THE CASE AGAINST SMOKING BANS

(THE ABRIDGED-- BELIEVE IT OR NOT-- VERSION)

c. Stewart, NYC CLASH, 2003


TABLE OF CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

The War on Smokers
The Anti-Smoking Movement


 
PROHIBITIONIST TACTICS

"Quick and Dirty," 
says Elizabeth Whelan

"Attack the Messenger," 
says Stanton Glantz

Toss the Jargon
(everyone says it)


 
THE THEORETICAL (EPIDEMIOLOGICAL) SCIENCE

The EPA Report: 
Lung cancer and Secondhand Smoke


 
"HOW TO READ A STUDY" 
(Understanding the Jargon)

 
Heart Disease
and 
Secondhand Smoke
(53,000 "Deaths")

 
THE REAL WORLD SCIENCE

THE AIR 
ACCORDING TO OSHA

Cigarette constituents 
in the air (OSHA standards)

Table 1: 
constituents, charted

Anti-Smokers sue OSHA...
and say "Never mind."


 
RESTAURANT WORKERS AND RESTAURANT AIR

What else is in 
restaurant air.

"Cooking the Books," a restaurant study

Bartenders' "exposure"

Cotinine as a measure 
(of what?)


 
VENTILATION

For it: The facts

Against it: The Prohibitionists


 
CONCLUSION

 
APPENDIX

PROHIBITION'S POLITICS
AND 
PERSONALITIES IN NYC

 
 

PROHIBITION'S POLITICS 
AND PERSONALITIES


The question arises:

As Butch said to Sundance, with the posse hot on their heels:

WHO ARE THESE GUYS?

At least to begin with, a surprisingly small group. Perhaps a dozen or so guys. But stellar, and most instrumental among them, were some names you've probably heard: James REPACE (a physicist), John BANZHAF (a lawyer) and Stanton GLANTZ (a mechanical engineer.)

They started out as guys who just... hated smoking.  Just personally hated it.  Wanted it off the earth.  And -- give them credit -- they were able by dint of sheer single-mindedness, a Barnum-like knowledge of show biz, and -- in Repace's case-- a job at the EPA, to race their hobby horse to a Win.

Mr. Banzhaf has now carted his legal circus to virgin fields. A power behind the first fine lawsuits against Tobacco, his latest target is Big Food (you know -- McDonald's, Wendy's et al) and Mr. Banzhaf (who's aptly named) is a big proponent of bans.  Recently he noted the obese were "a visual blight" and very soon may be suggesting that we ban them from public parks. 

On the local (NY) level, our Carrie Nation is JOE CHERNER. And since Cherner appears to collaborate and collude with Stanton Glantz, we'll limit our discussion herein to these two.

This is not irrelevant.

How they play politics in New York City -- how they treat the City Council (how, in fact, they treat The Truth) becomes a matter, we'd say, of interest.

(Though we note the same strategies are at play throughout the land.)

JOE CHERNER

He's founder and president of "SmokeFree Educational Services, Inc.," a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization whose major activity, nonetheless, appears to be lobbying.

He's also the Policy Chair of "The Coalition for a Smoke-Free City," a coalition of some 250 groups including, most notably, the local chapters of the major health charities. 

Most of the member groups get funded from both general tax-payers' money (through state and federal grants) and additionally from the Master Settlement Agreement (money which, by law, actually comes from smokers.)  Recently, in an ad in the New York Daily News,  Mr. Cherner's coalition made a pitch for its own cut of the proposed new tax on cigarettes in the city.

It's impressive, then,  that Cherner holds the post of impresario at such a heavyweight organization, which directs its disbursement of taxpayers' money to things like, well...ads in the New York Daily News asking for more money. 

And like expensive (full-page) ads in the New York Times lobbying the city council for additional bans on smoking.  (For more, see "Quick And Dirty")

Thomas Jefferson, of course, might be squirming around in his grave. Funneling taxpayers' money to activists on one side of a political debate is--in his words--  "sinful and tyrannical" since it forces other citizens "to contribute to a cause with which they disagree."

POLITICAL DEBUT:  BRIBING TWO MAYORS, SMEARING ONE
Mr. Cherner, who claims to "identify with Spider-Man," got into the spin business in the early 1990's when he started a self-described "crusade" to remove tobacco billboards from Shea Stadium.  Having made enough money to retire at  31 (bond-trading made him very rich, very fast) he apparently decided to devote the rest of his life, and great gobs of his own money, to realizing his dream of a smoker-free city.  He seeded SES with $250,000 of his own bread. And threw more of it around.

After repeated (denied) requests to meet with then-Mayor Dinkins on the subject of those billboards, according to The New York Times,

"...Mr. Cherner [offered] last year to donate $25,000 to the charity of Mr. Dinkins's choice in exchange for an interview. His offer was rejected......By contrast, Mayor Edward I. Koch met with him after Mr. Cherner offered to donate $100,000 to charities in exchange for a meeting."

Scorned by Mr. Dinkins, Cherner went to work grinding out press releases and bombarding local reporters.  Savvy about manipulating the media (they "like it when people fight") he launched a $50,000 radio campaign which accused the Mayor of being beholden to (what else) "tobacco interests." 

Round One to Cherner.

Of course the truth (and Cherner knew it) was that the city had signed a long-term contract for the billboards, and both the Parks Commissioner and the city's Corporation Council had warned that it couldn't be broken at the peril of  being sued.  Never mind.  Smearing Dinkins was good copy and the tactic  --accusing every opponent of venal motive-- scored another proof that it worked.
-Anti-Smoker Presses Shea Billboard Battle,  NY Times, 4/26/93

WEBS FOR SPIDER-MAN
Cherner also presides over two websites, "SmokeFreeAir.org" and "Smokescreen.org." both of which are actively engaged in specifically lobbying the New York City council. Through centralized e-mills, Mr. Cherner solicits "mail"  (from his national membership) to members of the council.  He also offers to double the punch of those e-mails by faxing them too. 

Also on his sites are Members Only chat rooms, where a lot of revealing  chat gets openly chatted. As you will see.

GUNNING FOR CHRISTINE QUINN
More recently, Mr. Cherner has worked actively behind the scenes to defeat the nomination of Christine Quinn to the chairmanship of the Health Committee.

The following messages appeared on his site. The first is simply an APB to get the national (please note: national) forces to flood the Council with protests. Thus:

"The NYC Council will choose a health chair shortly. One of the candidates being considered is Chris Quinn. She is not in favor of smoke-free air and, in fact, she smokes ! ...What kind of message would the council be sending if it appoints Quinn as health chair?"

He goes on to list alternatives more to his liking, and to solicit irate mail. 

He also posts a copy of his letter to the Executive Director of the American Cancer Society, in his further efforts to sabotage Quinn:

Don Distasio (Ddistasi@cancer.org)
Don,
There are 18 members of the City Council who have come out in support of a safe, healthy, smokefree work environment for ALL New York City workers. Councilwoman Chris Quinn is NOT one of them.....Why does ACS want to endorse Chris Quinn for Health Chair when there are so many supportive Councilmembers...? [S]he would be terrible for tobacco control. Who is determining this ACS position?"
-Jan.15, 2002 www.smokescreen.org 
 

Obviously, Mr. Cherner has been hyperactive in lobbying for ever-wider smoking bans in New York.   Much of this lobbying has been done in collusion with Stanton Glantz who-- aside from "advising" him-- provides warm bodies and helps him to stack the Council hearings with outsiders.

So briefly, we'll digress:

STANTON GLANTZ

A self-described "lunatic" anti-smoker, his fingerprints can be found on almost every gun in the war against smokers. 

Though his degree is in mechanical engineering (PhD) he's billed himself as an "expert" on every conceivable smoking-related topic,  including,  but not limited to, health, entertainment (the censorship thereof), economics, and social policy.  That's just for openers.

A professor at the University of California (UCSF) Glantz has been able to parlay his hobby into a multi-million dollar goldmine,  to insinuate himself into government agencies (e.g. the EPA-- where his "science" was unsurprisingly less- than-objective) and into lucrative gigs as a government-paid witness (e.g. for OSHA) as well as into the orbit of media darlingness. 

Truly an avatar of the American Dream.

AMERICANS FOR NON-SMOKERS RIGHT$
His activism began in the late 1970s when he founded the Berkeley-based "Americans for Non-Smokers Rights."  (ANR)  It's avowed purpose was to propagate his vision of smokers as "social outcasts" and to lobby for legislation that would make it legally so.  In the 1980s, he lobbied strenuously for a tax hike on California smokers (Prop  99) with the stipulation that a portion of the revenue be earmarked for further political activism by... groups like his. 

His initial "take" from Prop 99 was close to $500,000, enough to put him on the map.  Once there, he got another $4 million from the state.
(Source: "Policing P.C." National Review, Aug. 28,1995)

Still, he kept his day jobs.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Hired, along with other well-known crusaders, by James Repace (himself an established crusader and then-head of the EPAs Indoor Air Division)  Glantz was contracted to contribute to the Division's "Technical compendium" on secondhand smoke. Since little was known, and virtually nothing had been established on exposures to such smoke, the resulting compendium was ( in the conclusion of the House Sub-committee that eventually looked into it) nothing much more than "an advocacy document" made to appear as though it were science. (1)

Before the draft of this report (later questioned, then publicly disavowed  by the EPA) had been subjected to internal or peer review,  Glantz--in  violation of EPA policy-- leaked it to the press.  Thus gaining his goals:  Screaming scare headlines, and personal celebrity.

In response to the EPA director's public disavowal of the Repace compendium, and his statement that some of its science may be, in fact " a figment of Stan Glantz's imagination," Glantz merely admitted that his leak had been a "mistake."
-AP, 5/29/91 

(1) All Material On Repace, Glantz And The EPA Is From The Transcript Of The Referenced Congressional Hearings a/k/a The Bliley Report

MORE GLANTZ RESEARCH
In 1994, though still a mechanical engineer, he co-authored a study purportedly proving that restaurants don't lose money from smoking bans, a study widely cited, right to this day, by advocates of bans in cities around the country. When it was challenged as fraudulent or, at best, rife with error (towns without bans apparently counted as having bans; losses accidentally reported as being  gains) he refused, upon challenge,  to release his raw data.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
If Glantz's research is sometimes questioned, if not indeed questionable, he has only himself to blame. Here's his policy statement on how he approaches research:

"...that's the question that I have applied to my research relating to tobacco: If this comes out the way I think, will it make a difference [toward achieving the goal]. And if the answer is yes, then we do it, and if the answer is I don't know, then we don't bother. Okay? And that's the criteria."
-  Written Transcript Of 3-Day Conference Called "Revolt Against Tobacco," L.A., 1992

It's the criteria for advocacy, all right. Just not for objective science. 

GETTING POLITICAL:  SMEARING POLITICIANS
In  1989,  with Prop 99 money,  Mr. Glantz set out to investigate... California legislators!  A purely political investigation.  When the grant ran out, he applied for-- and got-- a $600,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (the federal government) to continue the investigation.

His subsequent report, "Undermining Popular Government," (May, 1995) spent much of its time (and your money) grousing about the diversion of Prop 99  money from "tobacco control education" (ie., him) to such frivolities as health care for indigent children, and attempting to make the case that this diversion was because of tobacco industry influence-- not only on legislators, but on the California Medical Assn itself, whom he elsewhere defined as "sleazeballs." (1)

The rest of his efforts (and your money) consisted of listing every industry  contribution made to every politician over the course of 20 years and insisting that "incorrect" voters had been bought. 

This could get to be pretty silly.  First of all, according to Glantz, virtually every legislator had at some point since 1976 taken such money.  But by Glantz's logic, Senator A had been corrupted by $1400,  whereas the virtuous Senator B was unshaken by 30,000. 

L.A City Council members were implied to have been bought for 500 bucks.
-Report Funded By NCI Grant # CA-61021

(1) S.F.Examiner, Sunday Mag. 6/2/96 Calling For Blood

In Mr. Glantz's vocabulary, opposition to smoking bans, no matter what the reason = "pushing the tobacco industry's agenda."  Here's how he suggests that his troops deal with any such heretical legislators:

"In each state one or two politicians seem to be taking the lead in pushing the industry's position (at least publicly). As soon as these politicians start floating trial balloons, they should be attacked publicly. If they can be bloodied, it could well scare the others off. Fear is a great motivator for politicians." 
-www.smokescreen.org

GLANTZ IN NEW YORK:   COLD CALCULATION AND WARM BODIES
As far back as 1986, there are records of Glantz's advising New York activists (including some pretty powerful ones) on how to lobby the City Council. Usually by methods of subtle blackmail and threatened attack. 

Glantz, however, got directly into the act by testifying, and importing others to testify, at the hearings that led to the first serious bans on smokers  here in 1995. Apparently, with a foreknowledge of both the proposals and the proceedings (information not available to local citizens) he and his allies were pretty much able to orchestrate the proceedings. Or so went the reports.

In any case, it's clear that Mr. Glantz sees New York as a watershed in his war.  And what he wants from it is complete and unconditional surrender.  A "victory" in New York (a city widely known for its tolerance and diversity) holds tremendous importance.  If he can "take" New York, really "take" it 100%. then tomorrow the world.

VENTING ON VENTILATION:  GLANTZ V. CHERNER V. THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
Thus Mr. Glantz was particularly perturbed that in 2001's proposed bill to widen the existing smoking ban (from "only" 95%) to 100% of all city restaurants, the wrong-headed City Council had created (Section 17-513.2) a "Secondhand Smoke Air Quality Task Force."  The purpose of this task force was to investigate the possibility that new ventilation technologies-- not bans-- could be the answer to removing the last  vestiges of smoke from restaurant air. 

(And isn't "smoke-free air" what they're supposedly after?)

Apparently not.

In fact, Glantz (who--remember--sees everything in the world that opposes  his agenda as a vast, wrong-wing tobacco conspiracy)  renamed this prospective body "The Pro-Tobacco Industry Ventilation Task Force."

And aside from spreading the word that "many experts in ventilation are on the industry payroll, often covertly," and that "restaurant owners, bar owners, unions who install ventilation" (and perhaps even ventilation itself) are actually nothing more than industry fronts,  Mr. Glantz goes so far as to question, by dark insinuation, the integrity of Peter Vallone [then head of the city council]:

"Vallone has consistently refused to remove the task force.  In addition, Vallone's office has refused to disclose (to Business Week) who is demanding this task force."

By implication then,  Vallone -- who'd introduced the proposed bans and played hardball to get them passed -- was also, nonetheless, an industry front.

But the "advocates" seem to think they can end-run around him by "controlling" the task force:

"[Though] advocates have lobbied hard behind the scenes to get rid of the task force.. Vallone, has absolutely refused to remove it....The health groups think they will be able to control the task force once it is established....They are fooling themselves....If the task force stays...then it is crucial that the NY advocates kill the bill."

And later:

"I urge the advocates in New York to either fix the bill or kill it."

Gee,  we thought legislators fixed or killed bills.  Then again, maybe not.

To us, at least,  the most interesting-- perhaps operative--phrase is:

"BEHIND THE SCENES"

Interesting on two counts.

Interesting that the "advocates" who advocate banning smokers (about 30% of the city's population) from all public life have such easy and constant "behind-the-scenes" access-- such close ties to government. 

Whereas smokers, as mere citizens, seem to have none.  In fact, we only learn about the "hearings" and "proposals" that will drastically affect our lives at the very last minute, after they've been helpfully crafted by the "advocates," or even after-the-fact.  We are, as the saying goes, out of the loop-- until,  of course,  the loop forms the noose with which we're hung.

"Behind-the-scenes," too,  takes an interesting cast, when one compares what the advocates say "behind the scenes" to what they say "in public."

This was especially telling in the debate on ventilation. They were apparently careful to oppose it only "behind the scenes" since public opposition would reveal (to the public) that their actual objective isn't "smoke-free air,"  but a smoker-free world. i.e., Prohibition.

Mr. Glantz complains:

"The [NYC] advocates want people outside NYC to do the heavy lifting while they continue to play footsie with Vallone without raising any PUBLIC objections. Indeed, in response to media questions, Cherner criticized (publicly) those of us who are raising the issue. To do that publicly while privately urging us to pressure Vallone is hypocritical."

Amen.  And another day:

"Many people have expressed concern about the horrible precedent that the NY ordinance [task force clause] will set...The problem is that he [Joe] wants people from OUTSIDE NY to take the heat of getting rid of it. "

To this point, Glantz notes that Cherner has continually "entreated" him to solicit anti-ventilation testimony to the NYC Council from two of his UCSF colleagues, Joanna Dearlove and Annemarie Charlesworth.

Both of whom testified.  So did James Repace. 

And though there was no advance public announcement of the hearings  (March 1, 2001)---no news items in the press, nothing posted on the Council website, no information available through telephone inquiries-- lo, as if by magic, the hearing room was two-thirds filled with Anti activists, many from out of town.  This leads us to several questions, applicable to every city council everywhere:

WHOSE CITY IS IT, ANYWAY? 

WHOSE COUNCIL IS IT, ANYWAY?

DO YOU REPRESENT YOUR CONSTITUENTS? ALL YOUR 
CONSTITUENTS?

OR DO YOU ONLY REPRESENT THIS ORGANIZED CLAQUE?
 

For what all the yapping on VENTILATION was about, and for both sides of the argument, please see our earlier discussion on the subject.
 

                         ----END----