Advocacy Archive
(Even More) Travels Down Tobacco Road
June 11, 1998
Dear Colleague:
Behavioral research is back in the tobacco bill -- in a big way. By again working with (and taking a lead from) the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, APS helped forge a compromise among key Senators involved in the NIH portion of the tobacco bill. The agreement is on how much of $2.5 billion slated to go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) annually should be devoted to basic and applied behavioral research aspects of smoking. The short answer? Plenty.
The tobacco bill being debated on the Senate floor (even as I write) now mandates that first 5 percent and over time 20 percent of this yearly $2.5 billion will fund basic and applied behavioral research that has the potential to prevent tobacco use in kids. And this is on top of having behavior specifically listed in the general NIH research that would receive the rest of the $2.5 billion.
These are the terms of a compromise reached today after weeks of negotiations among Senators Jeffords (R-VT), Mack (R-FL), Harkin (D-IA), McCain (R-AZ) and Kennedy (D-MA). The compromise was sparked by an amendment, now agreed to, developed by Sen. Jeffords and cosponsored by Sens. Harkin and Bingaman (D-NM).
The central provision of the amendment features the following language we developed with the Campaign on the percentage of the $2.5 billion and its use: "...[T]o expand existing support (including the training of researchers) for epidemiological, behavioral, psychopharmacological, psychobiological, psychophysiological, health services and social science research related to the prevention and treatment of tobacco addiction. Research described in this paragraph shall include research on the effect of nicotine on brain and behavior, as well as the behavioral etiology of tobacco use." The amendment also contains a provision for the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research to assess and report to Congress on how these funds are used.
The language reconnects the NIH money to tobacco and to behavioral research, connections that got lost at one point along the legislative path. To recap: Tobacco legislation that came out of a Senate committee in May created two streams of NIH money. Most of the $2.5 billion would have gone to NIH research generally, although loosely linked to tobacco-related diseases. Some would have gone to social and behavioral research linked to tobacco. But NIH and many biological groups protested the links and the specific stream of money for behavioral research as too constraining. You never know where tobacco-related results will come from, they said. Why limit any of it? (Try that line next time you are asked to link your NIH behavioral application closer to a specific disease. Think it will work?)
The protests won, and the bill was changed before it hit the Senate floor. No tobacco-linked mandate and no percentage for behavior. It wasn't a complete wash, since the importance of behavioral research was throughout the bill and its explanatory report. But it was clear that the bill needed something stronger to make sure that money would go specifically for research on smoking as a behavior and as a public health issue. We have been working to reestablish a more direct behavioral research focus ever since. Now it's happened.
Don't forget the usual qualifications, more than usual in this case: Tobacco legislation has a long way to go; There are lots of issues more controversial than this one, and even here we need to continue to fend off efforts trying to undo it; The House of Representatives has given few clues on what they will do; And the clock keeps ticking toward adjournment for the year with less than two months worth of legislative days left before November elections. BUT, if all goes well, there might be $500 million more per year in new behavioral research aimed at stemming one of the most important public health problems of the century.
Stay tuned, Alan