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Published on 03/22/1999 All articles from this issue

Anti-tobacco advocate promotes cause at Los Altos Morning Forum

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By Cecilia J. Keehan

Special to the Town Crier

Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, and an anti-tobacco advocate, came to the Los Altos Morning Forum last Tuesday to encourage residents to lobby their politicians to adequately fund anti-smoking campaigns that he says in the past have been highly effective.

Glantz believes that if supporters could replicate the early California program, the state could essentially eliminate tobacco-related health problems within 10 years.

Glantz is co-author of "The Cigarette Papers," based on internal tobacco company papers. Those documents convinced him that the tobacco industry had long been aware of the addictive qualities of nicotine and of the danger cigarettes posed to the health of smokers. Yet, because of the potential for losing enormous profits, this information was kept secret, Glantz said.

California's Proposition 99, an initiative passed by the voters almost 20 years ago, increased the tobacco tax by 25 cents per pack, of which 5 cents went to fund an anti-smoking program. He called the program "the most aggressive and the most successful in the world."

Later, in 1994, Assembly Bill 13 passed, which made every workplace and restaurant smoke-free. Bars had to be smoke-free by 1997, and Glantz said that most bars are presently 85 percent to 90 percent in compliance.

The UCSF researcher has been targeted by tobacco companies. In 1997, the Sacramento County Superior Court dismissed a lawsuit that claimed Glantz used public funds to conduct politically motivated research, specifically on tobacco. The suit was filed against UCSF by Californians for Scientific Integrity, a group associated with the tobacco industry.

Triggering the suit was Glantz's assertion that smoking bans do not hurt businesses.

The tobacco companies are still trying to increase sales, he said, by using bars as the promotional venues for tobacco and sponsoring concerts on which their name and logos appear. They have also shifted their emphasis from recruiting young teen-agers to reaching out instead to those in their early 20s by making smoking seem "adult," he said.

In California, 83 percent of the population are non-smokers, Glantz pointed out, and once workplaces became no-smoking zones, about 25 percent quit and another 20 percent smoked less. He said this decline in smoking in California is causing a major financial loss to the tobacco industry.

He noted that about 430,000 people annually die from smoking-related diseases, and another 50,000 to 60,000 non-smokers die from second-hand smoke. This compares to 8,000 deaths caused by the use of illegal drugs on which the country spends $15 billion each year to control without much success, he said.

Yet, only about $1 billion is spent to control smoking, he said.

The professor said that tobacco costs the country about $60 billion a year in medical costs alone, and another $50 billion in lost wages.

Glantz is concerned about the efforts being made to recruit young smokers. He is encouraged by the election of Gov. Gray Davis, who recently approved the use of anti-smoking billboards.

Glantz hopes that the American Heart Society, the American Cancer Society and other such health-related groups will become more assertive in their effort to win funding for another major anti-smoking campaign.

Keehan is president of the Morning Forum of Los Altos, a members-only lecture series held at the United Methodist Church of Los Altos. To get on a waiting list for membership, write to: Morning Forum, P.O. Box 274, Los Altos 94023-0274.