Even Smokers Found to Favor Workplace Ban

Anti-tobacco sentiment in California is so broad that the state’s ban on workplace smoking is favored not only by nonsmokers but most smokers as well, according to a new statewide survey.

The findings by Gallup Organization show what tobacco companies and smokers-rights groups are up against as they try to rally the troops against curbs on public smoking. Rather than get fighting mad, many smokers think such restrictions are reasonable and even helpful as they try to quit or cut down.

Gallup’s survey of 1,283 Californians, conducted between February and March and released this week, concentrated on the effects of AB 13, the workplace smoking ban that took effect in January 1995.

Nearly four-fifths (79%) of respondents said they observed a decline in smoking since the law took effect. Of those who noticed a reduction in smoking, 95% of the nonsmokers and a startling 69% of smokers said they considered the change positive.

The survey also found that 88% of nonsmokers and 83% of smokers believe employees should be protected at work from secondhand smoke.

The survey was conducted for the California Department of Health Services’ Tobacco Control Section, which spends millions of dollars in tobacco tax revenues annually on anti-smoking programs.

Smokers-rights groups dismissed the findings as propaganda. “I don’t know which smokers they talked to,” said Otto J. Mueksch, vice president of Californians for Smokers’ Rights, which claims 8,000 dues-paying members and said it does not accept funding from tobacco companies.

Many of his friends have stopped going to restaurants because they can’t have a smoke with their meal, Mueksch said.

Some smokers may accept AB 13 simply “because it has reduced hassles for smokers in the workplace,” said Gary Auxier, vice president of the National Smokers Alliance in Alexandria, Va., which claims 3 million members and gets funding from cigarette makers Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.

“Maybe they’re finding it’s a lot easier to go out and have a cigarette with their buddies on the loading dock” than be harassed indoors, Auxier said.

But state health officials said the findings reflect a shift in smokers’ feelings about the cigarette habit.

In a separate survey conducted by the Tobacco Control Section, the proportion of smokers who reported having a ban on smoking in their own homes out of concern for children or other family members increased from 22% in 1994 to 30% last year.

“Most smokers are concerned and understand the comfort issue in terms of other people,” said Colleen Stevens, spokeswoman for the state Tobacco Control Section.

With an estimated 300 local anti-smoking laws on the books in California when AB 13 took effect, many job sites were already smoke-free. The law banned smoking except at outdoor job sites and in large warehouses, tobacco shops and businesses with fewer than six employees.

Bars and gaming clubs were also exempted until 1997, although legislation by Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Ceres), which would extend the deadline to 2000, has passed the state Assembly and is pending in the Senate.

In previous state and national surveys, about 70% of smokers have said they would like to quit. Although public smoking bans are aimed at protecting nonsmokers, some studies suggest they also prompt smokers to quit by forcing them to do without cigarettes for longer periods of time.

A study released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit research organization, estimated that workplace smoking bans cause a 5% drop in the number of smokers and a 10% drop in cigarette consumption by those who continue to smoke.

In another study, researchers at the University of Missouri found that 51% of hospital workers covered by smoking bans at work kicked the habit within five years of the bans taking effect. According to the study, this compared with a quit rate of less than 38% in the general population.