Tax-Fired Drive Against Smoking in California Seen as Model Effort : Anti-tobacco forces have reason to celebrate: hundreds of ordinances passed nationwide since 1980.

Coming off a string of successes in recent years, the anti-smoking movement is flush with optimism as it looks ahead. And for good reason.

Barely two weeks into the year, researchers reported impressive results from the most ambitious anti-smoking campaign ever. After a three-year, statewide educational effort supported by a tax on cigarette sales, the number of Californians who smoked had dropped from 26.5% in 1987 to 22.2% in 1990.

Now anti-smoking groups throughout the country are itching to duplicate the California effort--and to engage the tobacco industry on a host of other fronts.

BACKGROUND: The tobacco industry has been on the defensive since the 1967 surgeon general’s report on the dangers of smoking. That led to a ban on TV and radio advertising of tobacco products in 1972. What went largely unappreciated at that time was the simultaneous disappearance from the airwaves of highly effective anti-smoking public service messages, required under the equal time doctrine.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, as the industry vigorously fought back, tobacco foes joined forces and quickly began to gain new ground. For instance, the American Heart Assn., the American Lung Assn. and the American Cancer Society all opened lobbies in Washington.

“We decided that if we were going to have a real impact, we’d have to coordinate our efforts,” said Scott Ballin, head of the resulting Coalition on Smoking or Health.

Among the cigarette foes’ biggest successes in the 1980s were more than 500 ordinances, passed throughout the country, to restrict or ban smoking in restaurants, stores and workplaces. The Los Angeles City Council this week asked for a study of the economic impact of a smoking ban in all restaurants and government buildings in the city.

Another victory came in 1987, when smoking was banned on domestic airline flights two hours or longer. The rule was extended to all domestic flights in 1989.

Perhaps the most significant achievement of the anti-tobacco forces was the passage in 1988 of the California initiative raising the cigarette tax by 25 cents a pack. This raised $700 million a year, of which $80 million was earmarked for anti-smoking efforts. That amount stands in stark contrast to the $3.5-million annual budget of the U.S. Office of Smoking and Health.

OUTLOOK: The recent survey of Californians’ smoking habits also found two serious stumbling blocks to further reductions in smoking: the unabated high rate of teen-agers taking up smoking and the inability of many adult smokers to quit.

Hence there are fresh calls for more effective quit-smoking programs and for new ways to discourage youths from taking up the habit.

More than 80 local ordinances have been passed to ban or limit cigarette sales from vending machines, said Mark Pertschuk, director of the Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. “We’ll have to finish that job.”

Others said that, although most states have a minimum age for buying cigarettes, few states enforce it. Athena Mueller, general counsel to the 25-year-old Action on Smoking and Health, suggested that one way to get stricter enforcement would be to license cigarette vendors, much as liquor stores are licensed.

“Simply raising the age to 18 is not sufficient,” added Richard Hamburg, a legislative consultant to the American Heart Assn.

The anti-smoking lobby also hopes to encourage the International Civil Aviation Organization to bar smoking on international flights.

And the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which estimates that about 75 million people are still being exposed to second-hand smoke on the job, has taken an initial step toward workplace limitations or bans.

Anti-smoking groups also are heartened by bills in Congress that would impose new rules on advertising and promotion of tobacco products and establish a nationwide education program patterned after California’s and financed by excise taxes on cigarettes.

The tobacco industry downplays its foes’ gains. “They tend to get pretty puffed up over small accomplishments,” said Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute.

But Pertschuk insisted: “There is clearly a historic inevitability to what’s happening. The writing’s on the wall.”