Lobbying Stalls Pact on Tobacco Tax Spending

A fierce tobacco industry lobbying effort aimed at killing a proposed anti-smoking advertising campaign stalled agreement Tuesday on a $1.5-billion bill dividing up Proposition 99 tobacco tax money.

A two-house conference committee, which has spent weeks drafting legislation dividing up the tobacco tax money, adjourned Tuesday when it could not settle a dispute over $28.6 million earmarked in the bill for the anti-smoking media campaign.

Tobacco interests and their legislative allies argue that all the advertising money should be given to grade schools to finance anti-smoking education programs, rather than be earmarked for a mass media advertising campaign.

Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento), chairman of the six-member conference committee, said, “The tobacco guys are going crazy because they know very well that advertising works.”

The adjournment was requested by Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, who admitted that he and other members of the Senate were feeling the heat of a last-ditch lobbying campaign financed by the tobacco industry, which spent $21 million in a futile effort to defeat Proposition 99 last year.

During floor sessions Tuesday, tobacco lobbyists lined up three and four deep outside the Assembly and Senate chambers, trying to snag legislators as they left or send messages to those inside.

“If they can’t get that (advertising money) out of the bill, they’re threatening to blow the whole deal apart,” reported one lobbyist who did not want to be identified.

Maddy said he wanted additional time to discuss the issue privately with Gov. George Deukmejian and legislative leaders.

Maddy argued that smoking has received so much bad publicity that more advertising would be “a waste.” He said the money should be used to educate grade school students instead.

But others argued that that approach would not reach many smokers.

Works Well

Carolyn Martin, chairwoman for the Coalition for a Healthy California, authors of Proposition 99, said: “We know that TV works extremely well, and that is exactly why the tobacco industry has targeted (the money). They know it works too.”

The tobacco industry’s lobbying campaign is no secret in the Capitol, but until this week it has been conducted quietly and out of public view. Opponents reported Tuesday that they have counted 24 lobbyists working to defeat the anti-smoking provisions of the bill.

Representatives from the tobacco industry did not testify before the conference committee and did not respond to a reporter’s requests for comment.

Discussion of the anti-smoking advertising campaign overshadowed other work of the committee, which was able to agree on every other element of a complicated 2 1/2-year expenditure plan called for by Proposition 99, which was approved by voters last year.

The measure raised the cigarette tax 25 cents a pack and imposed comparable increases on other tobacco products. It specified that new tobacco taxes, expected to raise roughly $600 million a year between now and 1991, be split among hospitals (35%), physicians (10%), health education (20%), public resources (5%) and research programs (5%). It put no strings on the remaining 25% of the money, leaving the Legislature free to decide how it should be spent.

Emergency Rooms

The package tentatively approved by the committee would earmark $98 million to $110 million a year to hospital emergency rooms and trauma care centers.

In addition to emergency rooms, the bill would provide additional funds for counties, doctors fees, health clinics, prenatal services and a range of other programs, with the lion’s share of the money targeted to finance health care for poor Californians.

Over the 2 1/2 years the bill would remain in effect, county hospitals alone would receive $389 million. Various other county mental health, hospital and physician services would receive another $425.3 million.

On top of direct aid for health programs, the legislation appropriates $73.5 million to be spent on medical research programs on the prevention, causes and treatment of tobacco-related diseases, with the money to be administered by the University of California. Another $73.5 million would be spent on a variety of public resource projects, such as parks expansion, wildlife enhancement and protection of fisheries.