Taxpayers Footing The Bill To Help Anti-Tobacco Lobby Push Its Regulation Agenda

THE campaign against smoking and smokers is part of a larger, taxpayer-funded program of regulation that should receive a lot of public attention and public disclosure. It's time we understood the anti-smoking lobby is a special-interest group like any other and should be examined as such.

Washington DOC (Doctors Oughta Care), for example, denies it uses federal funds to lobby for legislation, yet Washington DOC is a subcontractor under the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST). ASSIST is taxpayer-funded, and ASSIST actively supported the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) "Smoking Ban." Washington DOC provided testimony at legislative and regulatory hearings. Washington DOC wrote letters in 1994 to L&I Director Mark O. Brown supporting the L&I "Smoking Ban," and in 1990 supporting Washington State's $7,500,000 participation in the $130 million ASSIST program.

According to ASSIST records, Washington DOC received $29,788 in ASSIST contractor payments during fiscal year 1993 to 1994.

This is about public disclosure since we are talking about levying taxes on citizens. A revealing approach is to examine the anti-tobacco agenda, its influence on regulation, and the money made by its participants. There are these legitimate questions:

-- Is it appropriate that taxpayer funds and facilities be used to promote regulations (Labor & Industry's "Smoking Ban"), where those promoting the regulation have a material economic or professional interest (support for their message, nonprofit anti-tobacco "education" and research grants, consulting fees, etc.) in regulations being passed?

-- Is it appropriate that citizens engaging in a lawful behavior, consuming legal products, be identified as "Target Groups" (Washington ASSIST 1990 proposal says minorities, blue-collar workers, and "lower socio-economic class" persons) and that taxpayer funds be used to change their lawful behavior (1989 ASSIST purposes are "behavior change" by smokers and "smoking cessation")?

-- Is it appropriate that state agencies and affiliated program organizations develop negative stereotypes or labels about citizens' legal behavior (addict, child abuser, killers of co-workers, uneducated, etc.)?

To answer these questions we can examine facts about ASSIST and its direct involvement in state regulation. The economic interests of anti-tobacco groups and state tax revenues are also important. Anti-tobacco is big business.

In just California, Oregon and Washington, hundreds of millions in "tobacco education" funds and "fair" distribution of more than a billion dollars in state tobacco tax revenues are at stake. Surely, political access makes an economic difference here.

System IV, Inc. is currently operating an extensive Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) system. The system effectively addresses any bona fide Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) health risk, and provides significant improvement for biological, particulate and gaseous contaminants. Our investment has created an effective system which, by L&I standards, is illegal. How can we provide superior indoor air quality, yet have an illegal system?

The answer is the state's L&I policy has been directly influenced by anti-tobacco special-interest groups to the point where 23 of 24 Indoor Air Quality items in the original L&I regulation were thrown away. The only item left was a "Smoking Ban."

The output of anti-tobacco influence is apparently regulation that does not provide clean indoor air, seems to be driven by a need to preserve authority to regulate as well as future tax dollars, and excludes use of effective technology. State regulators says this issue is about clean indoor air and worker protection, yet the state excludes from compliance any technology that protects workers from biological, particulate and gaseous pollutants.

Welcome to the world of taxpayer-funded public health coalitions. On Oct. 1, 1993 the health department published Washington ASSIST's 1993-94 "Action Plan." Objective 1 is: "Work to pass Department of Labor and Industries' regulations on eliminating environmental tobacco smoke from non-industrial work sites." Activity 1 is: "In collaboration with other work sites and policy task forces around the state, work to ensure that Labor and Industries passes strict regulations regarding smoking in the workplace."

ASSIST's "Smoking Ban" agenda, authority to regulate, state tax revenues and anti-tobacco consultant's income seem to come before clean indoor air.

We have an anti-tobacco revenue machine dependent upon a continuing anti-tobacco agenda to sustain itself. It generates revenue for state coffers and consultants. We paid to create the machine, paid to have the agenda written for us, and we are now footing the bill to keep the machine running. Norman E. Kjono is president, System IV, Inc., of Redmond.