A White House advisory panel has recommended that the federal government raise taxes on tobacco products and begin regulating tobacco as a drug, aligning itself with congressional Democrats trying to do both.

The three-member President’s Cancer Panel released its annual report Thursday. The panel is chaired by LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., a professor of surgery at Howard University College of Medicine; its other members are Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and Margaret L. Kripke, chief academic officer at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

In its report to President Bush, the panel said that “policymakers at all levels of government have an obligation to enact legislation to eliminate disease and death caused by tobacco use and environmental tobacco smoke exposure. The panel recommends foremost that the influence of the tobacco industry — particularly on America’s children — be weakened through strict federal regulation of tobacco product sales and marketing.”

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved a bill (S 625) on Aug. 1 that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate tobacco. Regulation would be financed by a fee charged to tobacco manufacturers, amounting to about 2.5 cents per pack of cigarettes.

In addition, the House and Senate have each passed bills that would raise tobacco taxes to finance an expansion of children’s health insurance. The House bill (HR 3162) would raise the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes by 45 cents, to 84 cents, while the Senate’s version (HR 976) would raise the tax by 61 cents, to $1 per pack.

Most of the HELP Committee’s Republicans opposed the tobacco regulation bill; the senior Republican, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, says it makes no sense for the FDA to regulate a product that cannot be shown to be safe or to have any health benefits. He has proposed legislation that would gradually ban the sale of tobacco.

While the Senate version of the children’s health insurance bill enjoys bipartisan support, the House version was opposed by nearly all Republicans in that chamber.

The cancer panel’s recommendation that Congress increase federal taxes on tobacco products did not specify an amount.

Bush has threatened to veto both children’s health insurance bills, saying tobacco taxes are regressive and should not be raised to finance spending increases. The administration has said it has concerns about the tobacco regulation bill, though Bush has not threatened to veto it.

The cancer panel pointedly noted that all “the issues discussed in this report have suffered to varying degrees from politicization that continues to derail or limit progress toward a healthier population that is less burdened by cancer. We cannot continue to fund tobacco- and obesity-related research, thinking it will solve the problems caused by cancer risk-promoting behaviors and products, and also acquiesce to the demands of the industries that encourage those behaviors and produce those products.”

Senate HELP Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., welcomed the panel’s report. “The recommendations eloquently reaffirm what is widely recognized throughout the public health community: that giving the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products is the most important step Congress can take to reduce smoking and the immense toll of illness and death it causes,” he said. “It is absolutely essential to reduce smoking, especially among the nation’s youth. “