's was the heart of auto- land, and the cars it churned out gave Waxman's district the most polluted air in the nation. When Dingell moved, in the deregulatory spirit of the day, to ease the auto emission standards in the federal Clean Air Act, Waxman used every device at his disposal to foil him. His success, assuring him of Dingell's enduring enmity, would hobble Waxman's efforts now, as he began to address the major health peril of smoking. III H ENRY WAXMAN harbored genuine moral indignation over the way to- bacco lobbyists and those who did their bidding in Congress declared that the cigarette industry was essential to the economic well-being of their re- gion, just as Southern lawmakers had defended slavery during the first half of the nineteenth century. He was thus highly receptive to the approach of Matthew Myers, lobbyist for the Coalition on Smoking or Health, who pro- posed Waxman's sponsorship of a bill embracing the chief recommendations of the 1981 FTC staff report Myers had shepherded into being. The tobacco companies, Waxman wrote on the Washington Post op-ed page in August of