Doctors Hit on Anti-Smoking Program

Three charitable health organizations accused the California Medical Assn. Monday of attempting to undermine Proposition 99, the voter-approved cigarette tax increase, by lobbying to cut spending for an anti-smoking education program.

Officials of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn. and the American Lung Assn. told a news conference that the doctors’ association was playing into the hands of tobacco interests by pushing lawmakers to shift $100 million from the anti-smoking program to health care programs for the poor.

“The tobacco industry fears most of all this particular (anti-smoking) program because of the impact on their profits,” said Dr. Lowell Irwin, president of the California division of the American Cancer Society. “They would love to get rid of it altogether.”

Medical association officials, however, said their decision to lobby for a shift in funds was prompted by their belief that expenditures on health care programs for the poor would be a more effective use of the money than an expensive media program.

“We are not . . . in bed with the tobacco industry,” said CMA spokesman Ken Todd. “We have been in favor of a smoke-free California long before this was ever on the ballot.”

The ballot measure requires that 20% of the revenue generated by a 25-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax be devoted to anti-smoking educational programs.

Since the passage of Proposition 99, the health organizations and the medical association, two former allies in the campaign to win voter approval, have been increasingly at odds over the expenditure of an estimated $130 million earmarked by the initiative for educational programs.

The news conference Monday followed an angry letter to lawmakers from CMA President William G. Plested III who suggested that some anti-smoking crusaders were motivated by hopes that they could gain monetarily from the educational programs. He said he had heard of one crusader who joined an advertising firm “in order, it is rumored, to give it an inside track on the community education contract.”

“This information is not presented for purposes of condemnation, but rather to illustrate that the anti-smoking crusaders are not always motivated by public interest or high ideals,” he wrote. He claimed it was a former representative of the American Cancer Society but did not give a name.

Irwin said the American Cancer Society was prohibited by its charter from accepting government funds so “there is no way this can be self-serving.” He said the health organizations had decided to hold a news conference only after failing to reach an accord with the doctors.

Carolyn Martin, a member of the lung association’s board of directors, said the anti-smoking groups viewed the education program as the most important recipient of the tax monies “because it deals with prevention.”

She said the program would need the full $130 million to counter a $200-million-a-year tobacco industry advertising campaign. She said it would include anti-smoking programs in the schools as well as an advertising campaign.

Todd argued that there would still be ample funds left in the program after a $100-million transfer for school programs. There would not be funds for a massive advertising campaign, he said, adding that CMA officials believe that kind of program would be ineffective.