Senator smoke-free

No one wants to see people suffer from smoking-related illnesses. It’s no different with Sen. Michael B. Enzi, Wyoming Republican, except that he has a pulpit and a plan. And for him, it’s personal.

Mr. Enzi’s idea is to make America a nearly smoke-free country. He scoffs at the idea that his campaign is an affront to free enterprise and a violation of Republican principles.

“I remember my first Senate campaign. I got a check for $5,000 from a tobacco company. I had such a strong opposition to tobacco, I said, ’If it bothers me this much, it’s the wrong thing to do.’ I sent the check back, and I’ve always turned down tobacco money.”

For him, tobacco use is a deeply personal issue. The senator recalls how his father, a smoker for 50 years, quit after seeing a video of children reaching into a beaker representing a smoker’s lung filled with a year’s worth of cigarette tar. The strings of tar that stuck to the children’s fingers prompted Elmer Enzi to quit smoking immediately.

The senator’s father died in 1998 and his mother, Dorothy Enzi, died in April, 2007. His mother-in-law, Evelyn Buckley, died in 1996. Sen. Enzi doesn’t elaborate on the specifics of their deaths. He only says, “They all suffered from smoking-related illnesses.”

“I got to watch two of my moms die from smoking,” he said. “One them was my mother-in-law, and she suffocated pulling an air tank around while she was still able to move, and then wasn’t able to breathe any more. That’s what a lifetime of smoking did for her. I want to see smoking eliminated entirely.”

He remembers a doctor’s visit from his youth in which the doctor credited him with quitting smoking, but the senator had never smoked. The doctor was mistaken — his lungs were clearing up from years of second-hand smoke from his mother and father.

“Anybody that says there’s no such thing a secondary smoke, don’t try and pass that off on me,” he said.

There are more than 45 million smokers in the United States today.

After more than 10 years in the Senate, Mr. Enzi says he is finally being presented with an opportunity to confront tobacco’s lethal effects head-on. Legislation moving through Congress would give the government unprecedented powers to regulate tobacco manufacturers, but Mr. Enzi is taking the opportunity to push for a stronger bill that, he says, would eventually reduce cigarette use in America to practically nothing.

He says legislation sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, is faulty because it puts too much pressure on the Food and Drug Administration, which is already saddled with monitoring a drug industry that has had public image problems with the safety of medicines on the market. Also, Mr. Kennedy’s bill has the support of the tobacco industry, which makes him suspicious of its effectiveness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 percent of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes in 2004, the latest available data.

Earlier this year, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where Mr. Enzi is the top-ranking Republican, advanced a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to restrict advertising it decides targets children, require larger warning labels that would encompass half of a cigarette package and outlaw terms such as “low tar” and “light.”

Phillip Morris USA supports the bill but the tobacco giant’s top two rivals oppose it and claim the bill would serve to strengthen Phillip Morris’ dominant position as the nation’s leading cigarette maker.

The legislation is on hold for now, but supporters said recently that it’s likely to resurface in Congress and come to a vote in the full Senate early this year.

Mr. Enzi is taking a stand against the bill and offering separate legislation that he says would reduce the number of smokers to 2 percent of the current number over a 20-year span. However, he first must contend with legislation that has already passed a Senate committee.

“It became evident we were entering into a treaty with Phillip Morris. I’m suspicious of any bill a tobacco company sponsors,” he said, adding. “I’m interested in ending smoking any way I can. I don’t think the bill ends it. It gives an advantage to Phillip Morris and continues smoking indefinitely. ”

Instead, he is offering an alternative proposal in which every tobacco company would be allocated a certain number of smokers based on their overall market share. Every year, that number of smokers would be reduced, until the total number of smokers, for all companies combined, is only 2 percent of the population.

Cigarette companies could choose to stay in business and sell less product or they could choose to sell their allotment of smokers to another company. Or, anti-smoking groups could buy up allowances from a company that chooses to sell and retire those.

“The idea is to leverage market forces. Some companies will choose to stay in business and be just fine, some folks will choose to sell and will be paid handsomely for their allowances, and in the end, fewer people will smoke, and thus fewer will die from smoking,” said Mike Mahaffey, a spokesman for Mr. Enzi.

Mr. Enzi has been trying to figure out a way to make a difference in the war on smoking without eliminating cigarettes in one swoop. He said ending smoking in the U.S. must be done over time rather than ban them immediately, which he said would create a black market for cigarettes.

“I’m watching people across the nation die every day. I wish I could change it overnight but that’s not reasonable,” he said. “But when we get into this debate, people will be watching and that will affect some people like the way it affected my dad when he saw the video of those children with tar.”

Prospects for Mr. Enzi’s proposal, however, are dim as the major public health groups, including the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, support the FDA regulating the tobacco industry.

“I am moved by his personal story with tobacco,” said Paul Billings, vice president of national advocacy at the American Lung Association. “We have some commonality with Senator Enzi, we don’t want people to die from smoking-related illnesss and welcome his desire. But Senator Kennedy’s bill gives the FDA the authority it needs to monitor marketing and advertising practices of the tobacoo companies.”