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Here is an insightful tidbit from Sid Mukherjee's book on the Crab:
"...The most effective method to alert consumers about this risk, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) felt, was to imprint the message on the product itself. Cigarette packages were thus to be labeled with Caution: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Health. It May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Diseases. The same warning label was to be attached to all advertisements in print media.
As news of the proposed FTC action moved through Washington, panic spread through the tobacco industry. Lobbying and canvassing by cigarette manufacturers to prevent any such warning label reached a febrile pitch. Desperate to halt the FTC's juggernaut...the tobacco makers crafted a strategy that, at first glace, seemed counterintuitive: rather than being regulated by the FTC, they voluntarily requested regulation by Congress.
The gambit had a deeply calculated logic. Congress, it was well-known, would be inherently more sympathetic to the interests of tobacco makers. Tobacco was the economic lifeblood of Southern States, and the industry had bribed politicians and funded campaigns so extensively over the years that negative political action was inconceivable. Conversely, the FTC's unilateral activism on tobacco had turned out to be such a vexing embarrassment to politicians that Congress was expected to at least symbolically rap the wrist of the vigilante commission---in part, by lighteneing its blow to tobacco. The effect would be a double boon. By voluntarily pushing for congressional control, the tobacco industry would perform a feat of political acrobatics---a leap from the commission's hostile fire to the much milder frying pan of the Congress.
So it proved. In Congress, the FTC's recommendations were diluted and rediluted as it changed hands from hearing to hearing and committee to subcommittee, leading to a denervated and attenuated shadow of the bill's former self...Entitled the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act (FCLLA) of 1965, it changed the FTC's warning label to Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. The dire, potent language of the original label---most notably the words cancer, cause, and death---was expunged. To ensure uniformity, state laws were also enfolded into the FCLLA---in effect, ensuring that no stronger warning label could exist in any state in America. The result, as the journalist Elizabeth Drew noted in the Atlantic Monthly, was "an unabashed act to protect private industry from government regulation. Politicians were far more protective of the narrow interests of tobacco than of the broad interest of public health. Tobacco makers need not have bothered inventing protective filters, Drew wrote drily:
Congress had turned out to be "the best filter yet"..."
....Pages 264-5
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Here is an insightful tidbit from Sid Mukherjee's book on the Crab:
"...The most effective method to alert consumers about this risk, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) felt, was to imprint the message on the product itself. Cigarette packages were thus to be labeled with Caution: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Health. It May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Diseases. The same warning label was to be attached to all advertisements in print media.
As news of the proposed FTC action moved through Washington, panic spread through the tobacco industry. Lobbying and canvassing by cigarette manufacturers to prevent any such warning label reached a febrile pitch. Desperate to halt the FTC's juggernaut...the tobacco makers crafted a strategy that, at first glace, seemed counterintuitive: rather than being regulated by the FTC, they voluntarily requested regulation by Congress.
The gambit had a deeply calculated logic. Congress, it was well-known, would be inherently more sympathetic to the interests of tobacco makers. Tobacco was the economic lifeblood of Southern States, and the industry had bribed politicians and funded campaigns so extensively over the years that negative political action was inconceivable. Conversely, the FTC's unilateral activism on tobacco had turned out to be such a vexing embarrassment to politicians that Congress was expected to at least symbolically rap the wrist of the vigilante commission---in part, by lighteneing its blow to tobacco. The effect would be a double boon. By voluntarily pushing for congressional control, the tobacco industry would perform a feat of political acrobatics---a leap from the commission's hostile fire to the much milder frying pan of the Congress.
So it proved. In Congress, the FTC's recommendations were diluted and rediluted as it changed hands from hearing to hearing and committee to subcommittee, leading to a denervated and attenuated shadow of the bill's former self...Entitled the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act (FCLLA) of 1965, it changed the FTC's warning label to Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. The dire, potent language of the original label---most notably the words cancer, cause, and death---was expunged. To ensure uniformity, state laws were also enfolded into the FCLLA---in effect, ensuring that no stronger warning label could exist in any state in America. The result, as the journalist Elizabeth Drew noted in the Atlantic Monthly, was "an unabashed act to protect private industry from government regulation. Politicians were far more protective of the narrow interests of tobacco than of the broad interest of public health. Tobacco makers need not have bothered inventing protective filters, Drew wrote drily:
Congress had turned out to be "the best filter yet"..."
....Pages 264-5
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