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the federal government charged with ensuring that products which the public ingests, 

 implants or applies to the skin are safe, effective, properly packaged and dispensed, 

 properly labeled, and properly marketed. How is it that a product which is a cause of 

 cancer, cardiovascular disease, emphysema, stroke, chronic obstructive lung disease, 

 premature births, osteoporosis, and is addictive remains virtually unregulated at the federal 

 level of government in the way in which it is manufactured, distributed, sold, labeled, 

 advertised and promoted? Why has this unacceptable lack of health and safety controls 

 over tobacco been allowed to perpetuate? Several reasons come to mind. 



Part of the reason lies with Congress's mistake and failure in 1964 to give the FDA the 

 authority it needed even back then to regulate tobacco products as a significant public 

 health problem. We would not be here today talking about the tobacco industry's 

 manipulation of its products if the proper authorities had been vested in the FDA in 1964. 

 Congress's failure to act on the recommendations of then Secretary of Health, Education, 

 and Welfare Celebreeze, to give FDA jurisdiction, stems also in large measure from the 

 tobacco industry's continued assurances to Congress and the American public that it was a 

 responsible industry that would do the "right thing" if it were proven that smoking caused 

 disease. We know now in retrospect that there were no good intentions on the part of the 

 tobacco industry, nor are there today. The promises and assurances that the industry made 

 to the American public as far back as the 1950s, that it would put the public's health above 

 all corporate interests, were nothing but public relations ploys designed to buy the industry 

 time to find ways to keep its products on the market. A confidential internal tobacco 

 institute document in 1972, released to the public during the Cipollone products liability 

 trial, portrays the tobacco industry "holding" strategies to dupe the public and the Congress 

 and to keep its products on the market as "brilliantly conceived and executed. " 



