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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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USA Today: Tobacco War Hits Beaches in CA [06/21-4]
Excerpts from: Tobacco war hits beaches in Calif.
By John Ritter USA Today [06/21/04]
As it did with the nation's first smoking ban in bars, California is opening new
fronts in the war on tobacco.
After several Southern California cities, including Los Angeles, prohibited smoking on beaches this spring, a bill is moving through the Legislature to make every stretch of sand along the state's 1,100-mile coastline smoke-free.
The nation's first bid to outlaw smoking in vehicles carrying small children failed narrowly in the Legislature's lower house last month, but its sponsor says he may try again before year's end.
Lawmakers still want to make California the first state to raise the legal smoking age to 21 from 18, a move backed by the California Medical Association. A Senate bill, the second attempt since 2000, was defeated in April, but it's not likely to be the last.
Smoke Free Movies, a national movement based in San Francisco and fueled largely by student activists, is intensifying pressure on Hollywood to assign "R" ratings to movies that feature smoking.
When California's bar ban took effect in 1997, the state boasted the nation's toughest anti-tobacco laws, including strict measures to prevent underage access to cigarettes. Cigarette taxes and spending on anti-smoking advertising were among the USA's highest.
For years, only California prohibited smoking in virtually every indoor public place. Then in 2002, Delaware followed suit. Today, nine states have what the American Lung Association rates as strong smoke-free air laws. After New York City's high-profile bar and restaurant ban took effect last year, New York state, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Massachusetts passed broad restrictions. Even Lexington, Ky., in the heart of tobacco country, passed a workplace ordinance.
More states try to discourage smoking with higher taxes. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia passed hikes last year. New Jersey was the first to exceed $2 a pack.
Efforts to cut youth access to cigarettes — eliminating vending machines, stiff fines for selling to minors, barring cigarette giveaways — are mixed, the association said in its 2003 report. States such as California, Connecticut, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Texas, have cracked down, but the association gives nearly half the nation a failing grade.
Tough anti-tobacco laws are most common in the East and on the West Coast, while the South and Midwest lag, the association said.
Smoke-free policies now cover an estimated 70% of the U.S workforce, but the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 440,000 people still die annually from tobacco-related illness, costing $75 billion in medical costs and $82 billion in lost productivity.
Even California has slipped. The state's 87-cent cigarette tax hasn't risen since 1999. To close budget gaps, California and at least 17 other states have raided their shares of a $206 billion, 1998 settlement with tobacco companies. Those funds were to pay for tobacco prevention, but nine states cut programs by 50% or more last year, the association found.
Still, California remains a trend-setter. And to tobacco foes, protecting kids confined to car seats from smoke was a no-brainer. "We don't want to limit individuals' private right to smoke in their cars," says Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh. "But if people smoke and injure kids in the process, then it's the state's business."
Firebaugh's bill lost by five votes after vigorous tobacco-industry lobbying, but he may try to jump-start it this summer. Tobacco companies don't dispute warnings that secondhand smoke causes cancer, and they urge adults not to smoke around kids.
City councils along the coast, confronted with student groups testifying to the tens of thousands of butts they picked up in just a few hours, were swayed. Where they weren't, in Encinitas for example, signature gathering is underway to put the issue on the ballot. However, in Pismo Beach, north of Santa Barbara, officials last week rejected a ban.
Besides littering, butts don't break down in the ocean and are toxic if ingested by fish, environmentalists say. Volunteers in annual statewide cleanup days pick up an average of more than 300,000 butts on beaches, one-tenth of what's there, says Eben Schwartz, the California Coastal Commission's outreach coordinator.
Says Jim Walker, director of STAMP — Stop Tobacco Abuse of Minors Pronto: "The beaches are turning into ashtrays, so you can imagine what you're lying in and what your kids are playing in."
The Youth Tobacco Prevention Corps in San Diego County and groups in neighboring Orange County such as Back That Ash Up and Kids Kick Ash that pushed the beach bans are shifting focus to the California-based entertainment industry's resistance to curbs on smoking in movies.
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