Where There’s Smoke : On the Front Line With the Tobacco Lobby

Most Americans, polls show, now believe that cigarettes kill. Among other things, the surge on general’s warning on cigarette packages tells them so in no uncertain terms. From the relatively mild warnings first mandated by Congress 21 years ago, a new, no-nonsense label flatly declares, “Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy.”

On the medical front, already glutted with reports damning cigarettes for precipitating everything from headaches to Buerger’s disease (a circulatory ailment that can result in amputation of fingers, toes, even legs and arms), the bad news continues to pour in, seemingly without end. The latest findings suggest that smoking may even contribute to Alzheimer’s disease (i.e., senility) in people as young as 48.

Still, some 55 million Americans continue to smoke.

And the Tobacco Institute is dedicated to helping them keep right on.

The institute, trade association for the nation’s leading cigarette manufacturers, lobbies tirelessly to defeat local anti-smoking ordinances and restrictive congressional measures. On other, lesser fronts, it also vigorously resists all proposed regulation of vending machines or free street-corner cigarette sampling as a means of curbing juvenile smoking.

Accordingly, the Tobacco Institute is

routinely depicted by the anti-smoking forces as a rich, slick, venal operation, a bastion of oily, immoral fat cats, “hired guns” of the tobacco industry busy making bucks (big bucks--around 600 billion cigarettes are sold nationally each year) at the expense of human life. “Merchants of Death,” as the American Lung Assn. puts it.

The Tobacco Institute bitterly objects that this is a calumny of the first order, that almost nobody ever tells its side of the story.

That side of the story begins in Washington, where the institute is headquartered.

T he institute’s leading media spokesman, Scott Stapf, was dispatched to do the welcoming honors. He arrived at 7 a.m. at the Hay-Adams, one of Washington’s grandest old hotels, just across a park from the White House. At that hour, the restaurant was mostly filled with well-tailored, carefully coiffed, middle-aged men, already deep into hushed discussions, their grave faces uniformly suggesting questions of national if not global consequence. Stapf was easy enough to spot as he stood on the threshold, mainly because he was the only guy in the place smoking a cigarette before breakfast.

Otherwise, as he hurried across this roomful of polished faces, he might have been mistaken for some visiting graduate student--a young man of only 28, maybe 30 pounds overweight, clad in a somewhat rumpled, nondescript mix of campus khaki, navy blazer, button-down collar and narrow tie.

Seating himself, Stapf laid his cigarette in an ashtray, then promptly lighted another. Upon realizing he had two burning at once, he colored slightly and hastily mashed out the first, oddly flustered at something so routine most serious smokers would have only laughed it off. Beneath the shimmering chandeliers, his forehead glistened as he prepared to brief yet another stranger on the importance of keeping America safe for the cigarette.

So much for the Tobacco Institute’s stereotypical image. No slick, three-piece sophisticate here. Just another bright, ambitious young American anxious to make his mark on the world, a history major from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minn., who once excelled in debate club, grew up in a conservative family “fed up to here with government interference” and decided “that I wanted to become a spokesman for some industry under siege.”

Siege he wanted, siege he got. Never before in its 102-year history has the modern cigarette industry been in such a tight corner, literally under assault from all sides.

At the state, county and municipal levels, anti-smoking ordinances, originating in Arizona and California in the early ‘70s, are now spreading across the country like a contagion, mainly because the anti-smoking forces have lately managed to marshal a mushrooming new army of nonsmokers to their cause by persuading them that they too are risking disease and death, merely by breathing the same air with smokers.

The menace has finally even reached the nation’s largest city, where New York Mayor Ed Koch is proposing an anti-smoking ordinance tough enough to make those of San Francisco and Los Angeles look downright lame.

On the federal front, Congress, having banned tobacco ads on radio and TV in 1972, is now considering a bill to abolish all tobacco advertising (a $2-billion per year business), right down to billboards, matchbooks and sponsorship of the Virginia Slims tennis tournament. Compounding the industry’s woes, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that even legal products, if deemed “seriously harmful” to the public, are not necessarily entitled to the First Amendment’s free-speech protection, the Tobacco Institute’s traditional defense. Adding insult to injury, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, one of the tobacco industry’s oldest and most influential political allies, suddenly turned, stunning his tobacco-growing friends and constituents alike by endorsing the tobacco-ad ban so long as it includes alcohol too. Meantime, the National Academy of Sciences is urging the government to prohibit all smoking aboard domestic airline flights. In a final measure of the national mood, even that epicenter of macho, the U.S. Army, recently got into the act, banning smoking in most areas of its bases, and the Navy has announced plans to do the same. (The Air Force and Marines haven’t been heard from yet.)

The Tobacco Institute is quietly busy behind the scenes, throwing everything it’s got, especially money, into the defeat of all the above.

The institute’s public posture, however--essentially the same one it has maintained for nearly 30 years--is that the cigarette is but a hapless target in a far more critical assault on individual and business rights led by a small, intolerant band of despots.

And, once relaxed, Stapf did the Tobacco Institute proud, proving himself to be an able, articulate and righteously indignant champion of the American Way. Just thinking about the anti-smoking crusaders, in fact, turns him pink with anger, sends him snatching at his cigarette pack. He loathes them all.

“They’re such a bunch of hypocrites, they talk outta both sides of their mouths,” Stapf fumed. “On the one hand, they say they only want to educate people to the risks of smoking, but they don’t really care what the evidence actually shows. They refuse to even look at it objectively. This isn’t really a health issue with them, never has been. What they really want is to scare the living daylights out of nonsmokers and make smoking so socially unacceptable that informed adults don’t have a right to make their own choices.

“And, if they succeed with cigarettes, where are they gonna stop? What will they decide is bad for us next? Chocolate? Salt? Television?”

As Stapf talked, he alternately speared hunks of his eggs Benedict and puffed at the cigarette constantly burning in the ashtray at his elbow. Upon closer inspection, however, altogether too many perfectly good cigarettes were being allowed to simply burn down to their filters. Also, he does not appear to inhale.

“It’s tyranny of the minority,” he continued. “And it is just a minority, a few thousand fanatics making all the noise, getting all the media attention.”

Stapf ‘s lip curled as he considered the enemy more closely.

“And they’re mostly Californians,” he said sourly. “At least three-fourths of all the local anti-smoking ordinances that’ve been passed so far in this country are in California. If you put all the hard-cores in one room--and they’d probably all fit in here,” he said, waving a hand around the restaurant, “I’d bet you 90% of them would come from California--a bunch of high-fiber, low-fat yuppies who aren’t typical of Americans or anybody else.”

And, at the moment, the most aggravating Californian of them all is Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of a House subcommittee conducting hearings on the proposed bill to ban tobacco advertising. “Hollywood Henry,” Stapf hissed. Everyone at the institute calls Waxman that, or worse.

From there, Stapf devoted a few simmering minutes to another sorry Californian, a former mayor of Del Mar, who has been talking about an initiative to ban smoking everywhere in his city, beaches and parks included. (At one point, in fact, there was reportedly even some discussion about fining citizens caught smoking in their cars unless the windows were rolled up.)

“But, actually, nut cases like that (Del Mar) probably help us,” Stapf concluded with satisfaction. “Because the more radicalized the anti-smoking zealots get, the sooner reasonable people are gonna get turned off and drop out.”

By 9, Stapf was in his office, well primed for another day of battle. Although by now his own commitment to cigarettes had become highly suspect. He even smokes Barclays, one of the most boring of all the new low-tar nicotine brands. Some Tobacco Institute lobbyists obviously pay enough attention to medical reports to at least try hedging their bets.

he Tobacco Institute is lo cated in a fashionable down town office building not far from Capitol Hill. It occu pies the entire eighth floor and employs about 80 people, with another 20 or so deployed around the country in geographically strategic “regions.” (California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona compose Region 9, with offices in Sacramento and Anaheim.)

Stepping off the elevator, visitors are greeted by the institute’s mascot--a three-foot statue of an Indian chief holding cigars, reminder that tobacco consumption is in the oldest, finest native American tradition.

On a wall beyond, enshrined in a large, mounted glass case, are more than 100 cigarette packs, nearly every major American brand ever produced, marching in historic evolution through their various package sizes and designs, from non-filters to filters, and, inexorably, from high- to ever-lower nicotine-tar content. (After Congress forced the tobacco industry to label its product lethal, however, the curator apparently lost heart; the display is several years out of date.)

Otherwise, it’s just another ordinary corporate waiting room, unless you count the ashtrays. They’re everywhere. Not those silly little decorative shells that hold no more than a butt or two, either, but big, sensible ones able to take on an entire pack or more.

Standing guard over the lobby is a pretty, sharp-eyed, chain-smoking young receptionist who politely but firmly invites visitors to please be seated while she calls ahead to confirm that an appointment has in fact been scheduled. Strangers do not wander around the Tobacco Institute unescorted--a mild enough precaution, considering the climate of the times. By now, most institute spokesmen are accustomed to being hissed, spat at and called “baby killers,” but they’re still chilled by the anonymous loon who temporarily terrorized San Jose in June by threatening to lace supermarket cigarettes with cyanide, on grounds that “all stinking scum smokers” deserved to die.

Visitors to the Tobacco Institute are not kept waiting long. Despite the fact that the institute feels generally maligned by the press, almost everyone working here is friendly and cooperative. A smiling secretary soon appears to lead the way from the lobby into a maze of inner offices that stretches for nearly half a city block.

To an outsider, especially a Californian, it initially feels a little like stepping into a time warp, turning the clock back at least a decade or more, to the days when people not only smoked but did it with utter abandon, without trace of shame or guilt, strangers to either civic restrictions or social approbation.

Ten minutes through the door, it becomes abundantly clear that if these people are hustling a lethal product, at least half of them are fully prepared to meet their maker, favorite brand clutched in hand.

The place is literally crawling with smokers, the serious kind who know how to talk with a cigarette clenched between their teeth. People smoking at their desks, in the corridors, at the water coolers, even in the toilets. The air is filled with curling tendrils of cigarette smoke, gently wafting upward, dissolving in fragile patterns above the heads of smokers and nonsmokers alike, seemingly no big deal to anybody. There isn’t a single non-smoking work zone or no-smoking sign in the place. Instead, some desks sport aggressive little placards with such messages as, “Thank you for not breathing while I’m smoking.”

The usual amount of coughing is going on, of course, as it does anywhere heavy smokers congregate. But, here, nobody pays the slightest bit of attention. No frowning glances of pity, scorn or alarm, even at the occasional death-rattling spasm.

“ Every body coughs, not just smokers,” one young secretary shrugged. She was smoking Marlboros (the real ones, in the red box, not those new low-tar imposters packaged in white and gold). She also had rosy cheeks, clear eyes and, if her nails have yellowed with nicotine yet, an iridescent pink polish hid it. Apart from the cigarette in her mouth, she could have passed for the girl next door.

“It’s maddening , the way people are always coming in here, expecting to find, I don’t know what--a bunch of monsters , I guess,” says public relations officer Brennan Moran, 23, with an exasperated half-laugh. “Well, we’re not monsters, we’re just an ordinary group of working people who happen to believe that the tobacco industry has a right to be heard.” Something of a Lauren Bacall look-alike (though more imposing at 6 feet, 1 inch), Moran was, however ironically, formerly employed as an administrative aide to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

She switched jobs, she says, “because it just drives me crazy, the way they (the anti-smokers) distort facts. They keep saying, for instance, that 350,000 lives are lost each year from smoking--well, where do they get that figure? It’s so utterly unsubstantiated and arbitrary! I wanted to do something important, involving principles, defending a point of view. We’re not selling cigarettes here, we’re selling freedom !”

Moran’s brand, like Stapf’s, is Barclay. Her desk, however, is littered not with mere packs but entire cartons, stacked three or four deep, of cigarettes waiting to be smoked, the sure sign of an addict who has once too often discovered the last pack empty, generally at some miserable hour like 2 a.m., when all the stores are closed except the 7-11 clear across town, and there’s nothing to be done except get up, get dressed and go.

But for all their seeming candor, upon hearing the very word addict-- which Congress considered adding to the health labels--most institute spokesmen instantly bridle like Dracula suddenly confronting the holy cross.

Most, in fact, are automatically conditioned to deny that smoking is a “habit,” much less an addiction--even at the risk of having fellow addicts giggle in their faces.

Moran, for instance, insists, with the thoughtful frown of one considering the subject for the first time, that she could quit smoking “anytime, tomorrow morning, if I chose to. I don’t think it would be any problem. But I don’t want to quit. I enjoy smoking.”

“The word, addiction , it has, uh, well, you know, such negative connotations to most people, they instantly think of heroin addiction or something,” Moran muttered lamely. She then went on to even deny that smoking is, at the very least, a nasty, inconvenient and destructive pastime. Never once has she ruined a silk shirt with a cigarette ash, she insisted, nor burned a hole in the upholstery. With that, to her credit, she glanced away with a sheepish grin.

The higher up the institute totem pole you go, the more candid the answers become.

Case in point: Vice President Walker Merryman, the institute’s public affairs heavyweight, to whom all visiting journalists are eventually led.

Merryman is well suited to his task of charming the press. A relaxed, good-humored, seemingly spontaneous man whose polished, practiced manner belies his 38 years, Merryman, puffing nonstop on his Salem 100s, first shows off his collection of antique cigarette tins; then, eyes dancing with malevolent delight, he produces his favorite desk placard, which says “Kiss My Butt.” He loves the way it shocks the prissy anti-smokers who occasionally march through his office, he chortles.

Truth is, though, Merryman means it. Unlike institute spokesmen such as Stapf, this is more than a job to Merryman--it’s a personal crusade. Merryman has been smoking cigarettes for 20 years, free of outside interference, and damned if he’s about to bow down now to a frantic band of anti-smoking zealots.

“Sure, I think smoking might cause cancer,” he shrugs, glancing briefly at the cigarette burning in his hand. “Nobody here is arguing that smoking is good for you. And I don’t know if it’s an addiction, or a habit--maybe it depends on the individual. But, so what? People are aware of the dangers. Most smokers are born risk-takers. They probably don’t use their seat belts either, but that doesn’t make us suicidal or crazy. It’s a matter of choice. I used to drink too much, but I chose to give that up. I do not choose to give up cigarettes. Smoking is a pleasure to me. And that’s the point. People should be allowed to make their own personal decisions, not be ordered around by a bunch of little ayatollahs on the march.”

That has always been the institute’s first line of defense, that the debate over cigarettes is not a medical issue but a question of personal freedom of choice. And, even if it is a medical question, the institute still defends the cigarette, as it has done for nearly three decades.

“We don’t deny specific health studies per se,” Merryman says, “but we do argue that they aren’t conclusive. We question the statistical correlation between cigarettes and diseases. Nobody has clearly shown the cause and effect. For instance, if smoking causes cancer, why do nonsmokers get it, and why don’t all smokers get it--and our studies show that 90% of the heaviest smokers don’t get lung cancer.”

As for the anti-smoking forces’ latest and undeniably most effective tactic of making the hazards of so-called secondhand or side-stream smoke a central issue in their campaign, Merryman only snorts in disgust. As he points out, respectable medical authorities are still at odds among themselves on the issue, issuing conflicting reports almost monthly on the effects of secondary smoke.

“But I gotta hand it to them, it’s smart strategy--took them long enough to figure it out, too,” says Merryman sarcastically. “Unfortunately the evidence just is not there. But guys like Chick and Hollywood Henry simply don’t care. They’re determined to eliminate smoking, period, using whatever scare tactics they can.” (Chick, as in chicken coop, is a nickname acquired in boyhood by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who has declared his desire to see “a smoke-free society by the year 2000.”)

If all else fails to sway anti-smokers, the institute appeals to national self-interest, pointing out that those who would cripple the tobacco industry are ignoring the “disastrous economic consequences” that would result. Among the usual institute statistics forwarded:

Tobacco is our sixth-largest cash crop and, either directly or tangentially, employs at least 2.4 million Americans (“from seed to smoke,” as Merryman puts it); provides an estimated $11 billion in annual excise taxes alone; and, overall, accounts for at least $82 billion in annual consumer expenditures.

In short, cigarettes are buying the kid’s shoes, even if they may also be killing his parents. Or as Merryman prefers to say: “There is virtually no American industry that doesn’t benefit in one way or another from the tobacco industry. Take McDonald’s, for instance. I like their Big Macs, and I eat there quite a lot; but I wouldn’t if they had a no-smoking policy.” Like Stapf (and all institute employees, for that matter), Merryman suggests on the one hand that the tobacco industry is under assault from a small, atypical, insignificant group of crackpot fanatics. On the other hand, he isn’t loath to have it both ways by portraying the industry in the martyr’s light.

The institute’s single biggest frustration lately is that the anti-smokers have succeeded admirably in stigmatizing the Tobacco Institute as the “black hats,” the greedy bad guys. As Stapf complains, “they make it out to be a David and Goliath situation, but the fact is, we’re the ones who are surrounded. The lung association is a lobby too, and the anti-smoking business is now a $1.5-billion annual industry. But nobody ever talks about that.”

“They’ve said such nasty things about us for so long,” Moran summarized, “that they’ve convinced people that nothing we say can be trusted, no matter how legitimate it is.”

“Cigarette smokers are the only group left it’s legitimate to hate,” Merryman says. “It’s always puzzled me, how people judge society from their own narrow point of view. Nearly 60 million Americans still smoke, but people who work in an office of nonsmokers simply assume they’re typical of all Americans. There’s a lot of the Puritan ethic in it, too--some people simply can’t stand the idea that others might be enjoying themselves. Look at the two hottest issues today--smoking and abortion. There’s a real similarity in type between these anti-smoking crusaders and the anti-abortionists. Both groups are confident that they know best how others should live their lives.”

Not incidentally, however, the institute isn’t about to dispel its negative image, if it means talking money, and Merryman’s easygoing candor evaporates the minute the subject comes up. He won’t even provide a ballpark estimate of the institute’s annual budget, much less say what his own salary is: “When people ask me, my first reaction is, it’s nobody’s damned business. Then I usually just say, as politely as I can, that my salary is more than some, less than some and about half what I’m worth, considering the flak I have to take every day.”

(Stapf is somewhat more direct: “I’d tell you if I could, but we’re under a strict policy here not to discuss money. I will tell you this, though--first-year attorneys in this town start at around $75,000, and I don’t make anywhere near that.”)

Instead, the institute opts for a more practical way out--it simply does its best to operate wherever possible behind the scenes. And it operates there quite efficiently. Not only does the Tobacco Institute, with 11 major cigarette companies pouring funds into its work, have ample financial resources on its side, but it has also built one of the most efficient, vigilant national networks of any lobbying agency in the country. Wherever there is a proposed local ordinance or a federal bill, be assured that institute representatives are busily at work, wining and dining key legislators and local businessmen over the best, most expensive restaurant tables in town.

In large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, the institute hires one of the biggest public relations firms around to mobilize the local chamber of commerce, the restaurant and hotel associations and other organizations that would be affected by ordinances requiring segregated smoking sections. While it opposes all smoking ordinances, the institute’s chief goal is to defeat or weaken workplace restrictions that could seriously curtail cigarette sales, since smokers are captives on the jobs for eight hours a day--time enough for a serious smoker to put away at least a pack unless he is prevented. With restaurants, as Stapf shrugged, “a smoker can always go somewhere else if there’s a no-smoking section.”

The institute does, however, frequently hire its own medical and environmental air-quality experts and flies them in to testify at critical hearings. All are respected professionals in their fields. Unfortunately, as Dr. Nancy Balter says, “Once they find out we represent the Tobacco Institute, we’re usually not given more than a few minutes on the schedule, we’re sometimes insulted, and people don’t listen. They just mark us off as hired guns of the tobacco industry.”

A professor of biology and toxicology at Georgetown University, articulate and impressive, Balter (a nonsmoker) says she does not question medical findings that cigarettes are indeed harmful to the smoker’s health. But her area of expertise is the effects of secondary smoke--or, as she calls it, “environmental tobacco smoke”--on nonsmokers. And surveying the studies that have been done, she concludes: “There is simply no credible scientific evidence whatsoever, not yet at least, to support any conclusion that ETS is a health hazard to others.” Which is not to say, she stresses, that smoke is not a genuine irritant to some sensitive people. “But there’s a big difference between somebody’s eyes getting itchy and getting cancer.”

Even most of her own colleagues disapprove of her role for the institute, she says. Some insultingly suggest she’s selling out; others wonder why she wants to help the tobacco industry, even if she is right.

“As a scientist, it’s disappointing to see other scientists knowingly look the other way, which is what they’re doing because this is such an emotional issue. And it’s absolutely ridiculous,” she says, laughing in frustration, “for anyone to suggest that I’ve sold out. I hold no brief for the tobacco industry. My only interest is in scientific integrity. If I were going to say something I don’t believe, I’d do it for the lung association! Why would I risk my reputation for the Tobacco Institute? It would be suicide !”

Sharing Balter’s frustration is Gray Robertson, president of a Washington-based firm that conducts all-inclusive indoor-air-quality studies nationwide, primarily for large organizations such as banks, hospitals and government agencies. In a five-year survey of 135 buildings (including the U.S. Supreme Court and the nearby Federal Reserve Bank), “In only 4% of them was tobacco smoke a problem,” Robertson says. “Instead, in the majority, it was fungus in the air causing people to have allergic reactions they were blaming on tobacco smoke.”

An Englishman, silvery-haired, impeccably tailored and aristocratically droll, Robertson finds his own obscure line of work so fascinating that it’s contagious. Hauling out a thick ledger of color photos and reports, he eagerly points out fungus here, mold there, assorted bacteria, dirt, asbestos and other deposits, all clinging to pipes, ducts, sewage systems, wiring and other components of the dimmest, dreariest recesses of large buildings. Here, he concludes, briskly triumphant as he finally shuts his albums, are the real culprits.

“Not only was tobacco smoke not the problem, but also in almost every case the answer was a defective ventilation system. So, the solution is almost always improved ventilation. And,” he adds dryly, “it is not unreasonable to say that tobacco smoke is actually good , because it is visible. And if you remove it, you are also removing the only indicator of poor ventilation.”

Like Balter, Robertson, who became a part-time witness for the Tobacco Institute only last year, is a nonsmoker. “I always thought it was such a, well, a fu tile thing to do,” he says, blending innocence with arrogance, as only the British can do.

Both Balter and Robertson went to New York in the spring to testify at preliminary hearings on Koch’s bill. “I was allowed about three minutes,” Robertson says with a small smile. “And I don’t believe anybody listened, not really.”

Nevertheless, both may return when the ordinance comes up for further hearings. The Tobacco Institute is sparing no expense or effort to at least drastically dilute the New York ordinance--which in its original form would have forced restaurants to allot up to 50% of their seating to nonsmokers. (Los Angeles’ ordinance, in contrast, permits restaurants to set their own policies; only the most hard-core municipalities, such as Palo Alto and San Jose, have adopted such stringent percentages. Palo Alto, for instance, requires a 60-40 division in favor of the nonsmokers.)

“Whichever way New York goes,” as Stapf had observed grimly at breakfast, “it’s going to send a very major signal to the rest of the country.”

So far, the institute has every reason to be optimistic. It has already hired a leading Manhattan public relations firm to help organize a committee of businessmen and private citizens, called the Committee for Common Courtesy, to fight the bill. The committee’s membership ranges from former Gov. Hugh Carey, former Mayor John Lindsay and Howard Cosell to the chamber of commerce, the Restaurant Assn. and the Hotel Assn. The state NAACP has also been enlisted.

“From experience, black people are opposed to any law that tends to segregate one segment of the population,” declared NAACP President Hazel Dukes hotly. “And it just makes me furious when I hear them (anti-smokers) argue that low-income minorities are being hurt more by cigarettes than educated whites. There’s not a lick of evidence to support that! To the contrary, most poor people gotta bum butts, they can’t afford the habit. It’s just one of their tricks, saying, ‘Oh, we’re just trying to save those poor people.’ But what is true is that Koch’s proposed fines for anybody caught smoking someplace off limits would hurt minorities more.”

Dukes (a nonsmoker) was especially steamed at the New York Times, which editorialized against the Common Courtesy committee:

“If courtesy were king in New York City, its citizens would not be so adept at stealing cabs from one another. The dog owner would scoop the poop simply because he cared about his fellows’ feet, and the pedestrian would have no need to fear the demon cyclist, or the bus rider the moody driver. The elderly and infirm might even be able to get seats on the subways. But New Yorkers are born with their elbows akimbo--the better to make their way through the crowd, and have never been known for their manners.” Et cetera.

“ That ,” Dukes fumed, “is downright insulting!”

It may be correct, nevertheless.

“Ha. Koch is gonna tell me I can’t smoke in my own cab?” snarled one New York cabbie, a Marlboro clenched between his teeth. “Hell, I hate those self-righteous bastards! I get a passenger who starts bitching about my cigarette, I just pull over and tell ‘em to get out and find another cab that suits ‘em better! I just wanna see the cop who’s gonna fine me for smoking in my own cab! I tell you, this thing passes, there’s gonna be fistfights in the streets of this town.”

The kind of talk, needless to say, to warm the cockles of any Tobacco Institute lobbyist’s heart.

nd enough, some days, to make Ron Saldana, the institute’s man in Anaheim, practically weep with envy.

“I used to get nervous, especially if I was at a hearing alone, but now I just get mad. And frustrated. I don’t know what it is that makes California different from the rest of the country, but the piety and militancy of the anti-smokers out here is unbelievable,” says Saldana. “I’ve been hissed, booed, shouted down, called all the usual names--merchant of death, baby killer, hired gun, you name it. Lotta times, too, they don’t want to allow us to even speak. And when we do, they laugh and snicker, really rude . . . and they refuse to hear a single thing we say. One of the most hostile crowds I’ve ever seen was in Riverside. They did everything but throw stuff at me.

“But, the worst part is, we usually can’t even get the local chambers of commerce organized behind us, to speak out in their own self-interest. California businessmen are just so resigned to having some ordinance forced on them, they don’t think it’s any use to protest.

“And forget the smokers themselves. If we could mobilize them, they would of course be a very formidable force. But the California smoker has been intimidated for so long, so ostracized, they’re actually ashamed to stand up for their rights. I really feel sorry for them.”

Welcome to the trenches of Region No. 9, a battle zone so fierce and fraught with failure that other Tobacco Institute lobbyists speak of it in tones of semi-awe and give grateful thanks each day that it belongs to poor old Saldana and not them.

Of all the Tobacco Institute spokesmen to appear in this scenario, Ron Saldana, 40, is the most improbable of the lot--a quiet, reserved family man, father of three, trim and sandy-haired with a close-cropped beard, raised in Utah to be such a good Mormon boy that today he even looks guilty ordering a glass of iced tea in 110-degree weather. And that’s his only vice. He doesn’t drink either alcohol or coffee and reports, without pride, that he once smoked a cigarette in high school. “I didn’t like it; it made me sick. I haven’t had one since.”

Saldana, whose territory includes Southern California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, allows with a wan smile that he loses “around nine out of every 10” battles. Never mind defeating a proposed ordinance altogether, Saldana counts it as a victory if he can just influence a city council to dilute its ordinance to exclude restaurants or retail stores--”or at least leave it voluntary, let the businessman set his own policy depending on his trade. I mean, it’s just not fair to force a guy who may cater mostly to smokers to set aside 50%, or even 10%, of his seating for nonsmokers. He’s gonna have half an empty house every night!”

Hence, to Saldana, Tustin was a victory “because they exempted retail stores”; Yorba Linda exempted businesses with 10 or fewer employees; “Orange County was probably my biggest success because we got them (the supervisors) to at least agree to go voluntary . . . to leave regulation up to the individual towns, pending a six-month review”; and “Anaheim probably hurt us the worst, because, although they exempted restaurants, they set a precedent for other large cities like Santa Ana by allowing just one nonsmoker to dictate policy in the workplace.”

“That’s the worst thing about these ordinances,” Saldana adds. “They create conflict where there was none by giving nonsmokers all the power over their co-workers, and once they have all the power, they start enjoying it. They won’t compromise because they don’t have to anymore. You’d be surprised how many ordinarily nice folks turn into real petty tyrants after one of these ordinances passes.”

Saldana says this slowly, his face furled into the convincing, earnest frown of a man who wouldn’t know how to utter an insincerity if he tried. Which is why Saldana is probably among the Tobacco Institute’s most effective lobbyists. Like all institute employees, he won’t say what he earns, except that “it isn’t all that much.”

But watching Saldana in action, it’s clear that what really draws him to this job is the challenge. Like Scott Stapf, he relishes an uphill battle. And, echoing Stapf, he says, “I’ve always wanted to work for a business under siege.”

Before he went to work for the Tobacco Institute six years ago, Saldana was a lobbyist for the mobile-home industry. “It was the same thing--in those days everybody said they were firetraps, you’d burn to death in them. Just about every trade association is in the same boat; if they don’t have lobbyists out there, the government will put so many restrictions on them they’ll be driven out of business.”

And now, although Saldana has a handy command of the institute’s positions on the medical aspects of smoking, it’s obvious that to him the game is the same, whether he’s defending mobile homes or cigarettes. Except he’s probably got a better understanding of the hazards of mobile homes. When it comes to cigarettes, Saldana sometimes seems almost naively out of touch, befuddled by an uproar he really doesn’t understand.

By his own admission, Saldana isn’t “emotionally involved” with smokers’ rights--”certainly not like Walker (Merryman) or Jack.” “Jack” is Saldana’s superior--Jack Kelly, regional vice president of the institute’s Sacramento office and the most instantly disarming tobacco lobbyist of them all, thanks mainly to his persistent honesty. Kelly alone, for instance, is willing to publicly admit, bluntly, simply, and without apology, that he is a nicotine fiend.

“Hell, yeah, I don’t doubt that I’m addicted, I have no problem with the term,” he declared, as he sat in his office across from the state capitol, puffing steadily away at his Benson & Hedges.

“All I know is, I’d hate like hell to have to even try quitting. It’d be damned hard. What would I do with my hands ? What would I substitute? Smoking’s been such a continuous part of my life!”

Saldana, meantime, defends cigarettes with the natural detachment of a man who has never experienced either the pleasures a chestful of nicotine can bring, or the pursuant, racking 4 a.m. hack that eventually terrifies so many into quitting.

He says, for instance, that his wife smokes “maybe a pack a day” and insists that he doesn’t worry about her health. “Why should I? She’s healthier than I am. I get colds all the time, and she never comes down with anything.” He sounds perfectly sincere.

“But I do believe that, in some people, smoking may be a contributing factor in health problems,” he adds, tentatively. “For instance, if you have a history of cancer in your family, you might not want to smoke. But, hereditary considerations aside, the evidence so far presented doesn’t prove causation. Statistically, nine out of 10 people who smoke do not get cancer.”

Asked whether he would still work for the institute if medical evidence convinced him that smoking caused cancer, Saldana barely hesitates. “Yes, I think so. Because it’s still a matter of choice. And besides, nothing in this world is totally guaranteed safe. The government shouldn’t try to control it. And, morally, it doesn’t matter so long as I’m not endorsing the product, and the Tobacco Institute doesn’t endorse it for those who don’t want to smoke.”

Likewise, asking Saldana about the industry’s $2-billion annual ad bill is an exercise in futility. Like all institute spokesmen, he simply says ads appeal to those who want to smoke, they don’t create smokers.

Employing similar reasoning, Saldana even defends the tobacco industry’s resistance to any regulation of vending machines or street-corner sampling to prevent juvenile abuse.

“I think, uh, studies show that most kids who smoke, uh, get their first cigarette at home, you know? From parents who smoke, not from vending machines or a free sample,” he says. Frowning, Saldana pauses, then refuses to concede that vending machines should be at least as regulated as alcohol to prevent juvenile usage. Instead, he insists that vending machines need to be located on practically every block of the country as “a convenience for adults.” Besides, he allows almost innocently, “They constitute almost 15% of the market.”

But if Saldana generally holds to the basic party line, as time goes on and he begins to unwind, he also displays another, altogether unscripted streak nowhere to be found at the institute’s Washington headquarters. From his very different perspective working in the field, Saldana has developed an aggressiveness that often leads him to say exactly what he thinks--and also makes him want to fight back in an industry that has long since decided to lay low, make no waves and simply try to preserve the status quo.

Saldana, for instance, doesn’t hesitate to malign the motives of others, just as they malign the Tobacco Institute. Take the American Lung Assn.: “Our evidence shows that when they’re staging a fund-raiser,” says Saldana, “they always collect a lot more money if they focus on the smoking issue, which may account for some of their enthusiasm.”

Sometimes Saldana is even mildly critical of the Tobacco Institute itself. For example, he complains that policy makers in Washington don’t understand that, for fieldworkers like himself, one of the anti-smokers’ strongest arguments in hearings on proposed anti-smoking ordinances is that not one has ever been challenged on legal grounds.

“I would like to see us take one of these ordinances to court. . . . challenge some city council’s right to dictate to private businessmen. And the beauty of it is, even if the institute paid all the legal bills, we wouldn’t be involved--it would be some typical businessman who’s being hurt by the arbitrary policies of a bunch of bureaucrats. It’s so wrong, I think we could win a case like that easy !”

But, Saldana sighs, his momentary excitement fading, he understands why the institute won’t legally contest city ordinances. It is the same reason the Tobacco Institute is also careful not to brag too much about how they’ve never had to pay a penny in any of the multitude of liability cases brought against them by families of heavy smokers who died from assorted diseases related to cigarettes.

“We can’t risk it. . . . We’ve got enough troubles just fighting off efforts to destroy the industry altogether, without deliberately drawing attention to ourselves,” he says morosely. Furthermore, if the institute sued, and lost, he adds, ordinances might become the new national fad. “All we have to do is lose just one , and who knows? All hell could break loose.”

Saldana also objects angrily to some of the witnesses the institute flies around the country to testify at hearings. They may be experts but, from his own experiences, Saldana knows they are not always sufficiently committed to the institute’s cause.

“One time they sent this doctor to a hearing I had in Irvine. They chartered a jet for him and everything. Well, as usual, we were scheduled at the end of the agenda, and the meeting went on until nearly midnight before the smoking ordinance came up. And so this guy suddenly decides he’s tired and refuses to stay! He just got up and walked out, went back to his hotel room to go to bed ! I was really embarrassed. Because the doctors for the other side stayed until 1 a.m. to testify--and some of them were pretty old guys. It just confirmed what everybody says about the Tobacco Institute, that our witnesses are just hired guns, not doing this out of principle.”

Anyway, Saldana concluded with satisfaction, he called Washington to complain, and “they haven’t sent that guy back out here since.”

Not surprisingly, Saldana wasn’t eager to have a journalist accompany him on a trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., where the anti-smoking forces are busy trying to push through a stringent local ordinance.

As he said, “It’s not that I have anything to hide. It’s only that I’ve learned from experience that as soon as I’m identified as a representative of the Tobacco Institute, I lose all credibility. They just sneer us away. . . . So I try to work behind the scenes whenever I can. I’m much more effective that way.”

But, in the end, he relented. Mainly because Washington, operating on the premise that the institute’s press could only get better, never worse, ordered him to cooperate.

And so, there was Saldana, dressed in a tie on a sweltering 110-degree Scottsdale afternoon, occasionally mopping his brow as he leaned across the desk toward Sue Sharp, the local chamber of commerce representative, telling her precisely what she must do. For all his usual soft-spoken grace, Saldana suddenly resembled nothing so much as a general instructing his troops as they approached Normandy’s shores.

“Don’t let them get a proposed bill up, no matter what ! Try to prevent that, ask for a 90-day delay for the chamber to poll its members, do anything to prevent them from assigning a bill to be drafted tonight.”

Saldana was hunched forward, speaking with such hushed urgency that Sharp, normally a casual, relaxed woman, leaned forward herself, shoulders tightening at all this unexpected intensity. “And, God, whatever happens, fight any talk of percentages (in restaurant space)! Do all you can to stop ‘em from incorporating even a 20-80 percentage, because once they get any percentage in, they can just come back later when nobody’s around and get it raised.”

Sharp nodded dumbly throughout the exchange, taking notes, her face knitted into a tight frown of concentration verging on alarm. In time, someone in the room interrupted, wanting to know why the institute’s defense was directed so exclusively at business interests, and not at individual rights as well. “Because this is primarily a group of businessmen, so we’ve got to give ‘em something they’ll buy !” Saldana replied, a little impatiently.

Later, over dinner at one of Scottsdale’s most elegant restaurants, Saldana ventilated more of his professional frustrations.

“We’re just spread too thin ! We oughta

be working every town in the country like state legislatures! You saw that--Sharp’s willing, she’s on our side, but she can’t possibly lobby every chamber member in town, not in time to get ‘em all out to oppose that ordinance. The Tobacco Institute oughta be sending us reinforcements if this is a war they intend to win!”

Saldana’s mood had improved vastly, however, by the time he returned to California, where, for once, he was faced with a battle he is convinced he can handily win.

Beverly Hills.

As Saldana describes it, the proposed Beverly Hills ordinance is “middle of the road, not as tough as Pasadena’s, about the same as Los Angeles’--it calls for private workplace restrictions, but leaves individual policy up to the discretion of owners. It originally called for a 50-50 restaurant restriction too, but I think they’ve already given up on that.”

So far the anti-smoking forces haven’t even been able to get their proposed ordinance before the City Council for a preliminary hearing, and, thanks to community spirit, Saldana is hopeful they never will.

“It’s unbelievable, the way people are already turning out to fight it! Neiman-Marcus, influential types like that, and the chamber of commerce. They’re all on our side!” cried Saldana, beaming. At that moment, he looked around 10 years younger, just contemplating this happy enclave of organized militancy, a resistance movement befitting New York, right here in the heart of Southern California.

“In my opinion, that’s one ordinance that’s never going to get off the ground. The Beverly Hills City Council is never going to pass anything very strict,” Saldana concluded happily. “How can they, given the kind of people who live there? What are they gonna do--tell George Burns to put out his cigar?”