328 



Mr. Waxman. So you are discussing documents based on an arti- 

 cle you read in the New York Times. 



Mr. Califano. I am discussing documents based on the New 

 York Times articles by Mr. Hiltz. 



Mr. Waxman. So if a court order would apply to you, as this let- 

 ter seems to suggest, because you read an article in the New York 

 Times, everyone watching this hearing on C-Span would probably 

 also be enjoined from discussing this information about some docu- 

 ments that had been referred to and characterized in an article 

 that you have talked about from the New York Times. 



Mr. Califano. That is right, Mr. Chairman. I think you should 

 note, when people do something like this, it is not only an attempt 

 to intimidate me but it is an attempt to send a signal to anyone 

 else this committee might want to call as a witness to say, "If you 

 are going to go before that committee, you better beware." I mean 

 that is what I mean when I say I also think this is a blatant at- 

 tempt to obstruct the work of this committee. 



Mr. Waxman. Well, it is called stonewalling. It is called intimida- 

 tion. It is trying to put a chilling effect on everybody who might 

 have some information or some ideas about the problems of tobacco 

 and its use and the consequences of it to this country. 



You were there in the early days when our policy was formulated 

 30 years ago in the White House with President Johnson. You were 

 there as Secretary of HEW under President Carter. You indicated 

 that you were very cautious in your decisions as to what you would 

 characterize. You said in your testimony the head of the National 

 Institute of Drug Abuse of the United States said to you as the Sec- 

 retary that you ought to talk about the addiction from cigarettes; 

 you felt you didn't want to make that statement so unequivocally 

 because you wanted to be absolutely sure of any scientific assertion 

 that was made in any Government position. 



I find it amazing to have you criticized now for having known 15 

 years ago what the executives of the tobacco industry 3 weeks ago 

 still denied, and that was that cigarettes are addictive, and then 

 to criticize you for not having acted on the inforaiation because you 

 tried to be responsible and prudent by the way you handled that 

 very issue. 



I must say that I am just really quite astounded at the over- 

 reaching of the tobacco industry to try to, even at this day, to keep 

 information from getting to the public. 



Now you were there when the policy was formulated. Now iron- 

 ically enough, you are in a position where we are evaluating 30 

 years of this policy where we did not take further action to stop 

 smoking in this country, and the Medicare program may go broke, 

 health care reform may be a sham, if we have to pay for the enor- 

 mous health care costs because of cigarette smoking and because 

 people weren't warned about addiction when they decided to exper- 

 iment, usually as kids, with this particular product. Isn't that real- 

 ly what we are talking about? 



Mr. Califano. That is, Mr. Chairman, you are absolutely right, 

 and you put your finger on the most important hot button cur- 

 rently, which is that health care reform is doomed to fail unless we 

 deal with cigarette smoking and, I might add, some of the other 



