State Unveils New Attack on Smoking

After many delays and missteps, the Wilson administration on Thursday launched a major new anti-smoking advertising blitz, featuring an especially strong television spot showing a woman who has throat cancer but is so addicted to nicotine that she continues to smoke through a hole in her throat.

The ads are the first by the state in more than two years and represent the opening $22-million phase of a three-year $67.5-million campaign.

Funded by taxes on cigarettes, the effort is the most costly such campaign ever undertaken by a state.

The Wilson administration stopped airing anti-smoking advertisements in 1994, diverting $63 million from anti-tobacco programs to help fund other money-strapped health care projects. That move prompted lawsuits from anti-tobacco groups that are still pending.

Sandra Smoley, Health and Welfare Agency secretary, described the new anti-tobacco ads as the toughest produced by California.

“This assault unequivocally demonstrates this administration’s solid commitment to aggressive, hard-hitting media campaigns,” Smoley said at a news conference Thursday.

The ads come as Gov. Pete Wilson faces continued attacks from anti-smoking activists, who have accused his administration of going soft on the tobacco industry.

At the same time, the administration remains wary of lawsuits from the tobacco industry, and the new ads don’t directly accuse the industry of lying--something past campaigns have done.

“I don’t really care how the tobacco industry and others [engaged in the tobacco wars] react to these ads. What I really care about is how the target audiences react,” said Kim Belshe, state health department director and the Wilson appointee responsible for the new ads.

The six television commercials and six radio ads include spots aimed at persuading kids not to smoke by portraying the tobacco industry as manipulative. A television ad hits hard at secondhand smoke, showing, for example, a father smoking near a toddler who has a pained look on his face.

As the father blows clouds of smoke--the smoke isn’t real--the child plays with blocks and spells out words: bronchitis, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome. Medical research has associated secondhand smoke with a heightened risk of all three conditions.

But the strongest spot focuses on a woman named Debi Austin, a 46-year-old San Fernando Valley resident who had cancer of the larynx and underwent a laryngectomy. Viewers can see the hole in her throat as she speaks to the camera.

As the camera tightens in on her, she explains in a raspy and whispery voice that she had her first cigarette when she was 13.

“When I found out how bad it was, I tried to quit,” Austin says. “But I couldn’t.”

A half-smoked cigarette burning in an ashtray appears. Austin takes the cigarette, puts it to the hole in her throat, and draws deeply.

A printed message appears that reads: “The tobacco industry denies that nicotine is addictive.”

The commercial ends with Austin talking: “They say nicotine is not addictive. How can they say that?”

Anti-smoking advocates who saw the ads in screenings Thursday generally lauded them, although some contended that past ads were tougher on the tobacco industry.

“These ads lack the hard edge our past campaigns so successfully carried, but these ads do appear to be a good start,” said Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles).

Added Stanton Glantz, a UC San Francisco Medical School professor and a leader in the anti-tobacco movement: “They’re better than I was expecting, but not as strong as they could be.”

Cornelia Pechman, a UC Irvine graduate school of management professor who studies pro- and anti-tobacco marketing, was more approving, saying: “When I saw [the new ads], I felt very moved. They did a good job.”

Tobacco industry representatives either could not be reached or declined to comment.

Anti-smoking activists took a measure of credit for the tenor of the new ads, saying recent pressure may have helped prod the state to produce tougher ads.

Various sources said that as recently as two weeks ago, the ad featuring Austin did not make a direct link to the tobacco industry. However, the spot apparently was reworked to make it clear that the tobacco industry denies that nicotine is addictive.

But Belshe said, “The words [tobacco industry] have always been a part of this ad in terms of the rough cuts that I saw.”

The state Department of Health Services has come under increasingly intense attacks from anti-smoking groups and lawmakers over its anti-tobacco program, in part because the state pulled an especially strong ad in early 1995 after an R.J. Reynolds executive threatened to sue.

That ad featured footage of tobacco industry executives testifying before Congress that they did not believe tobacco was addictive, and ended by asking: “Do they think we’re stupid?”

Later in 1995, anti-smoking advocates obtained a copy of another commercial that the department shelved without ever broadcasting. The spot pointed out that while tobacco companies insist cigarettes do not cause illness, some tobacco conglomerates own insurance companies that grant discounts to nonsmokers.

Smoley said the new ads omit “the use of [the word] liar and subjective things that we did not feel our research could back up,” in part because she did not want to invite a lawsuit. The money spent defending such an action, she said, would be better spent on anti-smoking efforts.

“We’re proud of our campaign,” Smoley said. “It’s a new era. We’re moving forward, and we have the data to back it up.”

Smoking in California declined sharply after 1988, when voters approved Proposition 99, which raised taxes on cigarettes by 25 cents per pack and required that much of the money be spent on anti-tobacco advertising and education.

In 1994, however, after the administration suspended portions of the anti-tobacco campaign, smoking rose among California youths. A report expected to be released next week will show whether smoking continues to rise among youths.

Several of the new ads home in on young people, and are designed to counter tobacco industry marketing allegedly aimed at children.

Research by the state’s ad agency, Asher/Gould of Los Angeles, shows that the best way to persuade children not to smoke is to run ads saying that the tobacco industry manipulates them.

To that end, a radio spot that will be placed on rock stations features a narrator, speaking over patriotic marching music, saying:

“We the tobacco industry would like to take this opportunity to thank you, the young people of America who continue to smoke our cigarettes. . . . Your ignorance is astounding and should be applauded. Our tobacco products kill 420,000 of your parents and grandparents every year. And yet you’ve stuck by us. That kind of blind allegiance is hard to find.

“Remember, you’re rebels. Individuals. And besides, you impressionable little kids are making us tobacco guys rich. Heck, we’re billionaires.”

Among the other television spots is one titled “Rain.” Another attempt at showing that the tobacco industry manipulates children into smoking, the spot opens with children playing in the street. Then cigarettes start falling like rain from the sky, and the voice says:

“We have to sell cigarettes to you kids. We need half a million new smokers a year just to stay in business. So we advertise near schools, at candy counters. We lower our prices. We have to. It’s nothing personal. You understand.”

The next batch of ads will be released during the summer. Those spots will be aimed at Latinos, African Americans and Asians.