WASHINGTON -- The cigarette industry, under challenge on so many fronts for so long that it treats crisis as the norm, is warily anticipating relief from aggressive attacks in Congress.
With the new Republican chiefs of key congressional committees saying that Congress and federal agencies should go easier on tobacco regulation, the industry faces fewer threats from Capitol Hill.
Anti-smoking forces in Congress, which have long kept tobacco company executives under siege, concede that the mood will be different in the legislative halls. "There's reason for concern," said Rep. Martin Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat and member of the informal anti-smoking bloc of legislators.
Noting Republican leaders' comments, especially about ending an aggressive House subcommittee investigation, Mr. Meehan said: "The only remedy will be to look to the courts and the legal system."
Twice in the past 40 years, the industry faced separate waves of legal battles in the courts and survived both handily. A more intense "third wave" is now spreading across the judicial landscape.
Mr. Meehan said his most immediate interest is in a more aggressive Justice Department probe on whether tobacco executives lied to Congress earlier this year when they said that nicotine is not addictive and that its levels aren't manipulated in cigarettes. The inquiry, he said, "obviously takes on an increased importance" now that congressional pressure on the industry seems likely to ease.
John F. Banzhaf III, a law professor in Washington who has waged a campaign in and out of courts and government agencies against the industry through his group, Action on Smoking and Health, said any prospect of getting anti-smoking legislation out of Congress is "very substantially decreased -- probably to zero."
What smoking foes will miss the most in Congress, he said, are "the kinds of hearings that [Rep. Henry A.] Waxman has run."
Mr. Waxman, a California Democrat, has led the Health and the Environment subcommittee as it repeatedly lambasted the industry and its executives, and exposed industry secrets.
Now, that forum is about to close down. The top Republican on Mr. Waxman's panel is Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr., whose Richmond, Va., district includes a Philip Morris plant as one of its largest employers. In January, Mr. Bliley moves up to chair the subcommittee's parent panel, the Commerce Committee, and he has vowed to stop the Waxman investigation.
But the tobacco industry is not relaxing. "We cannot presume for a moment that anyone on Capitol Hill has our interests at heart," said Tobacco Institute spokesman Thomas Lauria.
The industry has long been accustomed to defending itself vigorously, whether or not it gets help from its allies in Congress -- as it often does. (No anti-tobacco legislation emerged this year, even though many such ideas were put forward.)
Of the more supportive words from GOP lawmakers, Mr. Lauria said: "We welcome their remarks, and we are glad to hear them." Most welcome, apparently, were the remarks of Mr. Bliley, who said bluntly last month: "I don't think we need any more legislation regulating tobacco."
Sen. Nancy L. Kassebaum, a Kansas Republican who will chair the Labor and Human Resources Committee, said last month that, in general, she opposes federal workplace controls -- including anti-smoking rules -- when states already are acting in those areas. "A lot of states are doing things -- why should we?" she said in a Washington Post interview. (Maryland has been one of the more active states moving to ban smoking, but that is stalled -- at least temporarily -- in the courts.)
If there is to be a fight in the new Republican-controlled Congress, it apparently will be over what Mr. Lauria called "the multi-pronged attack on tobacco" coming from the Clinton administration.
"Anti-smoking interests enjoy a special status at the White House," said the Tobacco Institute spokesman. He noted that the administration proposed sharply higher cigarette taxes to help pay for health care reform (a move that failed), imposed a tight smoking ban on workplaces in the military and put two agencies to work on potential measures that he said "could dramatically threaten the economic viability of the industry."
In February, the Food and Drug Administration began studying whether it has the authority to regulate cigarettes under its drug-control powers. The FDA concedes that, if it uses such authority to the fullest, that could mean that cigarettes could no longer be sold if they contained nicotine at levels "that cause or satisfy addiction," as FDA Commissioner David Kessler put it.
The study does not have a timetable, and FDA officials say they have no idea what will be the next step if they find that they have power to treat nicotine-containing cigarettes as a drug. To impose such controls, the FDA must first find that nicotine has druglike effects on the body, perhaps including addiction (an issue that the FDA already thinks is settled), and then, whether the industry manipulated the nicotine levels with the specific aim of achieving those effects.
Even if the FDA does find that it could impose restraints on nicotine levels, it may not want to do so without first getting congressional approval -- a step that now seems unlikely. The more immediate question is whether congressional committees' "oversight" powers could be used to discourage the study or to cut off its funding.
Mr. Bliley has promised to fight any effort by the FDA to regulate tobacco without guidance from Congress.
The other administration study, launched in March by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, focuses on possible standards for clean air inside the nation's workplaces. If the Occupational Safety and Health Administration adopts the idea, and if the final standards are strict, the result could be virtually a total ban on workplace smoking to protect workers from secondhand smoke.
OSHA spokesman Frank Kane said an administrative law judge holding hearings on that proposal may wind up that part of the review near the end of January. After that, supporters and opponents of such a ban will get more time to file written statements, and then OSHA's health standards staff will consider what -- if anything -- to do next.
That study also seems likely to be second-guessed in the new Congress. Ms. Kassebaum said last month that she does not think the federal government should even be involved in the smoking-standards study.
Mr. Banzhaf sees "a role reversal" coming in Congress. This year and last, he said, the anti-smoking forces often "had the upper hand," but industry forces headed off all new legislation.
Now, he said, the anti-smoking lawmakers and lobbyists will try to block any pro-tobacco initiatives -- such as scuttling the FDA and OSHA studies.
If any such measures get through, he said, smoking foes will press President Clinton to veto them and hope that the new Republican Congress cannot override such a veto.
WHERE TOBACCO IS IN TROUBLE
Federal agency threats
* A study by the Food and Drug Administration that could lead to far-reaching federal regulation of smoking, perhaps close to a ban on cigarette use, on a theory that nicotine is an addictive drug.
* A proposed rule, now being studied by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that would ban smoking in virtually all places of work across the country, on the theory that secondhand smoke is harmful to non-smokers.
* A possible presidential order forbidding smoking in all federal government buildings.
State and local government actions
* A spreading campaign to pass laws and ordinances making it a crime to sell cigarettes to youths, or for youths to buy them.
* A separate campaign to ban advertising of cigarettes when the ads are aimed at youths. Baltimore's ordinance against youth-targeted billboards promoting cigarettes is now being reviewed in a federal appeals court. Other states and cities are using the same theory Baltimore did: since it is a crime for youths to obtain cigarettes, advertising them contributes to illegal conduct.
* A variety of efforts to ban smoking in the workplace as a health hazard -- including a broad ban proposed by Maryland state officials but postponed while the courts review it. A nearly total ban on workplace smoking is about to go into effect in California, and somewhat narrower limits are being implemented in Utah
and Vermont.
New and broader challenges in the courts
* Lawsuits to outlaw cigarette advertising aimed at youths. The Supreme Court last month allowed such a case to go to trial in California courts against the "Joe Camel" cartoon ad campaign.
* Lawsuits by two states, likely to be joined soon by Maryland and other states, to have tobacco companies pay back the millions of dollars states have spent on medical expenses for the poor and for state workers and retirees who suffer smoking-related illnesses.
* A major new test case, just starting in New Orleans, that seeks damages from cigarette companies for causing "tens of millions" of smokers to become addicted to nicotine.
* A damage lawsuit in Florida, now representing claims of 60,000 present and former airline flight attendants, based on the argument that crews got sick by exposure to secondhand smoke from passengers' cigarettes.