Governor Is Urged to Back Tough TV Ads on Smoking

A state advisory board urged Tuesday that Gov. Gray Davis unleash tough new television ads aimed at the tobacco industry--including some the Pete Wilson administration refused to air.

The Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, made up primarily of appointees of the state Legislature and former Gov. Wilson, is also calling on Davis to give swift approval to a new batch of anti-tobacco billboards to replace what now are tobacco ads.

The requests, to be delivered to Davis in a letter today, amount to the first test for the new governor on the issue of tobacco control. Davis used tobacco as an issue in his campaign against his Republican opponent, former Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

“Given the issue, it will be given all due consideration,” said Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante. “This is an issue--smoking and tobacco--that he feels strongly about, and it will certainly be reviewed.”

The advisory committee had feuded with the Wilson administration over the former governor’s decision to stop airing commercials that anti-tobacco activists viewed as especially hard hitting.

Such ads were credited with reducing smoking, particularly among teenagers. In the mid-1990s, when the state cut back on its tax-funded anti-tobacco ad campaign, smoking increased among younger people.

“This should be a test of the credibility of the new administration,” said committee member Dr. David Burns of UC San Diego. “He has given the impression that he is going to act differently than the previous administration.”

One such ad, broadcast for a few months in the fall of 1994, showed the then-chairmen of the nation’s major tobacco companies testifying under oath before Congress that nicotine is not addictive.

“Do they think we’re stupid?” the ad says.

Lawyers for one of the tobacco companies threatened to sue the state for libel over that ad, prompting the Wilson administration to quietly stop airing it.

In 1995, the ad agency that creates the state’s anti-tobacco ads produced a commercial pointing out that although the tobacco industry denied that smoking is harmful, two tobacco conglomerates that own insurance companies grant discounts to nonsmokers.

“Say, what do those tobacco guys know that they aren’t telling you?” the ad says.

Davis can put off a decision on the television ads for now. But the new governor must move quickly on the billboard question.

Under terms of the state’s recent settlement with the tobacco industry in California’s major suit against cigarette manufacturers, tobacco companies must take down their billboards by April.

The settlement also says that if any time remains on tobacco firms’ leases with billboard owners, tobacco companies must donate the billboard space to the state.

However, the state must inform the ad agency developing the billboards by Friday if it intends to use the space. Otherwise, the state could lose the opportunity, committee members said at a meeting Tuesday.

“We need a hard hitting program, particularly now that we’ve got the tobacco industry on the run,” said committee Chairwoman Jennie Cook. “We ought to grab the chance and move forward.”

In all, the state would have access to 210 billboards now controlled by tobacco companies. Many of them are in prime locations, particularly in the Los Angeles area, said John Krueger of Asher & Partners.

At Tuesday’s meeting of the tobacco policy committee, Krueger unveiled several proposed billboards noting that smoking is linked to male impotence. One such billboard, playing off Marlboro Man ads, portrays a cowboy with a limp cigarette dangling from his mouth, and a single word: “Impotent.”

Others play off themes used by other tobacco companies. “We kill millions and make billions,” says a second billboard slogan.

Still another shows a picture of a young boy, and says: “This billboard used to sell the cigarettes that killed my mom.”