he Chronicle ourt rules on tobacco suit e Supreme Court found 5-4 that the FDA cannot regulate tobacco By LINDA GREENHOUSE N.Y. Times News Service
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court Tuesiy dealt a sharp blow to the Clinton adminisation’s efforts to curb smoking, ruling 5-4 that ie Food and Drug Administration had never re-
lived authority icco products.
from Congress to regulate to-
The decision, rejecting rules that the FDA
roposed in 1995 to restrict the marketing of
garettes to minors, hands the
question of na-
'
onal tobacco regulation back to Congress. An fort to confer jurisdiction on the FDA won ime bipartisan support in Congress in 1998 it became mired in a broader debate over hether to give the cigarette industry immunifrom damage suits. Tuesday’s ruling was notable for the strong
language that both the majority and the dissenting opinions used in describing the dangers of smoking, which causes some 400,000 deaths a year in the United States. Although essentially a straightforward ruling on a question of administrative law, the decision paid more than usual attention to the underlying policy issues, as if in recognition that the debate will continue elsewhere. The ruling was welcomed by the industry, but it left cigarette makers still obligated to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to settle lawsuits to recover state health care costs. It also prompted both Vice President A1 Gore and Gov. George W. Bush to call for congressional enactment of stricter controls on tobacco products. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who said in her See TOBACCO on page 8
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eporter critiques welfare reform Former ambassador takes post at Duke By MARY CARMICHAEL The Chronicle
Michelle Crawford was a welfare success story. Hired for her first job off the rolls, she fell to her knees and said, ‘Thank you Jesus, I’m going to pay taxes!” When she recounted her story at Wisconsin’s State of the State address last year, New York Times poverty reporter Jason DeParle was there to record every nuance of her speech. But when DeParle began writing his story a few
months later, the plotline had shifted. Crawford’s children were in and out of trouble. Her husband was recovering from drug addiction. ‘The transformation in her life was partial and tentative at best,” DeParle said. In the decade DeParle has spent covering poverty and welfare reform for the Times, he has learned his share of tough lessons like this one. But his efforts have also brought him great rewards. Last night, DeParle, Trinity ’B2, received the Futrell Award from the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism. The award, sponsored by publisher and journalist Ashley B. “Brownie” Futrell Jr., Trinity ’7B, honors a Duke alumnus for extraordinary achievements in journalism. Futrell’s paper, North Carolina’s WashREPORTER Jason DeParle spoke on campus Tuesday. ington Daily News, won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for exposing carcinogenic water contamination. mothers. And he also found that welfare had been “a Like that paper, DeParle has a tradition of jourlot less central to their existence” than some assumed. nalistic public service. He spent two years as a Henry With two jobs, a car and a 401k, the former welfare Luce Scholar working in a squatters’ camp in the recipient DeParle came to know as Nurse Margaret epitPhilippines. The journal he kept there inspired him to omized “what was being celebrated nationally,” he said. begin the career that eventually led him to his slot at But problems lurked under the surface. Her first car had the Times. been stolen and she was still officially poor, often getting DeParle’s post-ceremonial lecture last night, titled by with little food and no electricity. Her boyfriend beat “Life After Welfare: Reporting on the Human Impact her and she couldn’t pass the graduate equivalency of Policy and Politics,” was based on his best-known diploma test. Worse yet, her greatest source of pride—work, a 1999 12-part series on the struggles of Milher two jobs—left her with no time to raise her children. waukee’s poor after welfare reform. Then there was Lashanda Washington, who had reMilwaukee has been nationally lauded as the city united with her mother after years in foster care. ‘The where welfare rolls have dropped most steeply. But reunification was not an unqualified good thing,” DeBeParle discovered that America, “eager to claim Parle said. “Her mother is a crack addict.” Washington quick success,” had celebrated too quickly. was also supporting an outlaw sister and an abusive When DeParle began work on the series, media or- boyfriend. “I got so caught up in these troubled eddies ganizations nationwide had pounced on welfare as a of her life, that it was a long time before I realized I not topic. “I went to a homeless shelter, and the first was writing about a success story,” DeParle said. our people I talked to had the His months in Milwaukee made it clear that Presibusiness cards of five other reporters,” DeParle said with a wry grin. dent Bill Clinton’s original reform goals have been But as the months passed and the reporters left, twisted. The success of Clinton’s plan, he added, is too eParle stayed behind, seeking out people like Crawcomplex to be judged by numbers alone. “The convenord. He found them at the Academy of Excellence, a tional yardsticks we’re using... don’t begin to tell the wo-week professional prep course aimed at single story of what’s happened in people’s lives.” Q
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By ANYA SOSTEK The Chronicle
To James Joseph, the scene on the beach that day in 1973 was emblematic of South Africa as a whole. Marring the beauty of the ocean waves and sandy shores, a sign stuck out of the ground, emblazoned with the words “Whites Only, No Dogs Allowed.” Joseph, the new leader-in-residence of the Hart Leadership Program, was visiting South Africa for the first time on a business outing related to his work as president of the Cummins Engine Foundation. Standing in front of that sign, Joseph took his first steps toward accomplishing his true mission. “I went to gather ammunition for the war—we were a war waging against apartheid,” he said. “Because I was an officer of a multi-national corporation, I had credentials that allowed me to go where most blacks couldn’t. They didn’t see me as an activist—until I made my speech.” That speech, made on the beach that day to media and onlookers, strongly denounced the policies of the apartheid government, and came as a shock James Joseph to the same government that had extended its hospitality to the black American Joseph’s comments had their intended effect, sending waves through the South African public. Many newspapers ran Joseph’s photo on the front page; one headline read, “Black American Says Dignity Insulted.” After receiving threatening phone calls throughout that night, Joseph took the next plane home, scared and appalled by the conditions he had witnessed. But in the more than 25 years since—including the three he just served there as U.S. ambassador—he has remained an activist in a business suit, doing everything in his power to fight for equality there. Sitting at his desk in Durham’s Red Mill Building, Joseph is still fighting. But now, through the Hart Leadership Program and as a professor of the practice at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, his issues and tactics have changed considerably. See JOSEPH on page 9
V.R AcademicAffairs: JASON BERGSMAN DREW ENSIGN VR CommunityInteraction: ROB LEONARD SEAN YOUNG •
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