ANTI-SMOKING CAMPAIGN GUTTED, ACTIVIST CLAIMS

Glantz accuses Wilson appointees of torpedoing ads funded by Prop. 99

A prominent UC-San Francisco anti-smoking activist is accusing Gov. Wilson's
appointees of sabotaging the highly successful $30 million-a-year
advertising program against tobacco use authorized by California voters.

"At one point cigarette smoking was dropping in California faster than
anywhere else in the world, but since they watered down the program, that's
stopped," said Dr. Stan Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor of medicine and
a member of the state's Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee.

Glantz was to testify Monday afternoon before the state Senate Budget
Committee. He and other anti-smoking advocates have been sparring with the
Wilson administration over use of the $30 million generated annually for
anti-tobacco programs through funding created by voter-approved Proposition 99.

Prop. 99, enacted in 1988, increased the tax on cigarettes by 25 cents per
pack, and directed that the money be spent on anti-tobacco research and
education. As part of the effort, the Health Department began funding a
series of bare-knuckled print, billboard and TV ads that portrayed the
hazards of smoking in the harshest terms.

Among them: the well-known "I Miss My Lung, Bob" advertisement, in which two
cowboys evoked the imagery of the old Marlboro Man spots.

The tobacco industry has long complained about the advertising program, even
likening the ads to Nazi propaganda. One 1990 spot, which portrayed tobacco
executives fretting about how to replace customers who die from
smoking-related illnesses, was so rough that most stations wouldn't air it.

Glantz said that when the Wilson administration adopted new review
guidelines in 1994, they took the teeth out the program. Previously, state
health officials approved the ads in consultation with a media advisory
committee of outside public health experts. Now all ads must be reviewed by
Sandra Smoley, secretary of the state's Health and Welfare Department and a
Wilson appointee.

"It used to be a very freewheeling, aggressive program. . . . But that has
changed," Glantz said. "They simply refuse to carry ads that take on the
tobacco industry."

Smoley could not be reached for comment on Sunday. But she has defended her
program in correspondence with the American Cancer Society, which has worked
with Glantz.

"I am disturbed to hear of your continued accusations that we are defenders
of the tobacco interests at the expense of public health," she wrote. "I
especially wish to take issue with your assertion that the administration
has somehow undermined California's successful anti-tobacco media campaign."

In her letter, Smoley concedes that her office rejected specific
advertisements but defended her decisions.

"The billboard "Are you choking on tobacco industry lies?' was pulled
because it was found to be offensive for government to use taxpayer funds to
call a private industry a liar," Smoley wrote. "My concern . . . is for the
health of all Californians. This cause is not helped by use of public funds
to attack a legal industry."

In the early 1990s, there was a sharp decline in cigarette consumption in
California -- at least partly attributable to the advertising campaign,
according to research by the state Department of Health Services. One study
found the anti-smoking campaign had cut the number of smokers in California
by 17 percent in three years.

But that decrease has since leveled off -- a phenomenon that coincides with
the state's slowness to approve new ads, Glantz said. The anti-smoking
movement has had previous fights with the Wilson administration. In 1992,
Wilson ordered the ad campaign shut down as part of a plan to divert some
$30 million from the cigarette tax to close a budget deficit. Anti-smoking
foes successfully sued the state to stop the diversion.

©1998 San Francisco Examiner