Turning Timid on Public Health

Californians voted in 1988 to raise the cigarette tax by 25 cents a pack. That revenue goes to state-funded anti-tobacco education and research. The educational campaign in particular has drawn national attention for its blunt television commercials and billboards. More important, state officials and public health experts believe it has been largely responsible for the 42% drop since 1988 in the number of Californians who smoke. That translates to millions of dollars in savings on health care.

Yet the effectiveness of this effort, administered by skittish public officials, is threatened by its very success. Within the past two years, the Wilson administration has refused to air one hard-hitting television ad and shelved another after an initial airing prompted R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, to threaten to sue.

“Nicotine Soundbites” aired briefly in late 1994 before the state Department of Health Services canned it. The ad featured videotape of several top tobacco executives testifying before Congress that they do not believe nicotine is addictive. The spot concluded by asking viewers, “Do they think we’re stupid?”

Reynolds’ lawyers complained that the ad suggested that the executives had committed perjury. California Health Director Kim Belshe openly defended the commercial, but by early 1995 her department had quietly ordered it shelved.

A second ad, attacking the tobacco industry’s steadfast denials that smoking is harmful, never saw the light of day. Belshe first called for changes in the tone, then decided against airing it altogether.

The grave health dangers of cigarettes cannot be overstated. Tax dollars spent to prevent more Californians from becoming smokers or to prompt smokers to quit is money well spent. Public officials who blunt those efforts out of deference to the cigarette makers are wasting tax dollars while undermining the will of the voters on a matter of public health. Is this any way to run a government?