Tobacco Giant Quietly Pushes Prop. 188

In a state that has led all others in attempts to snuff out smoking, the nation’s largest cigarette maker is taking the bold step of pushing a voter initiative that would make it easier for smokers to light up.

With its Proposition 188 on the Nov. 8 ballot, tobacco giant Philip Morris USA hopes to become the latest big business to use California’s initiative process to turn its goals into law.

“It is a very difficult, uphill fight,” said Lee Stitzenberger, the Westwood political consultant entrusted by Philip Morris with convincing Californians that smoking policy should be guided by a cigarette manufacturer. Difficult, but not impossible.

Improbable as it may seem in California, where fewer than one in five people smoke, Proposition 188 exhibits signs of life. Public opinion polls show that the race is close. The tobacco industry is outspending the vote-no-on-188 forces by a margin of 28 to 1. The opponents consist primarily of health groups, doctors and anti-smoking activists, who are having a hard time attracting attention--essential for countering the strategy employed by Stitzenberger and Philip Morris.

“(Philip Morris’) plan is to be low-profile,” said Jack Nicholl, the Los Angeles consultant for the No on 188 campaign. “Don’t create any controversy . . . then slip in in the dark of night, with an ignorant electorate. It’s a smart tactic based on weakness. The weakness is that the sponsorship is not tolerated by the voting public.”

Proposition 188 would reverse a decade-long trend in California, returning to restaurants and other businesses the right to permit smoking in ventilated sections.

The initiative would erase local smoking bans from Los Angeles to Redding, and prevent cities from regulating tobacco use in the future. The initiative also collides head-on with a bill passed by the Legislature that would be the nation’s strongest statewide smoking restrictions.

Signed into law by Gov. Pete Wilson earlier this year, the statewide ban will go into effect in January--unless Proposition 188 passes, in which case the initiative takes precedence.

The legislation signed by Wilson would ban smoking in most indoor workplaces--restaurants, malls, offices, factories among them. It would prohibit smoking in bars by 1999, unless the state can develop standards to guard against the ill effects of secondhand smoke. The law also would permit cities to pass even tougher smoking ordinances.

Since none of that was considered good for its business, Philip Morris fought back with the initiative, paying $1.8 million to place it on the ballot in a petition drive that brought charges of fraud by anti-smoking forces--charges at which Stitzenberger scoffs.

While other tobacco companies are belatedly joining the effort by donating money, Philip Morris remains Proposition 188’s prime backer.

“We’ve got a business interest in ensuring that our customers are treated equitably,” said David Laufer, a Philip Morris executive in Sacramento.

Philip Morris is a New York-based conglomerate that makes Marlboro, the world’s best-selling cigarette, and claims a 40%-plus share of cigarette sales in the United States.

The company emphasized its interest in Proposition 188 in a September letter to its stockholders, declaring that the initiative’s passage is of “paramount importance to our customers, our employees and you, our stockholders,” and saying it is needed to block the statewide ban from going into effect.

With four weeks to go before the election, Stitzenberger has spent $5 million of Philip Morris’ billions. The next-largest donor, R. J. Reynolds, which makes Camel cigarettes, has given $1.6 million. Other tobacco companies have given a combined $1.25 million.

Through the end of September, the Yes on 188 effort had raised $7.8 million. A relative handful of restaurant and bar owners and others have given a total of less than $2,500. Stitzenberger predicts that the campaign will not cost more than $10 million, but says he has no plans to air high-priced television spots, and may not go on radio--although “that could change.”

For now, Stitzenberger plans to run a “cerebral” campaign to “educate” voters. His message is that Proposition 188 is a reasonable compromise between smokers and nonsmokers. He intends to make heavy use of direct mail, the theme of which is that voters should read the initiative.

“If people understand what’s in the initiative, and get away from all the hype, they’ll see it is a fair, balanced, reasonable solution,” he said. “We believe a majority of voters believe in some measure of business choice.”

It’s not clear, however, that even careful readers of the voting pamphlet would pick up on some of the nuances in Proposition 188. The initiative says, for example, that smoking would be permitted in business establishments that meet ventilation standards.

It does not explain the standards, except to say they must be in accord with “ASHRAE Standard 62-1989,” a reference--not explained in the initiative--to a trade organization in Atlanta called the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Condition Engineers Inc.

As it happens, the tobacco industry helped draft the ASHRAE standard and, since 1988, ASHRAE has received $16,600 from Philip Morris, executives in the trade group told The Times.

Engineer John Janssen, who chaired the committee that wrote the standard in 1989, said it was designed to spare people from the odors of tobacco smoke and other indoor pollutants, not from ill effects.

Additionally, Janssen said in a telephone interview, the tobacco industry paid for at least one committee member to attend the meetings leading to the standard. A second member had done tobacco-funded research, and pushed tobacco industry views, Janssen said.

“We had gone to the tobacco industry and asked them to contribute somebody for the committee,” he said.

The No on 188 campaign consists of health groups such as the California arms of the American Cancer Society, American Heart Assn. and American Lung Assn. and business groups such as the California Restaurant Assn. and the California Labor Federation. The Mormon church also has come out against the measure.

The three health groups have given a combined $111,000. The California Medical Assn., among the largest campaign spenders, has given $21,000, and the California Dental Assn. has given $31,000 toward the defeat of Proposition 188. Most hospital corporations and health insurance companies are pledging their political war chests to defeat other initiatives on the ballot.

“I’m grateful for what (donors) have given, but it’s not enough,” Nicholl said. “They don’t see it as their top priority. But they’re going to hate it if they have to live with the results. It will put smoke in their face.”

Nicholl said he expects to have less than $600,000 for the No campaign--he has raised $257,000 so far--a paltry sum in California politics. He hopes to have enough money to air some radio spots in which former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop blasts the initiative. But with little money, and given Stitzenberger’s decision to remain low-key, the No on 188 effort is struggling.

Trying to draw attention, opponents held a news conference last week, bringing several public officials to the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland.

So television crews would have something to videotape, the organizers brought a 10-foot-long “cigarette” stuffed with what looked like shredded money. The plan was to stomp on it in front of television cameras. But when only one radio reporter and a camera crew from a Spanish language station showed up, the initiative’s foes ended up saving the “visual” for another day.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood), who authored the now-threatened statewide smoking ban due to go into effect in January, is alarmed by the campaign being waged by opponents of Proposition 188.

“Frankly, I haven’t seen much evidence of the (No on 188) campaign,” he said. “I hope that there is a strategic plan. I’m not aware if there is one or not. . . . It would be the ultimate irony that this struggle in Sacramento was wiped out because a special interest took advantage of the initiative.”

Ironically, part of the Yes on 188 campaign, called Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions, is aimed at nonsmokers. Stitzenberger’s mailers talk about the need for statewide tobacco regulation, proclaim that Proposition 188 would create one of the toughest smoking laws in the nation, and tout elements of the initiative aimed at making it harder for minors to buy cigarettes.

If the initiative fails and Friedman’s smoking ban goes into effect, California will have overdone it with “de facto prohibition,” Stitzenberger said.

“This is not a burning issue,” he said. “This is not the biggest concern people have in the world. They have a lot of concerns that rank a whole lot higher than whether there is a separate smoking section.”

On the coffee table in Stitzenberger’s Westwood office is the book “Thank You for Smoking,” a witty and biting satire of the tobacco industry. Through much of the book, the main character battles “Health Nazis” and attacks scientific data pointing to the risks of smoking.

Stitzenberger hasn’t read it yet. But he could be one of its characters. He derides Health Nazis, and scoffs at “irrational ravings of the opposition.” He smokes occasional cigars, although he says his wife makes him light up on the deck, and terms as “garbage” studies showing that tobacco smoke can harm nonsmokers.

Stitzenberger and his firm, the Dolphin Group, ran the 1986 campaign that resulted in the unprecedented defeat of California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other Supreme Court justices. In that campaign, he and his partners organized a group called Crime Victims for Court Reform, which drew on mothers and fathers of murdered children who opposed the liberal Bird court.

Later, Stitzenberger produced a video of Willie Horton’s victims. Their descriptions of Horton’s vicious attacks was a powerful attack on former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in his 1988 run for the presidency. Stitzenberger produced the video as part of an independent effort to aid George Bush’s election.

Now, the No on 188 campaign hopes to make use of “tobacco victims” to defeat Stitzenberger. He takes umbrage at the description.

“I don’t acknowledge that exists,” he said. “You make choices in your life--whether you choose to drink or not drink, smoke or not smoke, have wild abandoned sex. . . . We all make judgments in our life.”