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Tobacco scores court win
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July 20, 1998: 7:01 a.m. ET
Federal judge rules EPA overstated findings on secondhand smoke
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A federal judge in North Carolina has declared that a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency study overstated the proven link between secondhand smoke and cancer.
The decision is a victory for the tobacco industry in its battle against public-smoking prohibitions.
The EPA findings have been a major factor spurring regulations and ordinances enacted around the country curbing smoking in public buildings, workplaces and restaurants.
Though U.S. District Judge William Osteen's decision apparently would have no direct legal impact on those rules, tobacco executives made clear they would use the opinion to lobby against new restrictions and ease existing ones.
"This decision should prevent the EPA from becoming a participant in the anti-smoking industry's crusade to ban smoking," Charles Blixt, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. general counsel, said in a statement.
"Striking down the EPA's contention that secondhand smoke causes cancer destroys the basis for those agencies and state and local governments that have banned or restricted smoking because of the EPA's classification."
The ruling came in a case filed by the tobacco industry seeking to overturn the study and was issued late Friday in Greensboro, N.C.
In its 1993 study, the EPA rated secondhand smoke a "Class A carcinogen," the most definitive link that the regulator can make between a chemical and cancer.
Although tobacco companies didn't deny the possibility of dangers from secondhand smoke, they argued that the government overstated the connections demonstrated in its own studies.
Osteen ruled that the EPA's finding was based on limited evidence and that it "adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the agency's public conclusion."
"A risk assessment is supposed to entail the best judgment possible based upon the available evidence," Osteen wrote in his decision. "Instead, [the] EPA changed its methodology to find a statistically significant association."
EPA officials reportedly said the agency will likely appeal the decision.
Shares of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. (RN), the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, gained 5/16 to close at 24-1/2 in Friday trading. Philip Morris Cos. Inc. (MO) closed at 39-1/2, off 1/16. B.A.T. Industries (BTI), parent company of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., finished up 1/16 at 23-11/16. 
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