Gore Tries Pitching Himself As Drug Industry Opponent

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Attacking the pharmaceutical industry for engaging in "corporate chutzpah" and for "gouging the consumer unfairly," Vice President Al Gore said today that he would take on the drug manufacturers next week at campaign stops in battleground states from California to Pennsylvania.

In an interview on the veranda of his home here, Mr. Gore cast himself as a longtime critic of what he said were the industry's excessive prices and profits. He does, in fact, have a long record on the topic, dating to his days as a young Tennessee congressman in the early 1980's, when he played a crucial role in defeating legislation that would have granted drug companies patent extensions on lucrative medicines.

So Mr. Gore is dusting off his Congressional record and past speeches to stake out policies at odds with the manufacturers. A review of his record, though, and a detailed talk with the vice president make clear that his views are more nuanced than his language suggests. And some of the same drug makers that Mr. Gore now criticizes have hired his friends and advisers to represent them as lobbyists.

The pharmaceutical industry, which responded icily to Mr. Gore's statements today, has in some cases embraced his positions. For instance, drug manufacturers are among the biggest beneficiaries of the government's tax credit for research and development, and Mr. Gore favors legislation that would make that credit permanent.

And while he argued for greater disclosure of the industry's pricing practices, the vice president allowed that some information probably should remain proprietary. Mr. Gore has also been a strong supporter of the biotechnology industry, which through collaborations and mergers is becoming part of the prescription-drug business.

"I don't see myself as a basher of the pharmaceutical companies," Mr. Gore said. "I see myself as opposing the excesses that have accompanied their enormous market power, excesses that have come at the expense of consumers."

Excerpted from the New York Times, Saturday, July 1.