The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, Bush and Dukakis negotiators deadlocked over how many debates there will be, a federal judge allowed Eastern Air Lines to cut service but not its work force, and there are reports Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa will open talks with the Polish Government tomorrow. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, we focus first on the NFL suspension of New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor for drug abuse. We hear from the NFL, two sports writers and a sports sociologist. Then the battle against air pollution [Focus - Clearing the Air] and a debate between EPA Administrator Lee Thomas and the Mayor of Denver, Federico Pena. Finally we begin a regular campaign series, [Series - '88 - On the Stump], excerpts from candidates' speeches on the stump, tonight Michael Dukakis. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The big Presidential debate meeting was held today in Washington. It ended in disagreement over numbers. Official representing Democratic Candidate Michael Dukakis want there to be three face to face televised debates, but those representing Republican Candidate George Bush want only two. Here's what the negotiators said after the meeting.

JAMES BAKER, Bush Campaign: We're not afraid of three at all. It's just simply our view that debates are very important, that the Vice President is going to debate, looks forward to debating, but there are other ways to campaign. Debates have a way of freezing the campaign during their pendency.

PAUL BROUNTAS, Dukakis Campaign: I think it's very very important and it would be very interesting and very informative and education for the American electorate to see Michael Dukakis and George Bush debating face to face and man to man on the issues. We've had a lot of rhetoric. We've had a lot of negative charges over the last three weeks. We hope that that's not the way the campaign progresses over the next seven or eight weeks. We think that the best forum for the voters to weigh and evaluate the positions of both candidates, see them debating face to face and man to man.

MR. LEHRER: They all agreed to meet again Thursday to see if the impasse can be resolved. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Meanwhile, the two candidates were slashing at each other from long distance today. In North Carolina, George Bush called Michael Dukakis another liberal Governor coming out of nowhere, claiming the Democrat was weak on defense, soft on crime, in favor of new taxes and guilty of poor judgment. In Massachusetts, Dukakis assailed Bush's judgment in the Iran/Contra affair asking how can you possibly sit there and do nothing while we trade arms to a terrorist nation.

MR. LEHRER: Eastern Air Lines can cut back its service to Kansas City and elsewhere, but it cannot lay off 4,000 employees. That judgment came today from a federal judge in Washington. Judge Barrington Parker said Eastern had a right to proceed with its plans to concentrate its business more in the Eastern part of the country, but he said the additional plan to lay off 4,000 workers must be a subject of negotiations with its unions. The judge said the Railway Labor Act required such a procedure. Eastern President Phil Baakes called the ruling a fundamental misreading of the Railway Labor Act and said the airline will file an emergency appeal.

MR. MacNeil: The death toll in the West German air crash on Sunday rose to 49 today as more survivors died of injuries. About 50 critically ill patients, including many children, have been transferred to special burns units. Some American victims were being flown to a medical center in San Antonio, Texas. The Pentagon said today that six Americans were among those killed on Sunday when three Italian jets collided and hurdled into the crowd. The Pentagon said another 41 Americans were among those injured.

MR. LEHRER: The government uses an index of 12 economic factors to chart the progress of the economy. That monthly index was released today by the Commerce Department and it was down .8 percent in July, the sharpest drop in eight months. It had gone up 1.4 percent in June. Also, in a separate report, the Commerce Department said orders to U.S. factories were down 3.5 percent in July.

MR. MacNeil: The Justice Department said today that a month long experiment in international cooperation to fight drugs had resulted in an unprecedented haul of drugs and dealers. Attorney General Thornburgh told a Washington news conference that the 30 nation effort had seized 11 tons of cocaine, destroyed 244 tons of marijuana, and arrested 1200 people.

RICHARD THORNBURGH, Attorney General: The statistics are not nearly so important as the signal that's been sent to the drug kingpins that we are working together, that we are cooperating and that we are trying to maximize the resources of all participating nations in an effective effort to stamp out drug trafficking and to deal with the problem of drug use throughout the hemisphere.

MR. MacNeil: There were some other drug figures published today, a survey of illegal drug use by pregnant women. It found that 11 percent of women in 36 hospitals had used illegal drugs during their pregnancies. As a result, as many as 375,000 children born in the United States face possible health damage.

MR. LEHRER: The United States expressed official alarm today over what is happening in Afghanistan. State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley accused the Soviet Union of breaching the Geneva Troop Withdrawal Accord. She said it is clear Soviet bombers have been involved in action against Afghan rebels. In Southern Africa, South Africa said the last 1,000 of its soldiers crossed the border from Angola to Namibia. The departure is part of the peace plan agreed to by South Africa, Angola, and Cuba, and it clears the way for the next steps, the departure of 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola and granting Namibia independence from South Africa.

MR. MacNeil: Poland's Communist Government today agreed to talks with Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity Union. Walesa left the Gdansk Shipyard where he's been leading a symbolic strike observed by mine and steel workers elsewhere in Poland, demanding that the government recognize Solidarity. Later it was announced that he will hold preliminary talks tomorrow with Poland's interior minister and a representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Warsaw. That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to Lawrence Taylor and the NFL drug suspension, the battle for clear air and a Dukakis speech. FOCUS - TACKLING DRUGS

MR. MacNeil: For our first focus tonight we look at professional football and drugs. He's called LT, No. 56, the NFL's most valuable player last season, the New York Giants' million dollar linebacker. But yesterday Lawrence Taylor was sidelined before the season has even begun, the reason, drugs. It was Taylor's second suspension for substance abuse in the last two years. His team had this reaction.

BILL PARCELLS, Coach, New York Giants: Obviously, it's a blow to our team but the Giants organization is supportive of the league drug policy and anything that we can do to support the efforts to alleviate it, the problems that are quite apparent in the league, we certainly will do our part.

MR. MacNeil: Taylor was the ninth player to be sidelined for drugs in the pre-season. Eight others, including Dexter Manley of the Washington Redskins, failed routine drug tests. The NFL as well as other professional sports has a drug program which involves random testing and some rehabilitation therapy. So are these suspensions examples of the failure or success of these programs, or are people like Lawrence Taylor, who's acknowledged that he was a cocaine addict, simply uncontrollable? In the title of his autobiography, Taylor said he enjoyed living on the edge. Here to talk about drugs and professional football and what the teams should or can do about it are Jan Van Duser, Director of Operations for the National Football League, somewhat who helped draw up the NFL's drug program, Harry Edwards, a sociologist from the University of California at Berkeley, and special assistant to the baseball commissioner, as well as a consultant to other professional teams, including the NFL San Francisco 49ers. He joins us from San Francisco. Jill Lieber is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated Magazine who wrote a cover story on Lawrence Taylor last year, and Ira Berkow is a New York Times sports columnist an author of the recent book, "Pitchers Do Get Lonely". Mr. Van Duser, does the NFL think this means, this suspension and the others this summer mean that this new system is working?

JAN VAN DUSER, National Football League: We think it's working. We don't take any joy in these recent sidelinings of players, but yes, we think it's working, because now we've got three years of testing behind us and we're now coming to the point where players who have had Step 1 in our so-called three step progression have now reached Step 2 and there is a requirement that they sit down for 30 days.

MR. MacNeil: What happens to Taylor during the 30 day suspension now?

MR. VAN DUSER: That will be up to the doctors. They will decide whether --

MR. MacNeil: Your doctors or the Giants' doctors?

MR. VAN DUSER: Our drug advisor jointly with the Giants' doctors will decide whether he needs in-patient or out-patient treatment. He'll be tested and he'll get appropriate treatment.

MR. MacNeil: Why do you not say what substance he was found, he tested positive for? I mean, it seems to be common knowledge that it was cocaine based on his previous testing, but why don't you say what it is?

MR. VAN DUSER: Well, we're trying to protect confidentiality as much as we can. That's the main reason. He has acknowledged cocaine use in the past. There's no question about that.

MR. MacNeil: I see. Harry Edwards, do you think this shows that the policy is working?

HARRY EDWARDS, Sociologist: Well, I think first of all many of us who have been arguing for more stringent drug policies in professional athletics over the last decade or so applaud the NFL's efforts in this regard. I think that it's a new program. It's one that has many developmental problems and some fine tuning that most certainly is necessary. I think it is working to the extent that various complexities have been anticipated. I think for example that there are great inequities in this situation. For example, Lawrence Taylor stands to lose over $62,000 a year if the team chooses to not pay him, whereas, individuals who were caught earlier -- $62,000 a week, I'm sorry, as opposed to $500 a week if they were caught earlier.

MR. MacNeil: You mean because of the timing of his testing in August, just before the pre-season, rather than in July when the other eight were tested?

MR. MacNeil: Precisely.

MR. MacNeil: Let me just ask Mr. Van Duser, why, what was responsible for that timing? It's been raised by a number of people.

MR. VAN DUSER: The testing is done by SmithKline Laboratories and it is done to accommodate the schedule of the club. The club tells us when they can test within a given period in the pre-season period and we accommodate the club's schedule.

MR. MacNeil: So the club chose the timing in this case. The Giants chose the timing.

MR. VAN DUSER: In effect, we accommodated their timing.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Edwards.

MR. EDWARDS: Yes, that's something I think that really should be coordinated. I think also there is also the problem of the equity with which all drugs are treated. Someone who has had an altercation, a driving problem involving alcohol, someone with a minimal residue of marijuana in their system, is treated the same as someone who may be snorting up the Grand Canyon in terms of cocaine. That too creates problems. It creates what is essentially seen by many individuals as a bad rule and the bad rule generates contempt for rules in general and that exacerbates the problem. So I think that that's another fine tuning area that really should be dealt with. And while their anonymity in terms of the drug involved is all well and good, it also lumps everybody under the same umbrella, the alcohol related problem with the cocaine related problem and that's not a good situation.

MR. MacNeil: You mean, he could have been found or drunk a few beers and that showed up in the test, but everybody assumes it's cocaine because of the previous finding?

MR. EDWARDS: That's precisely what I'm saying, that he would be at Step 2 irrespective of the drug violation involved. Also, I think we have to -- .

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask Mr. Van Duser, is that right or would it have to be for the same one? Would he go to Step 2 if it were something different or something less serious than cocaine?

MR. VAN DUSER: If it were a prohibited substance, alcohol at a high level, cocaine, marijuana, then he would move to Step 2 in most cases. The commissioner has some prerogative in this area to take into account what Mr. Edwards is talking about. What I can tell you here is that we have the same substance involved multiple times.

MR. MacNeil: So we're talking about cocaine?

MR. VAN DUSER: I can't give you the --

MR. MacNeil: I see. Mr. Edwards --

MR. EDWARDS: Let me say one final thing which I think is perhaps the most grievous thing problem with this whole system, as much as I applaud it and the effort that's involved here, is that it removes all incentive really for individuals to step forward and admit that they have a problem and get treatment within the context of the individual franchise, because that would have to be reported to the NFL office and this individual would find himself at Step 1 or Step 2 or even Step 3 where he's suspended for a year. It also removes incentives for the individual franchise to deal effectively with problems. They literally have to wait until the individual is caught because if they suspect that an individual has a problem and they want to get treatment for this individual within the context of the family there, the team, the organization, they have to report it, and this individual could go to Step 2, they could wind up losing that athlete, and that's between a rock and a hard spot, to let him go ahead down the road toward drug abuse and perhaps even death as in the Lin Bias case or to turn him in and perhaps lose him for the season or lose him for 30 days.

MR. MacNeil: Let's bring in our sports writers here. Iran Berkow of the New York Times. Is that right that this new system has removed any incentive the team would have for dealing with the problem within the team?

IRA BERKOW, New York Times: Would it have any incentive as far as the team is concerned?

MR. MacNeil: Because anything discovered would have to be reported to the NFL now.

MR. BERKOW: Well, it would see so. I think that from what I've seen of the NFL's program it is kind of mealy mouthed and I guess kind of sort of mealy mouthed in its way, but it seems mealy mouthed to me. The system that I like and what seems to have worked is the one that the National Basketball Association has and that is that if somebody comes forward and has a problem, then he is dealt with in a way that the NFL doesn't deal with the problem. If he is caught on his own, somebody else comes and finds out that he is dealing in drugs, he is thrown out of the league for at least two years. It seems that this is an incentive for everybody to stop taking the cocaine and have integrity in the league as well as the players are concerned.

MR. MacNeil: Whereas this one gives the player too many chances, you mean? He gets three strikes before he gets suspended for a year.

MR. BERKOW: Absolutely.

MR. MacNeil: What's your feeling about it, Jill?

JILL LIEBER, Sports Illustrated: My question is, I wasn't surprised that he was caught, my question is why didn't the Giants know this was coming. I really wonder how much they were testing him and if they really cared to test him. He went into rehab in I guess 1986. He's a time bomb waiting to go off. They had to know when the NFL was going to come test him if he was doing cocaine again then he'd get caught and he'd be gone. He's a million dollar investment for the Giants and I think that they should know where he is, know what he's doing. They should have kept closer tabs on him.

MR. MacNeil: Well, do you agree with the point Harry Edwards has made that it's now a disincentive for the team to test or to know and they might be inclined to look the other way now?

MS. LIEBER: Well, I remember a couple of years ago when I was checking around the league to find out what the different team drug policies were, there were teams that weren't testing at all for anything. So the question is -- and I don't know what the Giants were doing -- the question has to be, did they do anything? Had they been testing him?

MR. BERKOW: Robin, historically, the football teams, and I guess even the basketball and the baseball teams, when nobody was watching, historically they would take all their problems and try to sweep them under the rug so they wouldn't tell the public, and at one point, especially in the NFL when they had these greenies and various pep pills, the players were doing almost anything they wanted. The league knew what was going on but decided to turn their back to it. Finally when it was exposed, then they decided, we're going to do something with it. I think the the same thing has been true of the cocaine problem. Finally after a lot of pressure by the public on the teams now they decide to do something about it and then even slowly, so the teams, there's always been a disincentive for teams to expose it.

MR. MacNeil: How do you reply to the point that there isn't an incentive for a team like the Giants to go looking itself now or to find a problem because as Harry Edwards said it would all have to go to you and therefore be made public a second time?

MR. VAN DUSER: We think just the opposite. We think that the events in the last month have galvanized teams into being much more interested in their drug problems because they realize they might lose players from their roster. On Harry Edwards' comment, the first time that a player comes forward or the first time that he tests positive is not reported to the league office. It's reported to our drug adviser. We don't know about it. Pete Rozelle doesn't know about it. He does not become involved until Step 2 when it requires removal from the roster.

MR. EDWARDS: Yes, but do you understand, the point being that irrespective that whether or not you are made aware at that first step, that first step is there, that is Step 1.Each subsequent problem becomes even more of a disincentive. If you're going to have a player step forward and you know that that's going to be Step 1, there's a tremendous disincentive for that player not to do that, because the next step he's gone for 30 days. If he is already at Step 2, then the next step he's out for a year. So at some point there must be a refining of this situation so that it is handled in a way that keeps the process within some kind of a relationship to the actual transgression rather than this categorical kind of thing.

MR. MacNeil: Are you arguing, Harry Edwards, that the system worked better, when it was up to the teams only?

MR. EDWARDS: No, no I'm not. I'm saying that we cannot swing from that extreme where the problem was winked at to an extreme where everyone is handled categorically and systematically and rigidly and that there is not any individuality in terms of the handling of the situation. We must begin to look at each individual case and within that context to make a judgment appropriate to the case. If an individual refuses to come forward, is utterly intransigent about his problem, is in a state of utter denial and so forth, then of course different actions have to be taken than with an individual who has a problem who is looking for treatment, who may have some difficulty in that regard and steps forward to get treatment and to get treated fairly with regard to that problem. That has to be handled entirely different.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Van Duser, do you expect the teams to continue testing on their own in-between, for their own information in- between times when you test? Are they supposed to be doing that now?

MR. VAN DUSER: We have now taken over the reasonable cause testing as well so that it's uniform. We send in our own collectors. It's sent to a central lab under the direction of our drug adviser and all of the teams are in that same program. So we don't depend on the team deciding that well, we've got a very important opponent to play this week or this is a very important player and we don't want bad news that we might otherwise get if we tested. We do the testing.

MR. MacNeil: Where is the incentive then for teammates for instance of famous and absolutely indispensable stars like Taylor, where is the incentive now for them to help the guy or to notice what he's doing or to come forward to the team or anything, is there any?

MS. LIEBER: Well, what I was surprised about was yesterday when the cameras went into the Giants' locker room and asked players what do you think about it, Joe Morris, Phil Simms, said, well, we were told not to talk about it. Now I don't say that Phil Simms should come out and say, I'm disappointed in this guy, he's let us down, but this team had a chance to be in the Super Bowl and I really wish that some of these players instead of being quiet, sitting on their hands, I wish we could find out who the leaders are on this team so they could come forth and say we're disgusted, you're selfish, look what you've done to us, and maybe that would shock them a little bit.

MR. MacNeil: You don't think that Lawrence Taylor is shocked by this?

MS. LIEBER: No, because Lawrence Taylor thinks he has a bullet proof vest on. He thinks he can drive as fast as he wants to. He thinks he can drink as much as he wants to. He thinks he can do as many drugs as he wants to. He boasted about it in his book "Living on the Edge". That's the whole thing, that he tries to go as far as he can before he's caught. And up until this point I'm sure he thought I am Lawrence Taylor, I'm the highest paid defensive player in the league and no one is going to apply their rules to me.

MR. MacNeil: Do you read Lawrence Taylor that way?

MR. BERKOW: Absolutely. I think that he feels that the rules don't apply to me. Whatever the reasons are, perhaps going all the way back to grade school when he was always told that he was a superior human being because he could run fast and jump high and that kind of thing and maybe along the way he's just, this has been fed into him more and more and suddenly he is just this great person making a million dollars a year and can do anything he wants. He talks about driving a hundred, hundred and thirty miles an hour down highways drunk or having drunk or having taken cocaine and he was asked, what if you hit somebody or ram into a bunch of people and he said, if I don't care about myself, how could I care about other people.

MR. MacNeil: Do you read Lawrence Taylor that way, Harry Edwards?

MR. EDWARDS: No, I don't. I think that we run a tremendous risk, particularly when it's a super star athlete, of losing the forest in a single tree. We have a situation here where there have been eight individuals who have been suspended as a result of this kind of problem in the NFL. The only one that we have had a program on is Lawrence Taylor and that's because --

MR. MacNeil: What do you mean have a program on?

MR. EDWARDS: Well, I mean, he's the only one that has drawn this kind of attention that we have now in the media and that's because he's a super star's super star. As far as the comments and so forth in his book, I'm always leery of as told to books because it's difficult to separate out the human being from the sensationalistic efforts of the writer who may be putting that kind of material in for marketability. I don't know anything about the Lawrence Taylor case but I've known of enough cases to be suspicious of that kind of thing. The NFL's problem is the fact that we are now fishing out of a pool that is drug saturated. We live in a society that consumes more drugs in greater variety than any society on the face of this earth and we must begin to deal with the reality that this problem is not going to go away. The fact that it is Lawrence Taylor does not diminish at all the true nature of the problem, and I think it's a mistake really to focus on him irrespective of his psychiatric or sociological orientation as far as the problem is concerned.

MR. MacNeil: Is the NFL singling him out because he's such a great star, one of the greatest football players ever?

MR. VAN DUSER: He's been treated just like every other player.

MR. EDWARDS: That's right. I agree with that. I think the media, however, is singling him out.

MR. MacNeil: Are the media making a scapegoat or making a special case of him because of his stardom? I mean, are you both landing on him hard in your columns because of this?

MR. BERKOW: Well he is, Lawrence Taylor is news. He may or may not be any different as a human being from some of the other people. I guess he is not, but the others in football have also had experiences along the lines of Lawrence Taylor. They were all great athletes themselves all the way through. It's also true that there are people in drugs, people who have enormous egos, who would never pick up a football in their lives. Harry is correct along those lines. But here you have in some ways an individual case but also a symbolic case, and I think that you can zero in on this perhaps as an example and as someone to view who has a problem as opposed to a laborer or a garbage collector or somebody else.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel about him? You put him on the cover of a national magazine. You spent a lot of time obviously working on the profile of him. Do you feel personally let by him as the sort of image for other Americans that followed?

MS. LIEBER: First of all, in all my years of covering sports I've never had athletes as heroes and I really don't think kids should have athletes as heroes. It's very hard to know what are you seeing on the ball field compared to what kind of person is he. As far as Harry Edwards talking about the Lawrence Taylor book, I can say that Lawrence Taylor when I interviewed him told me he would give me 10 minutes and told me he would not talk to me about drugs, that he would only speak about drugs in his book. That's why I have to believe that what he said in this book which I'm sure had to be gone over by him which I'm sure had to be gone over by him on the galleys and okayed has to be what happened. It has to be true.

MR. MacNeil: Come back to the general problem for a moment, if we can, a couple of minutes. We have nine suspensions out of how many players in the league?

MR. VAN DUSER: Oh, 1600 or so when you get down to the final count.

MR. MacNeil: Harry Edwards says that football like everything else is drawing from a pool of young people in a country that uses a lot of drugs. Does this mean that the National Football League is clean compared to the rest of society, 9 out of 1600?

MR. BERKOW: If you look at the percentages, it seems that it's cleaner and, in fact, it might be because most of the athletes are disciplined, most of the athletes have a stake in staying relatively clean during the season anyway. Maybe for the general run of the population the football population is cleaner than that of most any other?

MR. MacNeil: Do you believe that?

MS. LIEBER: Well, I have a question about the NFL drug testing policy. What I want to know is why more players did not test positive for steroids this year. Pete Rozelle came out the beginning of training camps and said they were clamping down on steroids. I interviewed somebody recently with a 22 inch neck. This is not, this doesn't come from machines. I've talked to players. I know they're using a lot of steroids. I think that that might be a bigger problem right now in the NFL than cocaine or pot.

MR. MacNeil: How about that?

MS. LIEBER: You may well be right, Jill, but the testing results on steroids are not yet finished. That's a longer scientific --

MR. MacNeil: But your not deliberately blinding yourself to steroids? I mean, you are testing for them but you just haven't completed the tests, is that right?

MS. LIEBER: That's right. The drugs of abuse, cocaine, marijuana and other things are just at first, because they're easier to test for. In the normal business context, XYZ Corporation down the street doesn't have to step for anabolic steroids because that's not a problem. So the laboratories are used to doing drugs of abuse and we've had to take special pains with steroids because it's a new testing procedure.

MR. MacNeil: But you think that may turn out to be a bigger problem?

MR. VAN DUSER: I don't know. It's a different kind of problem. It involves competitive problems as well on the field.

MR. MacNeil: I mean in terms of numbers.

MR. VAN DUSER: It may. I just don't know. We hope that -- I'd like to think like Ira is thinking that most of the players are clean. Too often we're jaded and we have our thinking colored by looking at all these bad cases.

MR. MacNeil: Do you have a brief comment, Harry Edwards, on whether football is cleaned compared to the rest of the society?

MR. EDWARDS: I think it's probably reflective of the rest of the society and other occupations. Let me say one last thing.

MR. MacNeil: You mean the percentage of drug abuse is higher than the nine players suspended out of sixteen hundred?

MR. EDWARDS: Well, the percentage of drug use as well as abuse. When you start talking about abuse, the guys who have a severe problem that's one category, but the percentage of drug use, people who have used drugs who use it informally, who use it casually, over some extended period of time, I think it probably matches up with any other select group of society.

MR. MacNeil: I'm afraid I have to interrupt you there because we've used up our time. Harry Edwards in San Francisco, Jan Van Duser in New York, Jill Lieber, Ira Berkow, thank you both. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, ozone pollution and a Dukakis stump speech. FOCUS - CLEARING THE AIR

MR. LEHRER: Next a look at attempts to clean this country's air. Congress passed a law more than 10 years ago requiring cities and states to meet minimum clean air standards. That deadline hits tomorrow and there are some 70 metropolitan areas around the country which can't meet those standards. Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency ordered sanctions against Los Angeles because of its ongoing air pollution problem, particularly with ozone. Lee Thomas, the head of the EPA is here, as is Federico Pena, the Mayor of Denver, another potential target of EPA sanctions. We'll hear from them right after this report about ozone, one of air pollution's most dangerous and persistent components. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: It was 1965 when Tom Lehrer recorded this song about he bad old days of pollution, a time before Earth Day, before the passage of strict clean up laws and the birth of the EPA. While some environmental problems have gotten worse over the last two decades, the use of emission control devices on cars and factory smokestacks did improve air quality to the extent that air pollution has been seen as a problem of the 60's, but miniskirts came back in 1988, and so did smog, that hazy soup of noxious pollutants cooking in the summer sun.

NEWSCASTER [July 6, 1988]: So if you do have respiratory problems, you should curtail those outside activities. Take a look at what the reading was today, all the way up to 125. That's in the unhealthy category.

MR. HOLMAN: Jane Probst doesn't have to follow the air quality index to know that breathing has been hazardous to her health this summer. She's struggled every day, walking a block and a half from home to her job at St. Luke's- Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.

JANE PROBST: Oh, it's been very bad. It's been harder for me to breathe. I just can't walk very fast. I can't go as far. I can't carry things because it drains on my energy and it's really held me back in doing things that I would like to do in terms of getting around. I feel like sometimes I'm a prisoner.

MR. HOLMAN: Jane Probst's lungs are restricted by her severely curved spine. Probst would have taken some time off this summer to escape the smog but work was too hectic. She's an administrative assistant in the pulmonary medicine division of the hospital where the phones have been ringing off the hook. Dr. Norma Braun is a lung specialist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt.

DR. NORMA BRAUN, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center: Even the patients with mild pulmonary disorders have been coming in more frequently because they've had an exacerbation or worsening of their symptoms, and they're sure they're infected or something else is going on, but they're basically more confined. Some of my patients are virtually imprisoned in their apartments.

MR. HOLMAN: Smog has many components but one of the most dangerous is ozone. In the stratosphere miles above the earth, a layer of ozone shields us from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. But at ground level, ozone is a well known hazard to human health. Dr. Brawn sees the symptoms every day.

DR. BRAUN: Irritation, cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, and if it's enough, they actually can, the lung can flood, and they go into what we call pulmonary edema, which is the lung just getting wet. It's a reaction. It's a highly irritated substance and that can cause death.

MR. HOLMAN: Although ozone levels have been far from lethal this summer, they have been unusually high, well above the amounts Congress has defined as safe. The weather is partly to blame. Ozone is formed when sunlight strikes a variety of pollutants, automobile exhausts and factory plumes, fumes from dry cleaning stores and painting shops, and unburned gasoline vapors, so this summer's heat wave coupled with the mass of dirty air stagnating over much of the United States has meant a bumper crop of ozone in urban areas throughout the nation. Even rural areas have been affected. On June 15th, Arcadia National Park recorded ozone levels nearly double the federal air quality standard, the first time the State of Maine ever exceeded that limit.

LEE THOMAS: It's the toughest pollutant we have to deal with.

MR. HOLMAN: Lee Thomas is Administrator of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.

LEE THOMAS, EPA Administrator: This summer has probably been as bad as we've had in 10 years in terms of its impact on ozone. The heat, the stagnant air, we don't want another summer like this.

MR. HOLMAN: Neither do state environmental officials.

GEORGE FERRERI, Maryland Air Management Admin.: It's very disturbing I mean that we think we've made progress and then all of a sudden Mother Nature just turns the tables on us, and it just shows that we, you know, we've got to do a better job.

MR. HOLMAN: George Ferreri is Director of Maryland's Air Management Administration. His agency monitors ozone levels at stations throughout the state like this one in downtown Baltimore. The readings are recorded in a state office building here to see if they meet the standards set by Congress. The Clean Air Act allows cities to exceed the standard once a year but so far this summer, Baltimore has violated it 34 times. Baltimore is not alone. Some 70 metropolitan areas home to 75 million Americans are now in gross violation of federal air quality standards, and EPA says 14 jurisdictions aren't trying hard enough to comply. Included among EPA's list of the worst offenders are the Cities of Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. Lee Thomas has ordered sanctions placed against the Los Angeles area starting with a ban on construction of highly polluting plants, and if that doesn't work, a cutoff of federal highway and other funds. The EPA could extend those sanctions to other areas this fall.

LEE THOMAS: The important part is the statement we're making that this area has a significant air quality problem and that this area needs to work harder on correcting that problem. That's what that sanction is all about.

MR. HOLMAN: EPA Administrator Thomas hopes the penalties will spur local jurisdictions to work harder on cleaning theair. Originally the sanctions were to take effect on December 31st of last year, the target date specified in the Clean Air Act. But Congress enacted a moratorium that expires tomorrow. Congressman Henry Waxman authored the moratorium. He says the sanctions are unfair.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, [D] California: EPA has done a miserable job in trying to get the communities in this country that are dirty air areas to reduce pollution and the threat of sanctions that they are now rattling before communities in this country rings awfully hollow when you recognize that the Environmental Protection Agency has not done its job early enough to try to get these areas to reduce air pollution so they wouldn't face the deadlines without having achieved decent quality air or the standards required by law.

LEE THOMAS: If they would just quit pulling the rug out from under my feet every time I try to use them, I think everybody would understand once and for all that we were serious about this.

MR. HOLMAN: State and local officials say they're trying to clean the air but their efforts are being outpaced by urban growth and development. Some big fixes have already been made. Motor vehicle emissions for example have been cut 96 percent since 1968. There's still room for improvement but each small step costs money and can provoke a political battle. A case in point. Gasoline vapors escaping at the pump account for about 2 percent of ozone forming pollutants. That may sound small but in Baltimore alone it translates into 10 tons of hydrocarbons a day. California, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., now require special nozzles that trap the gas vapors and George Ferreri also favors their use.

GEORGE FERRERI: It's a control strategy that can be employed. When you consider what we have done and what is remaining, nine or ten tons a day is a big chunk of emissions that should be reduced.

MR. HOLMAN: But after vigorous lobbying by oil companies and gas station owners, the Maryland State Legislature passed a law forbidding the adoption of vapor recovery devices. Vic Rasheed is Executive Director of the Service Station Dealers of America.

VIC RASHEED, Service Station Dealers of America: It's had many problems. It's expensive to install. It could run as high as $30,000 per station, and where it is installed it means that a large number of stations are going to be closed rather than go through the expense of installing this system.

MR. HOLMAN: Rasheed argues that other strategies to reduce gasoline vapors would be more effective and a lot cheaper, like requiring oil companies to make gasoline less volatile, and requiring car manufacturers to install vapor trapping canisters on all cars. EPA Administrator Thomas agrees. He's proposed regulations for both in an effort to reduce hydrocarbon emissions by about 10 percent.

LEE THOMAS: I'd predict that it will be mandated before the end of this year, that the volatility of gasoline hopefully will be reduced, the same with the automakers. We have already proposed that that equipment will go on their cars. Hopefully we'll have that finalized by the end of the year. Those are two of the biggest rule makings as far as regulations are concerned that this agency has ever come out with.

MR. HOLMAN: But critics like David Hawkins, Senior Attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, want less talk and more action from EPA.

DAVID HAWKINS, National Resources Defense Council: Well, all of those things are good first steps but they've been going on for several years and all of those things have not taken one pound of pollution out of the air. And we're breathing that pollution this summer as a result.

MR. HOLMAN: And it's not just people with respiratory disease who have cause for concern. New studies show that .12 parts ozone per million parts of air, the standard Congress has defined as safe, the standard 70 cities have found virtually impossible to meet, has serious health effects.

REBECCA BASCOM, University of Maryland Medical System: I don't think we can any more say that .12 parts per million is a safe level.

MR. HOLMAN: Dr. Rebecca Bascom is Assistant Professor of Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical System, one of a handful of research centers with an environmental exposure chamber. It's a specially built room in which levels of various air pollutants can be controlled. In experiments, healthy volunteers exercise while breathing air containing the legal limit of ozone. They wound up coughing with shortness of breath and painful breathing. The preliminary evidence indicates that chronic ozone exposure may damage the lungs permanently.

REBECCA BASCOM: I don't want to scare people unnecessarily but there's a progressive decline that occurs with continued exposure, so if Congress is serious about wanting to have air pollution levels that protect health, I don't that think they can with confidence say they're doing that at the current standard.

MR. LEHRER: Now to EPA Administrator Lee Thomas and to Federico Pena, the Mayor of Denver, and one of fourteen cities the EPA has threatened with sanctions. Mr. Mayor, do you believe your city deserves to be on Mr. Thomas's air pollution hit list?

MAYOR FEDERICO PENA, Denver: Well, I think the way in which the Federal Clean Air Act now reads Mr. Thomas may not have any discretion. I think he may have the obligation to impose some kind of sanctions as he has done in Los Angeles. Now to answer your question, do we deserve it, I would argue very strongly that we do not deserve it. The reason we don't deserve it is that Denver is one of the few cities in the United States that has taken extraordinary steps to reduce our carbon monoxide. This past year we saw a 26 percent reduction in CO. We have taken a number of very dramatic measures, everything from banning wood burning stoves and fireplaces. We have a voluntary no drive day. We've used oxygenated fuels this year. We have an enhanced inspection and maintenance program and so I would argue to the Congress that as it adopts the new Clean Air Act that we put in there some kind of a good faith standard so that we don't penalize cities like Denver which are really trying and maybe not making the mark, and those cities which are not trying and not making the mark. For those cities I would say they ought to be sanctioned.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. You're trying but you are not making the mark. Why are you not making the mark?

MAYOR PENA: A number of reasons and I think a number of different groups need to take some blame. First let's blame the local elected officials. The truth is that in our country only very recently have local state elected officials, state legislatures and cities really started to take the Clean Air Act seriously. Let me take the case of Denver and of Colorado. It wasn't until 1982 that our state legislature passed the Inspection and Maintenance Law. Prior to my administration in this city government the city was not very concerned about air pollution and so I want to say first off that because of inadequate local leadership we have not been very successful. But secondly, I have to place part of the blame onthe part of the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to Mr. Thomas's administration, I have to say that EPA has not been doing a very effective job in working with us in helping clean up the air. And in fact, previous administrators have in my opinion tried to subvert the Clean Air Act and work against cleaning up our air. And thirdly we now have better data. We now know for example in Denver that woodburning stoves and fireplaces are also the cause of carbon monoxide and not just automobiles. Those are the three reasons I believe explain why cities like Denver have not reached compliance yet.

MR. LEHRER: Would you agree to those three reasons, Mr. Thomas?

LEE THOMAS, EPA Administrator: Well, I think the Mayor makes a number of excellent points. First I would agree with him that Denver I think has made real progress in making some of the hard decisions. I often use Denver as an example of how the public is supporting local officials in moving forward to deal with the air pollution problem. I also think that the blame can be spread around as far as why we're at this point. I think the blame, we've got to do more as far as the federal government is concerned, state government, local government, but the public as well, the public has got to recognize that they are part of this problem. They've got to be a part of the solution, whether it's taking your car in every year for an inspection of the emission control equipment, whether it's recognizing that the number of trips downtown every day is going to have to be restricted in some of our cities, whether it's recognizing that suburban areas have now got to be brought in as far as controls are concerned if we're going to deal with pollution in our urban areas overall, so we've all got to be a part of the solution to this problem.

MR. LEHRER: But your sanctions for instance that you announced yesterday on Los Angeles, the government, the City of Los Angeles and California said fine, you're going to restrict some plants that nobody was going to build out there anyhow. It's meaningless.

MR. THOMAS: Well, the sanctions that we imposed are really non- discretionary sanctions under the Clean Air Act. If anything, it points out one we've still got a major air pollution problem in this country and also Congress needs to go ahead, reauthorize the Clean Air Act and straighten out the inequities that the Mayor talked about as far as sanctions are concerned. Where I've got the discretion I wouldn't impose sanctions on a city like Denver. I would impose them on some other cities but not a city like Denver, and I've done that in the past.

MR. LEHRER: Well, but what happens now? I mean, the sanctions, let's use Los Angeles, or if you add Denver, you're not going to impose, Denver is on the 14, is one of the 14 places on your list.

MR. THOMAS: There's a good chance Denver will get a construction ban just as I did in Los Angeles come the fall of this year if Congress doesn't reauthorize and lay out a longer-term plan for this country to deal with air pollution. We passed the 1987 date which is the date that was in the law. Obviously, we didn't make it. We now need to lay out a course of action for the future.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Mayor, if that construction ban is imposed on Denver, what effect would it have?

MAYOR PENA: It would not have any serious effect. The construction ban applies to those industries which emit a hundred tons a year and we don't have any independent construction project that would do that. So for all practical purposes it really wouldn't affect Denver, but let me say this. In defense of Mr. Thomas, I commend him for taking a tough stance but I have to say that I agree with Congressman Waxman, this is the kind of tough action that we have been needing from the EPA from the beginning and Mr. Thomas is probably one of the few new administrators at EPA have had the courage to do this. And I think if EPA 10 years ago started to take dramatic actions, the predecessors of Mr. Thomas, I think the signal would have been sent out very strongly throughout the country that cities and state legislatures have to get very busy to comply with the Clean Air Act. I think that's part of the problem.

MR. LEHRER: You're not suggesting, are you, Mayor, that a ban on construction that has no effect sends a tough message?

MAYOR PENA: Well, I think that is simply an issue of fine tuning the Clean Air Act. I think there are some new sanctions that could be put into the Clean Air Act. And I support them by the way, even though Denver is one of those cities that in the past has had trouble, I have testified in the Senate for tough sanctions and I believe that EPA and the Congress should be tough and that our feet should be held to the fire and whether it's changing that construction ban so that in the future we'll have some real effect is something we can take up with the Congress.

MR. LEHRER: What happens next, Mr. Thomas? If the ban doesn't have any effect on City X, then what do you do? And let's assume for discussion purposes they still don't do anything that meets your thing. Then what do you do?

MR. THOMAS: Then I've got a next series of sanctions which I think clearly have an effect and that's to cut off funding for highway construction, that is, federal aid for highways. I can use that. I'll use that --

MR. LEHRER: Have you ever done that before?

MR. THOMAS: Yeah, I've done it in a number of places. Albuquerque is a good example. They wouldn't go forward and implement the inspection and maintenance program for mission control equipment. I imposed that ban. I have done it in a number of other places in the country and I've seen them take action as a result. Now let me say, tough action has been taken in the past, both in issuing regulations and using sanctions. We've all got to recognize though that that's the road we're taking, meaning Congress, because they've stepped in a number of times. Once we took that action and said no, wait a minute, stop, that's not what we want to do, now let's lay it out clearly in the law that that's a part of how we're going to go forward and let's make it clear when the sanction is going to apply and also when it will come off, when action is taken.

MR. LEHRER: How does that sit now? Let's say you suspend some highway funds for a city. Does that mean till the end of time or for a year, five years? What do they to do to get back on your good list?

MR. THOMAS: It's very unclear now under the law and there's great debate as to whether I have to impose them at the time they don't obtain the standard or when they're not making a good faith effort to try to attain the standard. Additionally, when do I take them off, there's debate there on the law. Do I take them off once they start trying hard, or do I have to wait until they attain the standard? Well, those are two very different interpretations.

MR. LEHRER: Well, how do you interpret it? You have to do it.

MR. THOMAS: I interpret it is that they're making a good faith effort doing best reasonable efforts to comply with the Clean Air Act then I won't impose the sanctions. It's a judgment call. If they're not, I will, as I have. Once they start making that good faith effort, I say until they attain that standard or are within several years of attaining that standard, I won't remove it. In other words, I'll leave it in place until they get to that point.

MR. LEHRER: Mayor, let me ask you and then I'll come back to Mr. Thomas quickly. Do you agree with those people who said the ozone problem, on the tape, who said the ozone problem is as serious as they said it was? Is this something to really be concerned about?

MAYOR PENA: Yes, it is. And in addition to the ozone problem, I want to emphasize the carbon monoxide problem. Here in Denver, our problem is not ozone, it's carbon monoxide, and carbon monoxide when it's inhaled into the blood system takes oxygen away from your blood system and it becomes a health problem and there's just no question about that. So it is a serious health problem.

MR. LEHRER: You agree too, Mr. Thomas?

MR. THOMAS: Sure. I also agree that as far as the ozone standard is concerned you'll probably see EPA over the next year to year and a half look at tightening that standard as new scientific information comes in.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, thank you both very much for being with us. SERIES - '88 - ON THE STUMP

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we begin a feature we intend to run regularly during the Presidential campaign, significant excerpts from speeches the candidates are making on the stump. We'll rotate them among the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. We start tonight with Democrat Michael Dukakis who spoke today at the dedication of a research facility at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, Democratic Presidential Candidate: Today we're borrowing billions and billions of dollars from foreign banks to finance our national debt, a debt that has grown more in the last 8 years than it did in the previous 200, a debt that our children and grandchildren will be paying for generations to come. The result is a trade deficit that has cost millions of good American jobs, a cost of capital that is twice what it is in Japan. Think of the competitive disadvantage that puts our companies at. Two out of every three dollars saved by American corporations and workers not being used to invest in America, but simply to pay off this massive national debt which has grown so dramatically in the past eight years, and in 1986 for the first time, America, the nation that brought high-tech to the world, ran a deficit in high-tech trade. Now some say we should be satisfied with that record although they don't want to debate it. I challenge them to debate it because that's what an election is all about and the voters this fall will have a fundamental choice between two very different ideas of prosperity and two very different kinds of leadership. Mr. Bush has said that our trade relationship with Japan is in his words superb. And it is for Japan. But I'm not running for President to create jobs in Japan. I want to create good jobs here, good jobs at good wages here in the good old USA. Mr. Bush says that after eight years of voodoo economics it's time to do it all over again. He's proposed a five year, $40 billion capital gains giveaway, most of it to people making more than $200,000 a year. That's not building an economy. That's feathering a nest. I say it's time to stop worrying about bringing more prosperity to those who already have it made and start bringing real prosperity to the millions of American families who work hard every day and in many cases are struggling to get by. After all, we've already seen Superman II, we've already seen Rocky II, we don't need "Son of Voodoo". We've got to be the leader and we should be the leader in the technologies of the 1990's, of the 21st century, not only in polymers but in computer chips and machine tools and robotics and biotechnology and the tools for commercializing and expanding our operations in space. That means we've got to restore the balance between military and civilian research in this country. We want an America that is both militarily and economically strong. But we can't spend billions on Star Wars, as Mr. Bush wanted to do, at least until last week, while Japan runs rings around us in the development of new civilian technologies. My friends, there are no short cuts to the American dream. The best America doesn't hide, we compete. The best America doesn't waste, we invest. The best America doesn't leave anybody behind. We bring all of our citizens along. And the best America is not behind us, the best America is yet to come. Thank you all very very much. Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Gov. Michael Dukakis speaking today in Amherst, Massachusetts. In coming days, we'll have speeches by Vice President Bush and the Vice Presidential candidates. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Tuesday, Bush and Dukakis negotiators deadlocked over the number of Presidential debates. Dukakis wants there to be three, Bush two. A federal judge told Eastern Air Lines it can go ahead with its plans to trim back its service to Kansas City and other Western cities, but said it must negotiate with its unions over its decision to lay off 4,000 employees, and in Poland, aides to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said he has agreed to open negotiations with the government tomorrow to end two weeks of labor trouble. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight, and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.