In regards to this lawsuit, the fox will be guarding the hen house if Ashcroft is approved as US Attorney General. SmokeFree Pennsylvania will urge Senators to reject Ashcroft's nomination, and other tobacco control advocates are urged to do likewise.

Following are a few chronologically arranged articles detailing Senator Ashcroft's leading role in opposing and ultimately defeating federal tobacco control legislation in 1998.
(submitted by Bill Godshall)

Senate committee okays tobacco bill

UPN (UPI US & World)
Date: Wed, Apr 1, 1998

WASHINGTON, April 1 (UPI) -- The Senate commerce committee has approved a sweeping tobacco settlement bill, freeing it for a floor vote sometime in May.

Committee members voted 19-1 tonight in favor of the bill, which proposes a $1.10 hike in cigarette taxes, promises sharp restrictions on tobacco advertising and marketing, and outlines hefty fines for companies if youth smoking is not reduced by 60 percent within the next decade.

Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., was the lone voice of dissent, objecting that the bill could destroy the tobacco companies -- and with them the tobacco farmers in his state.

After months of debate and competing proposals, the tobacco settlement is moving with lightening speed. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced the bill on Monday, and shepherded it through the committee he chairs in a single, marathon day of debate.

The committee offered several amendments to the bill, none of which changed it substantially. The legislation would resolve lawsuits between states and the tobacco industry over smoking- related health care costs.

McCain's bill is much harsher than the original settlement between companies and state attorneys general. He rejected the industry's request for immunity from many types of future lawsuits -- the bill's only concession is a $6.5 billion cap on companies' annual damage payments in civil suits.

The bill's main goal, McCain said, is to reduce youth smoking, and the bill would penalize companies by hundreds of millions of dollars a year if the number of youth smokers does not begin dropping sharply over the next years.

Companies also would pay more than $490 billion into a tobacco trust fund over the next 25 years, which would be used to offset smoking medical expenses and treatment programs.

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Missouri's senators are on opposite sides of tobacco settlement Ashcroft calls proposal a 'big-government travesty' Bond backs higher tax

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Thursday, May 14, 1998, Page A4
By Jon Sawyer Post-Dispatch

The political fissures over the big anti-tobacco bill opened a yawning chasm Wednesday between Missouri's two Republican senators.

Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., said he would use every possible weapon, including the filibuster, to defeat bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing youth smoking that could come up for a Senate vote as soon as next week.

"It would be a big-government travesty at its biggest," Ashcroft told a press conference on the Capitol lawn, "to use the tragedy of tobacco as a smokescreen to cover the expansion of the Nanny state."

On April 1, Ashcroft was the lone holdout when the Senate Commerce Committee voted 19-1 in favor of the bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee's chair. It includes sweeping new controls on the marketing of tobacco and would raise the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack to try to deter teen- age smoking.

On Wednesday, Ashcroft didn't look so lonely. He appeared with fellow opponent Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., and they were flanked by leaders of more than a dozen national organizations with broad support among mainstream Republicans - from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Heritage Foundation.

Those speaking, including Ashcroft, directed much of their fury over the proposed legislation at the apostasy of Republicans backing what the critics consider a whopping new expansion in federal taxes and spending.

"We should be debating how we send money back to the American people and how we provide tax relief," Ashcroft said, "rather than debating a proposal under a smokescreen of the tobacco settlement to increase taxes monumentally. This is a question about the direction of the Republican Party. It's a strange phenomenon in Washington," he added, "where taxes and spending are the only things more addictive than nicotine. . . .

"I think this kind of tax increase is not the appropriate subject for a Republican Congress."

Ashcroft's colleague, Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., is among Republicans who consider tax increases on tobacco not only appropriate but necessary. Bond has supported the basic thrust of McCain's legislation; he favors price increases of as much as $1.50 per pack of cigarettes.

"Generally speaking, the senator is opposed to tax increases," Bond's spokeswoman Leanne Jerome said. "But our goal here in the tobacco legislation is to put the price of tobacco out of range of most teen-agers. Sen. Bond has said the McCain bill is a step in the right direction."

As for Ashcroft, Jerome said, "he is entitled to his opinion. He's following his view and it happens to differ with ours."

Ashcroft said that he had not discussed the issue with Bond and did not know his position. He disagreed with the suggestion that Bond, facing a re-election campaign this fall, might find it more difficult to oppose a legislative crackdown on tobacco that appears to have broad public support.

"I don't think so," Ashcroft said. "When the American people understand that this is a massive enlargement of government - that it's 17 new boards and commissions, a 25-year commitment to higher taxes, locked-in spending without any assurance that the spending would be effective . . . I think most Americans would say, 'Wait a second.' I think Americans are beginning to understand this for what it is."

Bond and Ashcroft have been the targets of newspaper advertisements sponsored by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which supports the McCain bill. The White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress have also supported the bill's main thrust, while calling for tougher penalty provisions and the removal of even limited protections for the tobacco industry against future lawsuits.

Bond and Ashcroft do not accept contributions from individuals or political action committees associated with the tobacco industry, spokesmen said. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., has adopted a similar policy.

Ashcroft noted that he does not smoke and never has. Bond, by contrast, is a connoisseur of fine cigars. Visitors to the Russell Senate Office Building often know he's at work just from the aroma in the halls.

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Tobacco bill dies in senate after a fierce four-week floor fight Settlement between big tobacco and states is stalled: GOP critics say measure was 'tax and spend' Democrats vow to revive it before elections.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Thursday, June 18, 1998, Page: A1
From News Services

Senate Republicans killed tobacco legislation Wednesday, leaving the problem of cutting teen-age smoking and reducing tobacco-related deaths to state legislatures and courts across the country.

EXCERPT
Republican opponents of the bill, which would have raised the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack, argued that it was not primarily an anti-smoking measure but a tax increase to pay for government programs. "This is a massive tax on low-income Americans, and it is used to proliferate the bureaucracy of this government," said Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo.

But Sen. John McCain, the maverick Republican from Arizona who was the bill's chief sponsor, emphasized the importance of stopping teen-agers from getting hooked on smoking. "This bill is not about taxes," he told the Senate just before the votes. "It's about whether we're going to allow the death march of 418,000 Americans a year who die early from tobacco-related disease and do nothing."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said he would try to revive some form of tobacco legislation, but only a bill "that is narrowly focused on teen smoking."

It was a remarkable triumph for Big Tobacco, which invested tens of millions of dollars on an advertising campaign to kill the bill. Many of the arguments contained in those ads advanced the same arguments that Republican critics have been making on the Senate floor.

Left unclear is the fate of the huge settlement that several states reached with the tobacco industry a little more than a year ago to end their lawsuits. That agreement sparked the drive to write legislation in the Senate, but election-year politics and other forces swiftly intruded.

Dozens of court cases against the industry are still pending, including 36 from state attorneys general, several from health insurers and an ever-growing list of individual lawsuits. "This bill may be dead, but tobacco legislation is not dead,"said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Tobacco companies walked away from the bill when it was expanded beyond the amount they had agreed to with the states, rising to $516 billion over 25 years from $368 billion.

Funds from the $1.10-a-pack increase in the cost of cigarettes would have gone to help states pay their smoking-related health care costs, finance an anti-smoking advertising campaign and pay for health research.

At the insistence of Republicans, the bill also was expanded to include an election-year tax cut for couples making less than $50,000, a series of anti-drug provisions and a cap on fees for lawyers in lawsuits against the tobacco industry.

Republicans pulled the plug on the bill by invoking a procedural point - that it violates the spending caps set in the 1997 balanced-budget agreement. Senators from Missouri and Illinois voted along party lines. Sens. (John Ashcroft) and Christopher "Kit" Bond, both Missouri Republicans, voted against cutting off debate and bringing the measure to a vote.

Ashcroft and Bond then voted against waiving the budget act, sending the bill back to committee. Sens. Dick Durbin and Carol Moseley-Braun, both Illinois Democrats, voted to end debate and waive the budget act so that the bill could be voted on.

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Personal Values, Public choices
Op/Ed by Dag McLeod
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tuesday, August 11, 1998, Page B7

When the major tobacco companies began their $40 million advertising blitz to defeat the Universal Tobacco Settlement, better known as the McCain bill, I took the advice of one of their television commercials. I called an 800 number paid for by the tobacco companies to contact my senators and let them know what I thought of the legislation.

I strongly supported the McCain bill that was defeated in June by the combined muscle of the ad campaign and a minority of conservative Republicans in the Senate. Since one of my senators, John Ashcroft, had actually attempted to derail the bill with a brief filibuster on the floor of the Senate I thought he might need extra prodding. So, I also sent him an e-mail message expressing my dismay at his willingness to shill for tobacco interests.

In response, I received the following: "I am not a champion of using federal taxes as a tool for 'socially engineering' - to force people into adopting my personal values. Further, I am not persuaded that we should 'collect in advance' from people for smoking-related illnesses. We do not have 'collect in advance' policies for alcoholics, couch potatoes, fast food junkies, or others with high-risk lifestyles. This bill would cross an important line, by using huge tax hikes as a club with which to mandate particular behavior choices of adults."

Now, let me see if I've got this right: Ashcroft rejects the McCain tobacco bill because he doesn't want government to legislate lifestyle choices or morality?

Is this the same Ashcroft who championed welfare reform legislation that discourages welfare recipients from having more children? How does this position square with his opposition to gays in the military or his staunch support for the "defense of marriage" act, both of which use government legislation to mandate perhaps the most personal of values -- sexual orientation?

I am astounded to learn that Ashcroft has become a moral relativist. Never mind that the major tobacco companies have been lying to the American public for years. Never mind that they targeted children in their advertising; attempted to spike cigarettes to make them more addictive; knew years before anyone else the health hazards associated with smoking and perjured themselves before Congress in trying to cover it all up. Ashcroft and other conservatives in the Senate appear content now to "let it all hang out." Personal responsibility be damned if you happen to be a major corporation that produces a potentially lethal commodity.

In addition to the moral relativism that characterizes the new approach by conservative Republicans, the tobacco companies and Ashcroft also fashioned a curious, class-based argument against the McCain bill. Television ads against the legislation warned ominously that lower-income Americans would pay the majority of the new taxes raised by the McCain bill. In his response to my letter, Ashcroft writes that he opposed the McCain bill because the taxes it contained "would fall most heavily on middle- and lower-income households."

It's true, lower-income Americans smoke more heavily than upper-income Americans, and a tax on cigarettes will therefore disproportionately affect the poor. Of course, raising the price of cigarettes is intended to discourage low-income Americans from starting in the first place and encourage them to quit smoking once they've started.

Ashcroft discards this argument by insisting that smoking is a matter of personal values. But what about the public values attached to our personal choices? Specifically, what is the price we all pay for smoking-related illnesses?

Consider for a moment the fact that if low-income Americans are more likely to smoke, then low-income Americans are also more likely to contract cancer and emphysema. Low-income Americans, then, are more likely to require costly medical interventions before one-third of them finally die from smoking-related illnesses. Low- income Americans, however, are also the least likely to be covered by medical insurance. So, when they do fall ill, we all end up paying the tab. Middle-income Americans, those who are covered by health insurance, already face a "collect in advance" policy as an incentive not to smoke: their insurance premiums go up if they do.

Public policy inevitably affects personal choices. Whether we drive or take the train to work depends upon the price of gas as opposed to the price of the train both of which, in turn, depend upon a wide range of public policies regulating imports, the environment, road and rail construction, health and safety. That's the point of government policy: to encourage socially beneficial behaviors and discourage socially harmful behaviors.

The real questions, then, revolve around what we can agree are socially harmful and socially beneficial behaviors. After years of making dubious arguments about the harmful effects of certain groups "lifestyle choices", Ashcroft has now decided that its better to avoid that debate altogether by insisting, in effect, if it feels good, do it. You've come a long way, baby.

Ashcroft's nephew got probation after major pot bust
Although his arrest for growing 60 plants could have landed him in federal prison, Alex Ashcroft was tried in state court and avoided jail -- despite his uncle's crusade for tougher federal drug laws and mandatory prison sentences

By Daniel Forbes
Jan. 12, 2001
Salon.com

The nephew of Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft received probation after a felony conviction in state court for growing 60 marijuana plants with intent to distribute the drug in 1992 -- a lenient sentence, given that the charges against him often trigger much tougher federal penalties and jail time. Ashcroft was the tough-on-drugs Missouri governor at the time.

Alex Ashcroft, then 25, and his brother Adam, 19, were arrested and charged with production and possession of marijuana after police raided their home in January, 1992. A housemate, Kevin Sheely, then 24, was also arrested. Officials said approximately 60 marijuana plants were found growing in a basement crawl space, and a lighting, irrigation and security system was also discovered.

Although growing more than 50 plants often triggers federal prosecution, and results in jail time -- thanks to federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws Ashcroft fought to toughen as senator -- Alex Ashcroft was prosecuted on a state charge and received probation. His brother Adam did not live in the house and was never prosecuted.

According to Sheely's lawyer, Dan Viets, who practices in Columbia, Mo., Ashcroft tested positive for drugs during his first post-probation drug test, yet still remained free. "As I recall it, in his first month on probation, Alex had a positive urine test," Viets said. He asserted he has spoken to someone who has recently seen documentary evidence of the failed test.

Reached for comment, Alex Ashcroft's father Bob first denied that his son had failed a urine test, then said, "Anything's possible." Asked about the failed urine test, Alex's mother, Beverly Ashcroft, told Salon, "I have no idea. That's such an upsetting time, it's all a little foggy."

Ashcroft was sentenced to three years in the Missouri Department of Correction for a class C felony involving more than 35 grams of marijuana. The sentence was suspended, and he was placed on probation for three years and sentenced to 100 hours of community service, which he served.

Ashcroft's parents point out that Sheely, who went before a different judge, received even lighter treatment. Sheely's records are sealed, and all Viets would say is that his client was officially "not convicted." Bob Ashcroft says, "The prosecutor was from the other side of the aisle. He did everything he could to prosecute my son." His mother, Beverly, adds, "I think the facts are clear that his uncle as governor certainly did not bail Alex out."

There's no evidence Ashcroft intervened on behalf of his nephew, but Alex Ashcroft's connection to the governor was widely known. The arrest made national newspapers, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to USA Today, as well as the local dailies.

Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney transition team, said, "Given Sen. Ashcroft's reputation for zero tolerance, I'm sure if he had anything to do with it, the penalty would be much worse. He would have influenced it [the sentence] in the opposite direction." She declined further comment.

The federal law enforcement official who had jurisdiction over the case at the time, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri Jean Paul Bradshaw II, said he had no knowledge of the Ashcroft case. A Bush appointee, he is now in private practice in Kansas City, Mo.

Others convicted of similar offenses in Missouri have certainly faced tougher punishment. Eric Edmundson, an electrical engineer in Pineville, Mo., served two years in Leavenworth federal prison after his August 1993 arrest for what police said were 51 marijuana plants growing on his property.

Edmundson was accused of selling marijuana, a charge he denies. He accepted a plea bargain to spare his wife, a non-drug user, who was also charged. "You get a bad gut feeling in your heart, when [during sentencing] the judge says 'I'm sorry I have to do this -- no good can come out of it,'" says Edmundson, who now works as a production manager in a circuits factory. He said he's "bitter" that Ashcroft merely got probation after being convicted on similar charges.

The irony of an Ashcroft relative receiving lenient treatment for a drug offense won't be lost on drug reformers. The Drug Reform Coordination Network, a national advocacy group, calls Ashcroft "one of the most hawkish drug warriors supporting some of the most extreme drug war legislation during his tenure in the Senate." He has supported toughening mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and has opposed efforts to end the disparity between penalties for crack and powder cocaine, and to curtail racial profiling.

His nephews' arrests weren't the only drug-related embarrassments during Ashcroft's term as governor. His drug czar had to resign over revelations he'd used drugs himself in his youth.

As for the Ashcroft nephews, their mother reports they are both married and doing well. Alex works in computer installation, and Adam, the younger, is in insurance. "It was a good learning experience," she says. "They're both responsible citizens. It was a stupid college deal that taught the family a lot."

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