Anti-Smoking Ads at Risk

The American Lung Assn. is trying to rescue California’s impressive anti-smoking campaign from being blown away by the recession. We wish this campaign luck.

Struggling to balance the state budget, Gov. Pete Wilson wants to cancel advertising and education programs that in just four years have helped persuade tens of thousands of Californians to quit smoking. These funds, along with half the money earmarked for research on smoking, would be transferred to other health programs.

The anti-smoking campaign is financed by a 25-cent-a-package tax imposed on cigarettes by California voters in 1988. The lung assn. argued that the language of the ballot proposition that voters approved prohibits use of the funds for any other purpose, no matter how worthy. When Wilson indicated he would not change his mind, the association sued to block transfer any of the fund, which totaled $115 million in 1990.

Two years after the campaign was launched, a survey found half of the people who had stopped smoking in 1990 saying that ads sponsored by the anti-smoking program were part of their decision to quit.

With money so scarce, transferring some of the anti-smoking funds to offices that offer prenatal and child care to California’s poor cannot be called hard-hearted. But with more than 200,000 Americans dying each year of smoking-related diseases, the association was right to challenge the decision.