- guardian.co.uk, Monday January 8 2001 01.35 GMT
The radical strategy, explained in a book by David Kessler, the former head of the powerful food and drug administration, will send shivers through the tobacco industry, which is still reeling from successive class action awards made against it on behalf of lung cancer sufferers. Dr Kessler says the industry should be dismantled and cigarettes sold only in plain wrappers on a non-profit basis to existing addicts.
The proposed strategy comes just after the publication of figures showing that cancer rates have fallen over the last decade by 16% in California, the state with the toughest anti-smoking laws, compared with 2.7% elsewhere in the United States.
Dr Kessler's new book, A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry, suggests that there is now no other way to deal with tobacco than dismantle the tobacco companies as they now stand and allow them to operate only as a regulated organisation, similar to a public utility, able to supply cigarette addicts but not allowed to market their product. The money paid by smokers would be used only to cover the costs of production and transport.
"Although nicotine and cigarettes have to remain available, you cannot ethically and morally allow companies to make a profit," argues Dr Kessler, who is now the dean of the Yale University medical school. He believes that if the profit motive were removed from the equation, the industry would gradually die. Without a profit, the powerful tobacco industry would be unable to lobby politicians as successfully as it has in the past.
Dr Kessler tells how he was once told by Hillary Clinton: "I really admire what you are doing. It's Orwellian to say that nicotine is not a drug."
Her husband Bill was more reluctant to tackle the issue, he says, arguing that the Democrats' stance on tobacco and gun control had cost them control of Congress. However, Dr Kessler was able to persuade the president to mount an aggressive campaign against marketing cigarettes to children.
Whether Dr Kessler's suggestions will have much resonance within George W Bush's administration is another matter. Shares in tobacco companies rose as news of Mr Bush's victory was confirmed.
