It’s War Against Tobacco Industry : Smoking: Citizens must fight; government is too compliant.

There is a drug war going on in Orange County. The dealers and pushers are the tobacco industry and their supporters. The governor, his appointees and our legislative leaders are pushers in this war for the health and even lives of our children.

Tobacco products are the lethal weapon. Deceptive advertising and marketing practices are the ammunition. Until very recently, our government refused to admit that tobacco was addictive or that it was a drug. The tobacco industry is still allowed to push the lie that smoking makes you attractive, successful and carefree.

The reason our elected officials in Washington and Sacramento are so compliant with the tobacco industry is not their personal conviction--most do not smoke--but campaign contributions from the tobacco industry. They do not care that a war for our children’s lives goes on as long as they are reelected.

The street fighting is now in our communities, and city councils are being asked to support smoking control ordinances. At the same time, the tobacco lobbyists scare the wits out of local businesses while recruiting them to do their dirty work at city council meetings.

Unless we speak up, the war will be lost.

We need to tell our elected officials that we want them to join with us in a major offensive against an industry that is responsible for 20% of the deaths in California. Tobacco kills more than illegal drugs, automobile accidents, AIDS and handguns combined! Let us tell our elected officials to get their priorities in order.

In 1988, voters enacted Proposition 99, which mandated that 20% of the tobacco tax dollars raised be spent on education to prevent smoking.

California has developed a program that involves the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. It has media education programs that have attracted national attention.

Over the past five years, the governor and Legislature have diverted health education funds in increasingly large amounts for their “pet” projects.

Today, only 11% of the tobacco tax dollars go for tobacco-related health education. While our legislators are fully aware that this diversion is illegal, they have not been held accountable. Meanwhile, children become addicted, adults become ill or die and tobacco industry profits grow.

A recent survey of 16,000 Orange County students showed that 10.7% of eighth- graders and 17.2% of 11th-graders had used one or more cigarettes in the week prior to the survey. Ethnic minorities and adolescents are often the target of the tobacco industry’s advertising.

Phillip Morris is funding a statewide initiative designed to appear as a smoking control measure. In truth, it would preempt local ordinances and put smoking control in the hands of the governor and Legislature, the same people who have already diverted more than $165 million from the Health Education Account. In a time of war, that kind of behavior is called treason.