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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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NYC Mayor Bloomberg Donating $125 Million to Anti-Smoking Efforts [08/16/06-3]
Excerpts from: Bloomberg Donating $125 Million to Anti-Smoking Efforts
By Diane Cardwell NY Times [08/14/06]
Taking a significant step toward becoming a full-time philanthropist after leaving office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pledged today to spend $125 million of his own money to build a global anti-smoking campaign.
The donation, to be funneled to existing organizations over two years, is the largest single contribution to global tobacco-control efforts, anti-smoking advocates said. And beyond that, it shows how Mr. Bloomberg, who made banning smoking in bars and restaurants a focus of his first term, plans to amplify his work in office as he begins building his charitable foundation.
"I think we've learned some important things about how we convince people to stop smoking," Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at NBC television studios. "It is one of the world's biggest killers and it has sadly been overlooked by the philanthropic community."
Under the plan, Mr. Bloomberg would spend the money to create and support programs aimed at helping the world become tobacco free. The campaign would use several approaches, including developing and expanding quitting and prevention programs, encouraging the adoption of New York-style tobacco taxes and smoking bans, and designing a system to track tobacco use and efforts to stop it worldwide.
The campaign would also work to change the image of tobacco, support efforts to educate communities about its harms, create a global clearinghouse for anti-tobacco ads and bring together a legal consortium to assist in drafting and passing legislation. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Robert Lawson, declined to identify the organizations the campaign would work with, saying that arrangements had yet to be made final.
Mr. Bloomberg, one of the country's richest people, has long said that he plans to give away the bulk of his fortune, estimated by Forbes this year at $5.1 billion, and he has been steadily increasing his philanthropic giving. In 1997, he gave $26.6 million to charity; last year, he ranked seventh among the nation's philanthropists in a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, giving away $144 million.
Over the years, he has often made large gifts to academic or health-oriented institutions - the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University , where he was an undergraduate, now bears his name - and a series of smaller, ostensibly anonymous gifts to arts and social service groups.
This time, however, Mr. Bloomberg said it made more sense to announce his plans, both out of a desire to attract people with good ideas to his efforts and because once it became part of a foundation, people would find out anyway. Mr. Bloomberg is in the midst of buying a $45 million mansion on the Upper East Side to house the foundation, which is likely to focus on his primary areas of interest, including education, the arts and public health, perhaps as first among equals.
Speaking of the foundation, he said: "I plan to try to focus my resources where we can make a difference in improving the health and the quality of life of people in New York City, in the state, in the country and even around the world."
Public health advocates greeted news of Mr. Bloomberg's plan with praise. Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of epidemiology at St. Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto and an expert on tobacco control, said that if the money was spent the right way, it could make a tremendous difference in curtailing tobacco use.
"If Mayor Bloomberg can help governments take tobacco seriously, then it will have an impact," he said. "Once governments take tobacco seriously, they can figure out that there are a few really effective interventions." Those include raising the price of tobacco through taxes, clean air laws that restrict public smoking, prominent warning labels and clear information about the consequences of tobacco use.
Dr. Jha said the fact that Mr. Bloomberg was getting up on an "international soapbox and speaking about tobacco" was a contribution in itself. But he cautioned that the money should be used to help build public consensus about tobacco dangers and political support for tackling them, especially in poor countries with high smoking rates.
"The details matter," he said. If the money is well spent and focused on countries like India, China, Nigeria and Indonesia rather than on institutional overhead in the West, he said, "you could have a real bang for the buck."
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