Today, President Obama signed the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” and exclaimed that “today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we passed a law to help protect the next generation of Americans from growing up with a deadly habit that so many of our generation have lived with.”
This is supremely misleading, considering that the largest tobacco company in the country–controlling a majority of the U.S. cigarette market–has actively supported this bill for years. As a recent reference, here’s a June 11 press release from Philip Morris’s parent company, Altria:
Altria Group statement released on June 11, 2009 regarding the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act:
“We think today’s vote by the U.S. Senate is an important step forward on this legislation. For more than eight years, Altria Group has supported tough but reasonable federal regulation of tobacco products by the Food and Drug Administration and we are glad to see the progress Congress has made toward that goal.”
I’ll have more on this topic in my Wednesday column on our K Street page, but for now, you can check out my two recent columns on this, here and here.
