I disagree with Glendon Hyde's op-ed. ["New smoking ban is not needed," April 8]. The law doesn't go far enough, having been weakened by dozens of amendments that allowed Supervisor David Chiu and others to fulfill promises to the Small Business Commission and other proponents of smoking. The supervisors should pass a law prohibiting smoking everywhere in public �" indoors and out �" and anywhere else people are exposed to smoke, such as multi-unit dwellings.
I appreciate this might seem outlandish. I defend it by examining how we have come to view tobacco issues �" largely through tobacco industry framing. In 2006, in a case that got too little publicity, the tobacco industry was convicted of racketeering under the RICO act �" which is used to prosecute organized crime �" for 50 years of deception, lying about tobacco's deadliness, and advertising to kids. Unfortunately, the $200 billion penalty was overturned. In this context of deception, the industry has exploited the cherished ideal of personal choice.
Freedom and choice
Decades ago, when he was denying tobacco's deadliness, Philip Morris' CEO said if they believed smoking was harmful, they would stop selling cigarettes. He lied. When we talk about choice, we need to remember that the industry is choosing to sell a product it now admits is deadly. The government is choosing to OK a product that kills 440,000 Americans annually. The new Food and Drug Administration tobacco regulations prohibit removal from the market, a protection no other product enjoys (thanks in large part to Altria/Philip Morris' co-authoring the law, which is akin to giving al Qaeda a seat on the 9/11 Commission).
If you believe, as I do, the conclusions of the surgeon general and California's Air Resources Board that outdoor secondhand smoke is a toxic air contaminant with no safe level of exposure, then we should all be free from ever having to breathe it.
There are many products we are no longer free to access because they were removed from the market when found to be dangerous. Tobacco escapes this fate because of a powerful cartel with obscene influence on Congress.
We often think we have choices when others are making them for us. The industry's highly-specialized advertising effectively seduces our young and impressionable, convincing them that smoking is cool. Once they've started, in a remarkably short time, the addictiveness of nicotine compels many to continue, whether they want to or not. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70 percent of smokers wish they didn't smoke, which explains why most smokers support smokefree laws because it helps them in their resolve to quit.
What works
In recent decades, we've made remarkable progress in reducing smoking prevalence �" especially in California. Most effective are price increases, anti-industry campaigns, and denormalizing smoking by restricting where one can smoke. Most progress has occurred locally, where the industry has less influence. Nonetheless, the local hospitality industry often parrots tobacco industry language and predicts economic ruin if smoking is restricted. Studies consistently refute this, but merely raising it often sways politicians. Couched in personal choice rhetoric, entrepreneurs absolve themselves for their choice to promote smoking.
Under the guise of compromise, the supervisors missed the opportunity to do a better job of protecting non-smokers, the main point of the law, and secondarily, supporting smokers in their resolve to quit. Smoking doesn't take place in a vacuum, literally. The right to breathe smokefree air should take precedence over smoking in a public place, to which everyone has equal access. Smoking should only take place in private.
Tobacco as a gay issue
In California, LGBTs smoke at twice the rate of all Californians, lesbians at a whopping three times the rate of all women. This translates to higher rates of disease and death. Researcher Gary Remafedi found that one-third of LGBT youth in his sample didn't know any other gay youth that didn't smoke. One way to protect them is to model nonsmoking as the norm; another is to support efforts that isolate the tobacco industry.
The gay movement itself provides a dramatic example for doing so. Forty years ago, we challenged powerful institutions, demanding that fairness and sanity prevail in all arenas for LGBTs. Many were outraged by our audacity, but we persevered and changed the world. We need to use this bold strategy to phase out an industry whose products kill when used as intended �" 1,200 Americans every day �" and which costs us $190 billion a year in health care and lost productivity.
To bring this about, we need to continue to work on the local level, demanding that elected officials stop cooperating with tobacco interests. The appealing rhetoric of personal choice and compromise must be rejected for what it is, a manipulation of values we revere in order to allow an amoral industry to continue to make a killing.
Naphtali Offen is a UCSF tobacco documents researcher. In 1991 he co-founded the Coalition of Lavender-Americans on Smoking and Health and is a recent appointee to California's Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee.