Health: White House Smoke Signals

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Surgeon General C. Everett Koop is an outspoken enemy of tobacco consumption, advocating a "smoke-free society by the year 2000" as a major U.S. health goal. It was no surprise, then, that Koop planned to testify before a House subcommittee last week in support of legislation that would ban all advertising for tobacco products. But the day before he was to appear, the Washington Post reported that Donald Regan, the President's chief of staff, had barred Koop from testifying. The White House defended the action by saying that his presence on a panel that was to include such anti-smoking organizations as the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society would be perceived as Administration endorsement of the bill.

That rationale did not impress California Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. He charged that the Administration was actually opposed to the legislation, since it would hurt businesses that benefit from the tobacco industry's annual expenditures of $2 billion on advertising and promotion. Koop has now offered to appear in two weeks, if other Administration officials from the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department also come along to offer their views on the proposed bill.