Controversy Flares Over State’s Anti-Tobacco Efforts

Three physicians known for their anti-tobacco work have been removed from a state tobacco oversight committee, while the committee’s chairwoman accused the Wilson administration Monday of blocking her efforts to keep watch over California’s anti-tobacco program.

Declaring that the 12 members of the Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee are “the guardians of public health,” Chairwoman Jennie Cook attacked the state health department’s anti-tobacco section for refusing to let her see drafts of new television ads scheduled to start airing next month.

“We need to know what’s going on, and we’re not being informed,” Cook said at the emergency meeting she convened to pry the information out of the Department of Health Services--a request denied by state officials at the contentious meeting.

“You must be aware that what you give is advice,” said Donald Lyman, who helps oversee California’s anti-tobacco effort. “The [department] director can take [the advice] or not. That is the way the world works.”

At the same time, health department officials announced Monday that Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), in his final days as Assembly speaker in November, dumped from the committee Dr. Lester Breslow, former dean of the UCLA School of Public Health, and Dr. Reed Tuckson, president of Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

Breslow is a renowned cancer epidemiology expert. Tuckson has crusaded against smoking, particularly among African Americans and other minorities.

Pringle replaced them with a retired Rockwell International executive who has been active in the American Cancer Society, and a restaurant chain president, who was not at Monday’s meeting.

“It is curious certainly that this all came about just a day before a special meeting had been called,” said Breslow, who had asked especially pointed questions of the health department at committee’s December meeting.

Spokesmen for Pringle and Gov. Pete Wilson said that although Pringle made the appointments in late November, shortly before the new Democratic-led Assembly was sworn in, he either failed to inform the health department or the letter announcing the new appointments was lost.

The appointments were revealed Friday only after one of Pringle’s new appointees, Hal Massey, called the health department asking about it.

“I think I’m a good man for it,” said Massey, the former aerospace executive, noting that he has been active in the Cancer Society for 15 years.

John Nelson, Pringle’s spokesman, said Pringle’s other appointee, Doug Cavanaugh, is president of Ruby’s Restaurants, a Newport Beach-based chain, and is “familiar with the tobacco debate, balancing regulations with people’s right to smoke.”

Along with the Pringle appointments, it was announced that Wilson has replaced Dr. Paul Torrance, a tobacco expert at the UCLA Medical School, with George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley. Wilson also added Thomas Paton, a former executive of Blue Cross of California.

“It’s a surprise to me,” Torrance said of his ouster, adding that “the governor wants control over the ads, without any oversight.”

Sean Walsh, Wilson’s spokesman, said the critics are “tilting at windmills.”

“The bottom line is we have health care experts on the committee, the toughest ads in the nation and the toughest anti-smoking laws in the nation, thanks to Pete Wilson,” Walsh said.

The changes in the committee’s makeup, coupled with Cook’s complaint that she is being denied access to health department information, fueled a new round of accusations about Wilson’s handling of the state’s $24.5-million yearly anti-tobacco advertising effort.

Funded by the 25-cent per pack tax on cigarettes approved by voters in 1988, the program in its first years was hailed as a model for the rest of the nation.

In the past 2 1/2 years, however, the state has produced no new ads, has killed one especially hard-hitting commercial after a tobacco company threatened to sue, and has refused to air another tough spot even though it had been produced.

Wilson also has cut funding for anti-tobacco efforts, prompting anti-tobacco groups to sue to have the money restored.

Stanton Glantz, a professor at UC San Francisco Medical School, cited statistics showing that smoking declined markedly when the ad campaign was aggressive but that the drop has leveled off and smoking may have increased somewhat in 1996, when the campaign ebbed.

“What you’re doing is criminal,” Glantz told state health officials at Monday’s meeting.

Like Glantz, several other critics attacked the Department of Health Services for refusing to reveal even to members of the oversight committee the drafts of the advertisements scheduled to start airing March 24.

“We have to ask what you’re so afraid to show,” said Dr. John Longhurst, a physician at UC Davis Medical School and incoming president of the California affiliate of the American Heart Assn.

“As a father and as a cardiologist,” he said, “I have a very hard time understanding why you’re doing this.”

Looking directly at two health department physicians, Dr. Stephen Hansen, a board member of the California Medical Assn., said that if there were such a thing as “preventative health malpractice, the jury would vote to convict.”

State health officer James Stratton responded by vowing to air hard-hitting ads. He said the decision to withhold the information from Cook and the rest of the committee was made by the Wilson administration, but he would not be more specific.

“We intend to have innovative, hard-hitting ads on the air in March,” Stratton said.

* TOBACCO TRIAL

Tobacco industry lawyers decry regulation efforts. A15