Is The Bush Admin. Blowing Smoke?
Weekly commentary by CBS Evening News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer.
First disclosure: I'm a cancer survivor, and have lived for a long time with another disease called ulcerative colitis, both of which I probably got because of a long-ago, heavy addiction to nicotine.
So I am delighted the House will vote this week on legislation that for the fist time will give the Food and Drug Administration real power to regulate tobacco products. I hope it passes.
For the record, John McCain and Barack Obama, who don't agree on much, agree this needs to be done. So does the American Cancer Society, as well as the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and on and on.
The administration - incredibly, in my opinion - opposes it for a reason that would make the Queen of Hearts from "Alice in Wonderland" proud.
Their reason: that the FDA already has such a huge job monitoring food safety that it just doesn't have the resources to take on the additional job of regulating tobacco.
If it did, the administration argues, regulating food and drugs might suffer.
I couldn't be more serious. That really is their main reason.
By that logic, we shouldn't have asked the military or our intelligence agencies to get involved in fighting terrorism after 9/11. For sure, they already had plenty to do before Osama bin Laden came along.
In "Alice," after the Queen of Hearts issued her weird orders, her husband the King had a way of undoing them when she wasn't looking.
Well, maybe Congress can do the same and pass this by veto-proof margins.
Because every day, 1,000 children in America are learning to smoke, and for 20 years now, 400,000 Americans have died each year from tobacco-related diseases.
That's no fairy tale. Those are just the facts.
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By Bob Schieffer
