Nobody knows just when it happened, but th mass of tobacco critics has achieved critical mass. Life is changing accordingly. When the smoking ban on airliners was extended to nearly all domestic flights last February, there was fear of revolt–but only minor grumbling from the addicts aloft. High federal officials openly denounce smoking, and five major bills in Congress propose new restrictions on tobacco. More important, grass-roots antismoking groups have prompted a flood of state and local government curbs: 45 states and the District of Columbia now restrict smoking to some extent, and at least : 450 cities and counties have passed laws of their own. Even the tobacco states of Virginia and Kentucky have voted restrictions. Now a campaign aims to force the divestment of tobacco stocks from the portfolios of colleges and medical institutions across the country. After Harvard president Derek Bok announced that the university had sold its tobacco holdings, graduates at last week’s commencement carried grateful signs and jubilantly tossed broken cigarettes into the air. The Boston-based Tobacco Divestment Project announced that the City University of New York and two Boston-area hospitals had also sold stocks. And New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, saying the idea had “incredible appeal,” said his state would consider whether its pension funds should sell off their tobacco shares.
The antismoking forces can’t take victory for granted. Even though smokers have dwindled from 40 percent of all adults in 1964 to 29 percent at last count, the tobacco industry remains highly profitable; it can raise prices almost at will and has doled out more than $3 million in campaign funds and honorariums to current members of Congress in recent years. The industry is also gearing up for a new regional lobbying effort. According to Legal Times magazine, Philip Morris has hired at least 40 new lawyers and PR consultants around the country. Their task won’t be easy. Despite years of scientific studies and official conclusions to the contrary, the industry stubbornly insists that there is no firm proof that smoking causes disease. But tobacco has allies: newspapers and magazines (including NEWSWEEK) benefit from the industry’s $3.3 billion advertising budget. And at least one part of tobacco’s case can’t be lightly dismissed. The American Civil Liberties Union agrees that curbs on advertising violate First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech.
Deadly enemy: Still, the industry is hunkered down in the face of the massive shift in public attitudes. The cigarette’s old image as a devil-may-care token of sophistication got its first real blow with the Surgeon General’s report of 1964, linking tobacco to cancer, heart disease and other health problems. Apart from the printed warning on cigarette packs and the ban on televised ads, the industry won most of its battles for the next two decades. In 1986, however, two reports–one from the Surgeon General, the other from the National Academy of Sciences–established the danger of passive smoking. “Once people began to realize they could be killed by other people’s smoke, the majority became very antismoking.” says John F. Banzhaf III, founder of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Two years later another report from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop established nicotine as an addictive agent, later shown to be even more addictive than cocaine. And Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan has been tireless in portraying tobacco as a deadly enemy, one that kills 390,000 Americans every year and costs $52 billion annually.
This year’s most conspicuous battle will come in Congress. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy has a major bill providing $110 million for public education on smoking hazards and giving Sullivan power to regulate hazardous substances. Four other bills would, among other things, ban cigarette vending machines, raise excise taxes, restrict advertising and broaden the warning label, extending it to exports. The Bush administration has been ambivalent, especially on exports, which provided $4.2 billion on the positive side of the trade balance last year. One of Sullivan’s deputies, who had denounced tobacco exports as unconscionable, abruptly canceled an appearance to testify, and critics said the administration had muzzled him. Even Sullivan has waffled when it comes to federal action, proposing instead that the states should regulate tobacco sales.
TV spots: But whatever the outcome in Washington, there is no stemming the tide of public opinion. As with East-West relations and the civil-rights movement, notions that were once unthinkable are quietly coming true. In California, the state itself is using $29 million from a cigarette-tax increase to sponsor an antismoking ad campaign, aimed mainly at discouraging children from taking up the habit. The TV spots are appropriately sophomoric, says adman Paul Keye, whose agency created the campaign: “We all slept through seventh-grade hygiene. What can you tell a caterpillar that a butterfly will remember?” That’s easy, says Banzhaf: “It is the smokers today who are the social pariahs.” We’re not there yet, but sociologist Stephen Klineberg of Rice University thinks the legitimation of the cigarette is almost over–and in 20 years, people will look at “No smoking” signs with the same time-warped bemusement that hits us now when we see the words, “No spitting.”
