[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 106 (Friday, July 31, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1500-E1501]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              THE EPA, TOBACCO AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

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                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 30, 1998

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I call to my colleagues' attention this 
incisive and well-written column by George Will that in many ways 
captures the essence of what is going on at the EPA and throughout the 
environmental community. I would particularly direct my colleagues to 
the final paragraph in Mr. Will's column in which he quotes from an 
article by Dennis Prager in the Weekly Standard about ``this assault on 
the idea of personal responsibility.''

               [From the Washington Post, July 30, 1998]

                            EPA's Crusaders

                          (By George F. Will)

       Before the tobacco bill was blown to rags and atoms by its 
     supporters' overreaching, they substituted reiteration for 
     reasoning. But then, for years now the debate about smoking 
     has been distorted by vehement people who rarely suffer even 
     temporary lapses into logic.
       A new reason for skepticism about the evidence and motives 
     of the anti-tobacco crusaders comes in a ruling by a federal 
     judge in North Carolina concerning a 1993 report by the 
     Environmental Protection Agency. EPA said secondhand smoke is 
     a Class A carcinogen that causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths per 
     year. The judge said:
       ``EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research 
     had begun; excluded industry by violating the [1986 Radon Gas 
     and Indoor Air Quality Research] Act's procedural 
     requirements; adjusted established procedure and scientific 
     norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion; and 
     aggressively utilized the Act's authority to disseminate 
     findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended 
     to restrict Plaintiffs' products and to influence public 
     opinion.''
       The judge charges EPA not just with bad science but with 
     bad faith--with having ``cherry picked its data.'' Granted, 
     this is just one judge's opinion; EPA demurs; the litigation, 
     already five years old, will churn on. Still, what 
     disinterested persons considers the judge's conclusion 
     implausible?
       EPA's report came in 1993, when the infant Clinton 
     administration was preparing to micro-manage the nation's 
     health, and hence its behavior. Furthermore, do not all 
     bureaucracies tend to try to maximize their missions? EPA's 
     mission is to reduce environmental hazards. What kind of 
     people are apt to be attracted to work in EPA? Those prone to 
     acute anxieties about hazards. Is an agency apt to get 
     increased appropriations and media attention by moderate 
     assessments of hazards? What is the evidentiary value of 
     the EPA defenders' assertion, in response to the judge, 
     that in California (where smoking has been banned even in 
     bars) the state EPA agrees that secondhand smoke is a 
     serious carcinogen?
       The anti-tobacco crusade was a money grab by government 
     that, had the grab succeeded, would have acquired a 
     dependence on a continuous high level of smoking to fund 
     programs paid for by exactions from a legal industry selling 
     a legal product to free people making foolish choices. The 
     crusade's rationale was threefold: Secondhand smoke is deadly 
     to nonsmokers; people start smoking because they, poor 
     things, are putty in the hands of advertisers; smokers cannot 
     stop because nicotine is too addictive.
       The last rationale is inconvenienced by the fact that there 
     are almost as many American ex-smokers as smokers. The 
     assertion of the irresistible power of advertising is so 
     condescending toward the supposedly malleable masses (notice, 
     the people who assert the power of advertising never include 
     themselves among the susceptible), the anti-tobacco crusade 
     had to become a children's crusade. Hence the reiterated 
     assertion that almost as many 6-year-olds--90 percent of 
     them--recognize Joe Camel as recognize Mickey Mouse. This 
     assertion, akin to EPA's ``science,'' was based entirely on 
     interviews with 23 Atlanta preschoolers. There has been no 
     demonstration that advertising by tobacco brands increases 
     tobacco consumption (rather than particular brands' market 
     shares).
       One mechanism of the money grab was to be a tax increase of 
     up to $1.50 per pack. However, John E. Calfee of the American 
     Enterprise Institute, writing in the Weekly

[[Page E1501]]

     Standard, notes that in the late 1970s, when teenage smoking 
     declined nearly one-third, cigarette prices were declining 
     about 15 percent. Given that teenage smokers smoke an average 
     of only eight cigarettes a day, adding even a dime per smoke 
     ($2 per pack) would not deter them.
       The 40 percent decline in smoking between 1975 and 1993 
     coincided with a public health campaign emphasizing 
     individual responsibility for choices. Then came the Clinton 
     administration and the ascendancy of victimology: Wicked 
     corporations preying upon helpless individuals are 
     responsible for individuals' behavior. Calfee says per capita 
     cigarette consumption has barely declined since 1993.
       Also in the Weekly Standard, Dennis Prager, a theologian 
     and talk-show host, notes that the full apparatus of the 
     modern state has been mobilized for ``the largest public 
     relations campaign in history teaching Americans this: If you 
     smoke, you are in no way responsible for what happens to you. 
     You are entirely a victim.''
       This assault on the idea of personal responsibility, Prager 
     writes, further pollutes ``a country that regularly teaches 
     its citizens to blame others--government, ads, parents, 
     schools, movies, genes, sugar, tobacco , alcohol, sexism, 
     racism--for their poor decisions and problems.'' This 
     assault, a result of the politics produced by a culture of 
     irresponsibility, is an emblematic fruit of Clintonism.

     

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