Anti-Smoking Campaign Criticizes Legislators

Two Ventura County lawmakers are targets of a statewide anti-smoking campaign, which chastises them for being among the Legislature’s Top 20 recipients of tobacco industry campaign money since 1995.

Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) and Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) are part of a group criticized by a coalition seeking to ensure that money generated by a cigarette sales tax continues to be spent on a variety of tobacco research and education programs.

In a full-page advertisement entitled “Where there’s smoke . . . There’s a politician taking money from the tobacco industry,” the lawmakers were characterized as beholden to tobacco companies and poised to severely restrict Proposition 99 money.

The anti-smoking ballot measure, approved by voters in 1988, raised the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 25 cents. The initiative specified that 20% of the added revenue go to anti-smoking education efforts, while 5% go to research on tobacco-related disease.

The ad urges Californians to write their lawmakers and demand that they cut the strings proposed for the expenditure of Proposition 99 money, including a provision that would limit the kinds of anti-smoking publicity campaigns that can be funded with the added revenue.

The proposed restrictions are included in bills that are part of ongoing state budget negotiations.

“The basic idea behind the campaign is that tobacco companies do best in the dark,” said Stanton Glantz, a UC San Francisco professor who is a consultant to the Berkeley-based American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

“This is not a lobbying campaign; it is an education campaign,” he added. “We set out to simply educate the public about what is going on, based on our experience that the more informed members of the public are, the more likely they will be to force politicians to do the right thing.”

Boland, whose district straddles the Ventura-Los Angeles county line, took $26,921 in tobacco industry contributions between January 1995 and March 1996, and $36,671 in her 5 1/2 years as a legislator. Takasugi received $7,500 during the same 14-month period and $11,500 over his 3 1/2-year Assembly career.

Although the advertisement correctly placed them among the Top 20 lawmakers who took tobacco money since January 1995, it erred when it ranked them in order. The ad placed Boland 10th and Takasugi 17th in recent campaign contributions from tobacco companies, but listed the amount of money they have received during their entire careers at the state Capitol.

Using the lifetime measure, Boland would have ranked 13th and Takasugi 43rd, according to figures from the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Measuring from January 1995, Boland ranks 4th and Takasugi 19th.

Other local legislators crop up when using the lifetime contributions standard. State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) ranks 10th with $37,500 during her career, and state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) ranks 26th with $22,500.

Boland--whose 38th District includes Simi Valley, Fillmore and a small part of Thousand Oaks--did not return phone calls Tuesday.

Takasugi, whose 37th District stretches from Oxnard to Thousand Oaks and Moorpark, said he was upset with the advertisement and its thinly veiled message that his vote is for sale.

“The implication that if we receive money from certain types of industries that we are beholden to them is entirely wrong,” said Takasugi, the former mayor of Oxnard.

The issue has dogged Takasugi since he first won an Assembly seat in 1992.

Over the years, political opponents have pointed an accusatory finger at the campaign contributions he has received from tobacco companies, contending that they have been linked to votes he has delivered on related issues.

For example, Takasugi voted against a two-cent sales tax on cigarettes that would have helped fund breast cancer research, an issue that arose during his 1994 bid for reelection. That same year, he supported legislation to invalidate local efforts to restrict smoking in some establishments.

But Takasugi, noting that he supports the continued expenditure of Proposition 99 money for education and research, said his votes on those issues have had nothing to do with contributions to his campaign.

“I’ve been here for almost four years, I’ve gone through thousands and thousands of votes, and I make my decisions after considering each piece of legislation on its merits,” he said. “And we need to remember that this is a legal business in California. I don’t want to discriminate against any company that is legally here and legally doing business in California.”

Members of the coalition that sponsored Tuesday’s advertisement, however, are quick to contend that the tobacco industry is no ordinary business.

Mary Adams, director of public affairs in the Sacramento office of the American Heart Assn., said tobacco kills 420,000 people annually, at a cost of $50 billion a year.

Only recently, Adams said, has Gov. Pete Wilson restored full funding to Proposition 99 education and research efforts. And still at issue is $330 million in Proposition 99 revenues that had been diverted in previous years to help balance the state budget.

Anti-smoking advocates sued Wilson over the misuse of those funds and won back-to-back court victories. The governor is appealing those decisions.

Now with legislators threatening to restrict how Proposition 99 money is used, Adams and others say they are raising the stakes in their effort to stamp out smoking.

“Tobacco is the only product that, when used as directed, kills,” Adams said. “We would like people to read this ad and call their own legislators to insist on no political tinkering with Proposition 99. We failed in the past to have those dollars spent appropriately; we just felt that it was time for drastic measures.”