Pitch to Put Smoking Ban on Ballot Is Deceptive, Critics Say

Signature-gatherers for an initiative backed by tobacco giant Philip Morris have flooded California voters with phone calls urging them to sign petitions supporting what they say is a measure to restrict tobacco use.

The initiative is actually aimed at dismantling the increasing number of tough local smoking bans in Los Angeles, San Francisco and scores of smaller cities, and replacing them with a looser statewide standard that could allow smoking in workplaces.

Health groups have denounced the initiative as a fraud and say the signature-gathering effort is deceptive.

Although the number of calls placed by the phone banks is not known, opponents of the initiative say 100,000 calls might have been made in the past two weeks.

Acting Secretary of State Tony Miller received so many complaints that he issued a warning Friday to the backers of the initiative, telling them it is illegal to intentionally misrepresent the contents of a measure to obtain signatures. Miller said violations “will not be tolerated.”

A spokesman for the initiative, Lee Stitzenberger, said the phone bank operation has stopped, and insisted that there was nothing deceptive about it. The initiative indeed would create tougher smoking regulations in those places where there are no smoking rules. He said the outcry is being generated by the initiative’s opponents and called Miller’s letter harassment.

Those receiving phone calls include an Orange County real estate salesman whose wife is allergic to tobacco smoke, and the mother-in-law of the one of the state’s leading anti-tobacco politicians, Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood), whose legislation to impose a virtual statewide ban on indoor smoking has stalled in the state Senate.

When a petition caller asked real estate salesman Dave Emerson if he wanted to restrict smoking, Emerson was glad to oblige, and requested that he be sent a petition to sign. The petition arrived within a day.

Emerson, attuned to sales pitches, was “within a gnat’s eyelash of signing it.” Then he read the fine print.

“My 40-year-old eyes could barely read it, but I saw it was sponsored by Philip Morris,” said Emerson, who sells homes in Long Beach and Orange County. “They’re slick.”

Emerson said the caller assumed he was a nonsmoker who dislikes tobacco smoke--which he is. His wife is allergic to tobacco smoke and he believes he is “entitled to clean air in public places, not other people’s smoke.”

“The level of deception never ceases to amaze me,” Emerson said. “If I tried something like this in real estate, I’d be out of business.”

Using large type, the mailer sent to Emerson and many other Californians opens by saying that the initiative features “strict regulations.” It goes on to say that the measure doubles fines for selling tobacco to minors, bans cigarette billboards within 500 feet of schools, and mandates that at least 75% of all seats in restaurants be for nonsmokers.

The mailer also says the initiative “imposes tough smoking restrictions in more than 200 localities that currently have no regulations at all” and “replaces the crazy quilt of some 270 local ordinances with a single, tough, uniform statewide law.”

Under the initiative, there could be smoking in 25% of the floor space of restaurants if they meet ventilation standards. Opponents of the measure note that the ventilation standards are not designed to limit the ill-effects of secondhand tobacco smoke.

“It certainly confirms what I’ve thought all along: They’re going to run this campaign as if they’re out to save us from secondhand smoke. It’s total deception,” said Friedman, who received one of the mailers from his in-laws.

Stitzenberger, the initiative spokesman, contends that his opponents are orchestrating their response.

“I find it interesting that the people who want to ban smoking are afraid of having something like this on the ballot,” said Stitzenberger, whose consulting firm, Dolphin Group, represents Philip Morris.

He noted that the mailer contains a copy of the initiative for people to read, and states that the supporters include “restaurants, hotels and Philip Morris Inc.” He added that no other tobacco companies have joined the effort.

(In fact, the statement is in small print on the back of the envelope in which the material is sent and is not on the copy of the initiative.)

Stitzenberger said he is uncertain whether the measure will receive the 600,000 voters’ signatures needed by May 7 to place it on the November ballot. But Mike Arno of American Petition Consultants, the firm leading the petition drive, said he is on track to gather the signatures.

The phone bank operation is only part of the signature-gathering effort. Arno has hired signature-gatherers to circulate petitions at shopping centers and other locales, a common tactic in initiative campaigns.

Also, there is a direct-mail effort led by a newly formed National Smokers Alliance. The mailers include a four-page letter signed by former Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, a Republican from Michigan.

In his letter, Vander Jagt lashes out at California’s “200 different laws that tell you where you can or can’t smoke,” and urges recipients to sign the petition “to preserve your right to smoke.”

Bill Althause, a former mayor of York, Pa., and an executive with the National Smokers Alliance, described the group as “grass-roots.” He said it received start-up money from Philip Morris, but would not say how much the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer gave.

“We don’t see any public relevance” to the amount, Althause said.

Among the recipients of the Smokers Alliance letter was Theresa Velo, lobbyist for the American Cancer Society in Sacramento.

“I was laughing hysterically that they would send it to me,” Velo said.

Velo and other opponents of the initiative believe the measure will qualify for the ballot, but will lose.

“We can’t stop them from getting their signatures because they’re out there lying,” Velo said. “But in the campaign, we’ll be able to get our story out.”

Jack Nicholl, a Los Angeles political consultant hired by health groups to combat the initiative, said the telephone pitch may be deceptive, but not illegal.

“There is no legal recourse, unless they actually tell a lie,” Nicholl said.

Indeed, the measure’s restrictions are greater than smoking limits imposed by municipalities with nonexistent or weak ordinances. But the true target, he said, is tough local ordinances.

“This is a strategic move to head off smoke-free ordinances at the local level. That’s what’s killing them,” Nicholl said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find a place to smoke in the big cities.”

The proponents’ campaign committee, Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions, has not filed any campaign finance statements so it is not known how much the group has spent on the signature-gathering effort.

But Nicholl, who is familiar with the workings of phone banks, estimated that tens of thousands, and perhaps 100,000 or more people received calls in the phone bank operation. Given the cost of such an operation, he estimated that proponents might have spent $6 for each signature received.

He estimated that proponents are paying $1 to $1.50 per signature to Arno’s firm, which in turn pays signature-gatherers on the streets to obtain the necessary 600,000 signatures. Such a price would make it among the most costly initiative-qualifying campaigns.

Coincidentally, an anti-tobacco radio ad campaign titled “Invasion of the Tobacco People,” began airing last month with the theme that tobacco companies covertly finance efforts to undermine local smoking bans.

The hard-hitting ads talk of front groups with names such as “Citizens for a Fair, Sensible, Unrestricted and Totally Ineffectual Smoking Policy,” and “swear on a stack of cashier’s checks that there’s no cigarette money behind them--just a grass-roots effort by your friends.”

In a touch of irony, the ads are paid for by a 25-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes imposed by Proposition 99, a 1988 initiative approved by voters. They are not part of the separate, privately funded campaign to oppose Stitzenberger’s initiative.

Mark Caffee, a spokesman for the Proposition 99-funded advertising, said the ads do not target the proposed statewide initiative, but are intended to counter the overall tobacco industry strategy for fighting local bans.