Anti-Smoking Ad Curbs Revealed

Fearful of projecting an anti-business image, the Wilson administration has barred negative portrayals of tobacco executives in anti-smoking commercials produced for the state, according to an ad agency executive who testified Friday that words such as “lies” and “liars” have been declared taboo.

Allison Melody, an account supervisor with Asher and Associates, which creates ads for the state tobacco control program, told a legislative panel that some of the agency’s most hard-hitting concepts have been axed due to political sensitivities of administration officials. And some of the best commercials the state produced in years past--which now air in other states--are not being rebroadcast in California because they depict tobacco executives in a negative light, Melody told the state Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing in Pasadena.

According to a memo Asher prepared for the panel, the agency also was told last year to avoid using the phrase “tobacco industry” and the word “profits,” although these restraints were later lifted.

The disclosures are sure to provide new ammunition to anti-smoking critics of the Wilson administration, which has repeatedly denied charges that it is soft on Big Tobacco. The criticism has stemmed mainly from decisions to divert a portion of anti-smoking funds provided under Proposition 99, the 1988 ballot measure that raised the cigarette tax 25 cents per pack to fight smoking.

Over the years, more than half a billion dollars in Proposition 99 funds has gone to anti-smoking programs, including about $150 million for the media campaign. Supporters say that the program is largely responsible for California having the nation’s lowest percentage of smokers except for Utah. But Gov. Pete Wilson and anti-smoking groups have repeatedly battled in court over diversion of part of the money to other health programs.

The judiciary panel had to subpoena information from the ad agency because Asher’s contract with the state prohibited it from talking, even with lawmakers, about ad decisions.

State ‘Can’t Afford to Pull Our Punches’

State Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who heads the Judiciary Committee, said he was “disturbed and alarmed” by the dilution of the media campaign. Pointing out that the state spends about $50,000 per day to air anti-smoking messages--compared with the $1.2 million cigarette makers spend daily in California to promote their brands--Schiff said the state “can’t afford to pull our punches.”

“We can’t afford niceties when people are dying,” he said. “When somebody’s lying, we ought to say that they’re lying.”

Dr. James W. Stratton, deputy director of the state Department of Health Services, said which ads are most effective is a matter of opinion, and he defended the state’s current crop of anti-tobacco commercials, several of which he screened for the panel.

But he admitted that some ad concepts had been deemed anti-business and so were disapproved. And he acknowledged that objections to words such as “lies” and “liars” had not come from him.

“That is the position of the administration, and that’s administration with a capital ‘A’ as opposed to my office,” he said.

Asked if his boss, Kim Belshe, director of the health department, had drawn the line on “lies” and “liars,” Stratton replied that Belshe “is similarly difficult to offend in that regard.”

Rather, Stratton said, such decisions are made within the cabinet-level Health and Welfare Agency, consistent with policies of the governor’s office. A spokesman for the governor could not be reached for comment.

Stratton described the restrictions as “spillover effects” from the recession and the state’s efforts to rebuild its economy after the collapse of the aerospace industry. He said administration officials feared that ads attacking an entire industry might influence the expansion and relocation decisions of other businesses.

He said it is his job to run “the hardest-hitting campaign I can within the policy guidance I get.”

But state Sen. Raymond N. Haynes (R-Riverside), a member of the committee, argued that restraints on the ads are entirely correct.

“Do you not see an ethical problem with using tax dollars to attack a specific” individual or business? he asked.

“I’m not here to defend tobacco companies,” Haynes said, “but I do have . . . a problem saying, ‘This guy’s a liar,’ and using tax dollars to do it.”

According to Melody, the directive against negative portrayals of tobacco executives killed one of her agency’s strongest concepts. She screened the ad for the committee, which contrasted a 1963 memo by a top tobacco executive with footage of tobacco executives testifying before Congress in 1994 that they did not believe nicotine was addictive.

“Nicotine is addictive,” said the 35-year-old memo by Addison Yeaman, vice president and general counsel of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. “We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug.”

Stratton was questioned about a May 7, 1998, memo in which the ad agency’s chief executive, Hal Asher, seemed to coach agency officials on what Stratton wanted them to say during an appearance before the state Senate Budget Committee.

According to the memo, the executives probably would be asked if the state was “killing good ideas.” But administration officials “do not want to air any dirty laundry in public. They want everyone to be on the same page,” the memo said.

It suggested that the executives make comments such as, “We are extremely excited about the new commercials that we are in the process of producing . . . and we think they will be the most effective yet.” Stratton, the memo said, “would like us to say this.”

But Stratton said he did not recall making that suggestion and did not want to influence the executives’ testimony.

He noted that the commercials are only one element of the tobacco control program, and that most funding is concentrated in anti-smoking efforts by county health departments and in the schools. And he cited recent successes, including a dramatic decline in the percentage of merchants who make illegal tobacco sales to minors--a figure he said has dropped from about 70% a few years ago to an estimated 13% today.

Although the rate of teenage smoking is generally on the increase in the nation, Stratton added, it is still dropping slightly in California.