A GROUP of outraged medics belonging to the American Medical Association (AMA), are bellowing fire and brimstone against villains in the tobacco industry. AMA members came up with a scathing editorial in the July 31 issue of their publication, Jqurnal of the American Medical Association (IAmA). It declares that the American public "has been duped by the tobacco industry" for more than 30 years, and that there is an urgent need for the removal of this scourge from the nation.

The editorial is followed by a series of articles that conclude that the tobacco industry's own research had many years ago revealed the health risks and additiveness of its products. But profit-hungry corporate sharks deliberately concealed this knowledge from the people and the courts.

The attack could not have come at a more opportune moment for, the Food and DW4 Association (FDA), after a year's delibbration, has now decided that it has the authority to regulate tobacco products as drugs. And the JAMA report strengthens its case by proposing a 15- point plan that includes regulating tobacco as a "drug delivery vehicle", banning tobacco exports, eliminating all tobacco advertising and severely punishing those who sell tobacco to minors.

The FDA has gathered far more incriminating evidence against the tobacco merchants. It has specially targeted the tobacco giant Philip Morris Co. Congressman Henry Waxman, head of the Federal Trade Commission, took the floor of the us House of Representatives on August 2, to level serious charges against Philip Morris. He declared that in an FD& review, it has come to light that the company deliberately raised nicotine levels in 2 low-tar cigarette brands. The amount of nicotine in the regular length Benson & Hedges filtered and the king-size Merit Ultra Lights rose steadily between 1982 and 1991. This can hardly be accounted as accidental, alleged Waxman.

Philip Morris has issued an official statement accusing Waxman of "misleading the American people". The company asserted that the higher nicotine-to-tar ratio resulted from heavy filters that remove tar more efficiently than they remove nicotine, and from variations "within the range one0ould expect with an agricultural product".

As for the jAmA articles, based on an exhaustive analysis of internal tobacco industry documents that are claimed to have been stolen from the premises of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp, they have been dismissed as "little more than a cherry-picking exercise". All they do is "selectively" quote statements from thousands of pages of documents, argued defendants.

The White House, however, is inclined to believe the FDA. Government officials have indicated that the President is in a mood to let the association have its way and bestow it with regulatory powers over the tobacco industry. But some others are convinced that Clinton is using it as a bogeyman to scare the tobacco giants into agreeing to finance a campaign to curb smoking by minors. If the plan works out, the tobacco companies would have to sign an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, and shell out mone) to help states enforce laws for prohibiting smoking by minors.