Just Saying No : Education fund-raiser did well to resist big tobacco’s money

A group that raises funds for Santa Ana schools was right to decline a tobacco company’s offer to donate money to the schools.

The Santa Ana Unified School District is as strapped as any other district for money, so the offer of aid by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. for the Santa Ana Education Foundation was tempting.

Although the foundation is separate from the school district, its purpose is to raise funds for the schools. Accepting the Reynolds offer to print more than 3,000 brochures for two spring fund-raising mariachi concerts at Santa Ana High School would have undercut the district’s no-smoking message.

After all, it was only last May that a district high school was picked as one of 12 sites across the nation to participate in an anti-tobacco conference call with President Clinton. The message to young people needs to be: Don’t smoke. Taking the Reynolds contribution--the exact amount had not been determined--would have run counter to that common-sense exhortation.

Some Education Foundation members said when the proposed donation was announced that Reynolds likely would be rewarded with acknowledgment of its largess on the brochures. There was also a possibility of a banner near the concert site mentioning the tobacco company.

Nine years ago, California voters approved Proposition 99, which imposed a 25-cent tax on cigarette packs to fund a public health campaign about the dangers of smoking.

A major target of the campaign was teenagers. For several years after the proposition passed, the number of cigarettes sold in the state declined dramatically. Unfortunately, the decrease has leveled off and the number of teen smokers has increased.

Each year, an estimated 1 million teenagers become smokers, an addiction so hazardous to the health that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed regulating nicotine as a delivery system for an addictive drug.

The Santa Ana Education Foundation deserves credit for listening to the opposition of many parents of students in the district and making the wise choice to seek funds elsewhere. The decision sends a strong message to students that the smoking lamp is out.