On Thursday, the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy released a Portrait in Oversight describing the 25-year battle waged by Congressman Henry Waxman to expose the health hazards caused by tobacco products and establish safeguards to protect public health. His successful oversight effort, which enlisted both Republican and Democratic colleagues, models how Congress can protect American families from products that endanger their well-being.
“The Big Tobacco congressional investigation helped save millions of Americans from tobacco-related disease and disability, while saving billions of taxpayer dollars that otherwise would have gone to medical bills,” said Jim Townsend, director of the Levin Center. “The new Portrait in Oversight commemorates Congressman Waxman’s unrelenting oversight effort and reminds Congress and the public of what is possible.”
In 1982, as chair of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, Waxman held the first ever congressional hearing on the health risks of smoking. Many more hearings followed, educating the public about the scientific evidence of tobacco’s ill effects, marketing efforts that targeted children, and industry actions that hid or downplayed tobacco’s addictive and carcinogenic properties. The investigation spurred multiple reforms including a 2009 law which authorized the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the manufacturing, advertising, and sale of tobacco products. Over the same time period, public opinion turned increasingly against smoking, and rates of tobacco use fell from over a third of American adults to less than 10% of young Americans today.
Complementing the new Portrait in Oversight is a new Levin Center podcast with a key investigator from the Waxman subcommittee, Phil Barnett. The public can listen to his insider account of the fight against Big Tobacco on the Levin Center’s Oversight Matters Podcast at https://levin-center.org/levin-center-at-work/oversight-matters.
This portrait is the latest in a series of profiles developed by the Levin Center of past congressional investigations and key figures in the history of legislative oversight from 1792 to the modern era.
To read the latest Portrait in Oversight, visit https://levin-center.org/oversightscholars/portraits/henry-waxman-and-big-tobacco.
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