Speakers Come and Go, but the Smoke Lingers

When Willie Brown was speaker of the Assembly, the tobacco lobby channeled millions in contributions to the San Francisco Democrat and was apparently pleased with the value it got for its money. Brown joined ranks with Gov. Pete Wilson to force a major cutback in what was widely regarded as a highly effective state-funded anti-smoking ad campaign. Now Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) is speaker, and he is showing a similar solicitude for the welfare of the cigarette makers. Credit the tobacco industry for determined nonpartisanship when it comes to protecting its interests. And credit Assembly speakers for bipartisan evenhandedness in responding to the dictates of big-money contributors.

In negotiations over the state’s $63-billion budget, Pringle has been pushing for tight restrictions on how $60 million in cigarette tax money can be spent. The funds come from a 25-cent-a-pack tax approved by voters in 1988. In addition to their other specific purposes, the new revenues were to pay for education programs to discourage smoking and to provide smoking-related health research grants. The point cannot be emphasized too strongly: This is what the people, recognizing the dire health consequences of smoking, wanted done. But it’s not what the tobacco lobby and Pringle want done, so a sabotage campaign is underway.

The University of California oversees most tax-funded tobacco research, and the work of one of its top researchers, Dr. Stanton Glantz of the UC San Francisco Medical School, has been a particular irritant to the tobacco lobby and the politicians it supports. So Pringle wants some changes made. In a flagrant assault on academic freedom, he would require all tobacco tax-funded UC research to be reviewed by the state Department of Finance, which is controlled by the governor, and by a politically appointed panel. Further, Pringle would gut the anti-smoking advertising campaign by prohibiting any singling out of the tobacco industry for criticism. The result would be a nominal anti-smoking campaign lacking both content and effectiveness.

California voters did not enact Proposition 99 eight years ago to protect the tobacco industry or safeguard its flow of money to politicians. Recognizing the scourge of smoking, they voted to save lives through measures to actively discourage smoking. The contemptible effort to undermine that effort, wherever it comes from, must be resisted and stopped.