TOBACCO WARS . . . CIG CHIEF FIRES BACK, STATES TO SUE?

The week's wave of anti-tobacco rhetoric seemed to crest inside and outside the Beltway. Brown & Williamson Tobacco CEO Thomas Sandefur told a House panel his company was "set up" by the Food and Drug Administration, which he accused of trying to usher in a "backdoor prohibition" of cigarettes. Sandefur also denied yesterday's FDA charges that his company used a genetically altered tobacco to "spike" cigarettes with nicotine. Attorney General Janet Reno, meanwhile, announced she is looking into whether U.S. tobacco companies lied to Congress and to regulators to conceal health hazards in smoking. To round out the day, the attorney general of Mississippi, which has previously filed suit against the companies to recoup the health-care costs of taxpayers who smoke, said half a dozen other states were about to pile on. West Virginia and Florida have already announced their own actions.