The Showdown Over Smoking : Stage is set for November ballot confrontation

The stage is now set in California for a clear-cut showdown between the public good and tobacco interests. The Legislature has passed a sweeping statewide ban on smoking in restaurants and nearly all other enclosed places of employment. It took years of wrangling and compromising to pass this bill, a measure whose time has come.

Certainly Gov. Pete Wilson will have the courage to resist intense pressure from the tobacco lobby and other narrow special interests and sign AB 13. Friday morning he told KNX radio that “I expect that I will sign it.” After all, last year he imposed similar restrictions on state office buildings. How could he prescribe otherwise for private workplaces?

But a major hurdle looms. Philip Morris, the cigarette maker, has managed to place an initiative on the November statewide ballot that would cancel out AB 13 and all local anti-smoking ordinances. If approved, it would replace them all with uniform but far less restrictive rules that would permit smoking in workplaces that are well-ventilated. It is indicative of the backer’s mendacity that Philip Morris gained the signatures for the initiative by promoting it as an anti-smoking measure.

NOD TO TOURISM: AB 13, authored by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood), is the strongest legislation of its kind passed by any state and is sure to be emulated elsewhere. Meant mainly to protect nonsmokers from secondhand fumes, it was the product of prolonged deliberations in which Friedman got cooperation from the tourism industry by agreeing to allow smoking in parts of hotel lobbies and bars and in banquet and meeting rooms. And he agreed to exempt businesses with five or fewer employees as long as no worker objected. It was by coincidence but quite fitting that the bill was passed on the same day that the Centers for Disease Control disclosed staggering figures on the health costs of smoking. The centers released a study by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco that found about $50 billion a year in direct medical costs can be attributed to smoking--or $2.06 per pack of cigarettes.

TAXES AND LIVES: The Tobacco Institute responded with typical obtuseness. “We stand by our conviction that those costs do not exceed the taxes collected on the product,” said its spokesman, Thomas Lauria. How comforting to the dying lung-cancer patient to know that he is recouping, in terminal medical care, the taxes he paid on all those packages of pleasure, with even something left over for the government.

This is not a partisan issue. AB 13 passed the Senate on June 30 by a 23-10 vote and the Assembly Thursday by 48 to 22, with many Republicans joining the Democratic majority. There may be some who agree with Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) that AB 13 violates individual rights on the basis of the “lie” that secondhand smoke is dangerous.

But the Environmental Protection Agency says secondhand smoke is deadly, and a growing body of medical opinion supports that view. This bill protects Californians. The governor should sign it.