Smoking Outside: CA State Parks

Jail For Smoking Outdoors? ++ Updated ++ And Vaping Too?
August 17, 2014
By Dick Puddlecote
There has never been – nor will there ever be – a scientific study which says passive smoking outdoors is dangerous to passers-by. It doesn’t stop one town from proposing a criminal record for smoking outdoors though, complete with a possible jail sentence.
Where is this place, you ask? Why, in California, of course.
NEVADA CITY (CBS13) — Nevada City is considering strengthening its smoking ordinance in its historic district to possibly make the offense a misdemeanor in addition to the hefty fine.

Just watching out for those bar workers, didn’t they say? It was never about health.
UPDATE: Maybe that’s a bit harsh on California. Check out what’s happening in Arlington, Washington.
The proposed ordinance is modeled after a regulation in Marysville, though Arlington’s has been expanded to include trails as well as parks, and electronic cigarettes as well as tobacco products.
People caught smoking or chewing tobacco in a park or on a trail could be fined up to $1,000 or get a maximum of 90 days in jail, according to the proposed ordinance.
Yes. Jail for using an e-cig in a park! These people are insane.

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Gov. Vetoes Smoking Ban For Parks

May 3, 2010

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has snuffed out anti-smoking advocates’ hopes for banning cigarettes at state parks.

On Monday afternoon, Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have banned smoking at all California state parks and beaches.

The cigar smoking-governor said Monday that such a ban would be an improper intrusion of government into people’s lives. He often invites state lawmakers into his smoking tent at the state Capitol.

The bill’s author, Democratic state Sen. Jenny Oropeza of Long Beach, said her bill would have helped reduce litter, the threat of wildfire and second-hand smoke.

Hundreds of communities nationwide have enacted similar bans at municipal parks and local beaches. Maine is the only state to ban smoking at its state beaches.

Anti-smoking groups said no state has banned smoking throughout its entire park system.

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Governor Vetoes Smoking Ban In State Parks
May 3, 2010
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Cigar-smoking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation Monday that would have banned smoking at all California state parks and beaches, saying the bill crossed the line of government intrusion.
In a letter to California senators, the governor said state parks and local governments were already permitted to ban smoking on a case-by-case basis.
“There is something inherently uncomfortable about the idea of the state encroaching in such a broad manner on the people of California,” Schwarzenegger wrote to lawmakers.
Many of those legislators have previously been invited into his smoking tent at the Capitol.
The author of the bill, state Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, had argued her bill would help reduce litter along with the threat of wildfires and second-hand smoke. She crafted the legislation so smokers would be allowed to light up in parking lots and at campsites in parks.
“I’m sorry the governor did not agree with this widely supported effort to increase public awareness about the environmental threats carelessly tossed cigarettes are doing to our marine life and to the great outdoors,” Oropeza said in a statement.
Hundreds of communities nationwide have enacted smoking bans at municipal parks and beaches. Maine is the only state to ban smoking at its state beaches. But anti-smoking groups say no state has banned smoking throughout its entire park system.
The bill was supported by environmental groups that organize beach cleanup days throughout the U.S., where cigarettes are the No. 1 item collected by volunteers.
Schwarzenegger told lawmakers the best way to discourage people from leaving cigarette butts at beaches and parks is to increase fines and penalties.
At least one tobacco company, Commonwealth Brands, had publicly opposed the ban, arguing it would infringe on smokers’ rights.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/23439398/detail.html

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SB 4? – A bad idea
April 20, 2009

Dear Senator Oropeza,

I have reviewed your proposed legislation regarding a ban on smoking at State Parks and Beaches. I can not think of a positive benefit of this proposed legislation for the state, other than to mandate behavior. People were opposed to legislating behavior with Proposition 8, and they should be just as concerned about this proposed legislation.

The State of California Parks and Beach’s are paid for by the people of the state, for the use of ALL state residents and visitors. There is absolutely no valid safety or public health issue with people smoking out doors that would justify such legislation. If someone does not want to be next to someone who is smoking they can move, just like they do now for people who play offensive music, smell bad, have nose rings and tattoo’s, etc. But this state should welcome all people to our natural resources, not a select few. Also, I am a volunteer at our state parks (for over 15 years), offering for free my services at various past events such as the world gold panning championships, Christmas in Coloma, Pioneer days, etc at the Coloma State park. This I do for free, offering my time to the people of the state. Should this legislation pass, I will no longer be a non-paid, volunteer for the state. And there will be thousands like me that would do the same – we would no longer be welcome in our own public areas. And
since at least the state park in my area – the place where gold was discovered and one of the busiest parks in the state – is having a problems getting enough volunteers, the state would have to replace me with paid staff. I am assuming this would be the case in other parks around the state.

So do we really want to say what kind of people are welcome at our parks and beaches? Does the state have enough financial resources to replace non paid volunteers with paid staff? Is legislating behavior acceptable (a whole bunch of people opposed to the passing of proposition 8 think not). And since every published study ever done on lung cancer shows that 90% plus of all people that get lung cancer are smokers – and that includes when people spent time in elevators and offices and busses and planes with people that smoked – exposure to smoke does not kill people, smoking does. And seeing smoke in a outdoor setting certainly will not cause any harm – except for perception.

The state of California should not be promoting this behavior, enough people already have left the state the the number one reason of “Lack of Civility” (see the Los Angeles times for a past survey on that issue).

I urge you to drop this legislation, and not support any future similar legislation – for the people of the state of California.
Sincerely,
Robert Deitz, II
TO:? Senator.Pavley@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Simitian@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Kehoe@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Leno@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Wiggins@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Padilla@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Wolk@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Benoit@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Hollingsworth@senate.ca.gov; Senator.Huff@senate.ca.gov; governor@governor.ca.gov

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California Tobacco Control Program Wants More Money
But Can Higher Taxes Really Eliminate Smoking Within 5 Years?
September 2, 2008
By John R. Graham
I have spent (undoubtedly too much) time today struggling with a new article from the tobacconistas at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, a group of scholars funded by tobacco taxes, which publishes research calling for more…..(you guessed it)…..tobacco taxes.
But not only more taxes: “The California Tobacco Control Program…has adopted a comprehensive approach designed to change social norms rather than a frontal attack designed to market cessation services directly to tobacco users.? According to key planning documents for the program, this ‘social norm change’ approach seeks ‘to indirectly influence current and potential future tobacco users by creating a social milieu and legal climate in which tobacco becomes less desirable, less acceptable, and less accessible.'”
Or, in other words: the state taking smokers’ money to fund university professors who have the state’s sanction to bully law-abiding smokers.
Trouble is: how do you measure the results?? I previously tangled with these folks’ research in 2006, when I opposed an increase to the California tobacco tax, and discussed all the costs of an expanded anti-tobacco nanny-state.?? Well, the UCSF scholars have now designed an esoteric econometric model to capture the effects of the California Tobacco Control Program, established in 1989.
I have always been discontented with social scientists’ “physics envy”: ramming imprecise social data through highly complex functions.? For example, how does anyone really know how much people smoke, especially when high tobacco taxes drive much of the trade underground?? How can you really allocate precise health care costs to smoking, given all the other sins we bring on ourselves?
And what if “some types of expenditures in any given year are unlikely to change cigarette consumption immediately but will affect it over a longer period,…..because successful cessation is a process that usually takes many years and multiple quit attempts,’ as the article states? Won’t the model run away from reality pretty quickly, no matter how well the social scientists try to specify it?
Not according to the UCSF scholars: The article concludes that for a minor investment of $1.8 billion (in constant 2004 dollars) in the California Tobacco Control Program between the fiscal year 1989-90 and FY 2003-04, $86 billion of personal health spending was saved.
But the model doesn’t quite work right.? It estimates that one pack of cigarettes contributes to an annual health cost of $27, whereas the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates less than $7 per pack (as cited in the article).
As well as this extraordinarily high estimate, the estimate of overall savings has a very wide range: $28 billion to $151 billion (95% confidence interval).? Plus, this is the total over a decade and a half.? The mid-point estimate of the final year’s savings was $6.3 billion (7.3% of the total), which is less than 4% of California’s 2004 health spending of $166 billion.
That’s nothing to sneeze at, I suppose, but is it really enough to take the risk of inviting even more government control over our “social norms”?? Certainly, according one of the scholars:? If spending on tobacco control were hiked up to the level he prefers, California could “virtually eliminate smoking within 5 years”.
Like we’ve eliminated crack cocaine, car theft, and armed robbery, I suppose.? If only government cures were as effective as they say.
http://blog.spn.org/id.2456/detail.asp

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Outdoor smoking bans rile anti-tobacco leader

Jan. 15, 2007
By Suzanne Bohan, MEDIANEWS

In the early 1990s, Dr. Michael Siegel began leading pioneering efforts to ban smoking in workplaces to protect the health of nonsmokers.

Siegel, who got his start in the anti-smoking cause while earning his master’s degree at UC Berkeley, has written dozens of scientific articles on the dangers of secondhand smoke. His testimony in court and at countless city council meetings also helped push public policy toward tighter restrictions on smoking.

But now Siegel is speaking out against the movement he helped create.

Why? Today’s anti-smoking crusaders, he says, have lost their moorings in science by advocating smoking bans in the last refuge for smokers — the great outdoors.

“I’ve been working in this field for 21 years,” said Siegel, who earned an M.D. from Yale University and a master’s degree in public health from UC Berkeley. “The goal was to get rid of smoking in the workplace. I never understood that the goal was to get rid of smoking so that no one even gets a whiff of smoke.

“It’s a grass-roots social movement that’s been so successful that it doesn’t know where to stop,” Siegel continued. “It’s getting to the point where we’re trying to protect people from something that’s not a public health hazard.”

At risk, he and other like-minded tobacco control advocates assert, is not only the credibility of public health officials but also the undermining of a freedom prized in democracies — do as you wish as long as you don’t harm others.

Most of the new or proposed laws restricting outdoor smoking emanate from city council chambers, although the state Legislature is also considering a proposal to ban smoking at state parks and beaches.

A number of California cities have enacted tough regulations against outdoor smoking.

The Southern California city of Calabasas broke new ground for the United States in spring 2006 when it banned smoking in all public areas, including sidewalks. As of March 1, Emeryville will have anti-smoking laws almost as tough as Calabasas, with new widespread smoking bans, including in parks and on footpaths.

San Francisco now bans smoking in city parks, golf courses and public squares, and Belmont made international news in November with its pending proposal to ban smoking citywide, except in detached, single-family homes.

Stanton Glantz, a UC San Francisco professor of medicine and an anti-smoking firebrand who has built a legendary reputation battling the tobacco industry, is among the many public health advocates lauding efforts to outlaw smoking outdoors.

Siegel was once a student of Glantz’s, but the two men are now at loggerheads over the direction of the anti-smoking movement.

“He did some very good work, once upon a time,” Glantz said of Siegel.

Glantz insists there is a health effect worth worrying about with exposure to cigarette smoke outdoors, particularly for those with chronic heart disease.

“It’s going to be a very small number, but there is some risk,” Glantz said. “But that’s true of a lot of environmental toxics, like diesel exhaust.”

Glantz noted, however, that studies can’t state with certainty what level of outdoor exposure to tobacco smoke could cause harm.

“Nobody has ever done a study on people who are only exposed outdoors,” he said. “You can’t do such a study.”

Siegel, however, has a fan in Audrey Silk, a retired New York City police officer and founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment.

“Siegel had an attack of conscience 18 months ago that the arguments his colleagues were making were fallacious,” said Silk, as she took a long draw on a cigarette during a phone interview. She was referring to the 2005 launch of Siegel’s blog, http://www.tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/.

She’s outraged over the moralistic overtones and, in her view, lack of common-sense rationale for the latest generation of anti-smoking laws.

“Nobody is even trying to keep this in check,” Silk said. The laws banning outdoor smoking, she believes, aren’t about protecting public health, but strong-arming smokers to quit their habit.

Activists square off

Siegel, like virtually every other expert on the health risks of tobacco smoke, applauds the nationwide movement to ban smoking in indoor, publicly shared spaces such as offices, bars and restaurants. These bans are backed by large studies linking regular exposure to secondhand smoke indoors with heart disease and cancer.

Siegel’s greatest concern with the tobacco control movement today is what he views as exaggerated assertions advanced by major public health organizations, including the U.S. surgeon general’s office, that fleeting exposure to secondhand smoke poses a serious public health threat.

In June, the surgeon general released an updated report on the dangers of secondhand smoke. A news release accompanying the report warned that “even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects” by increasing the odds of developing heart disease and lung cancer.

“There is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke,” the release said.

The surgeon general’s report, however, only addressed indoor exposure, said Terry Pechacek, associate director for science with the Office on Smoking and Health in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose office helped prepare the report.

The word “brief” is also left up to interpretation. “We can’t quantify what is ‘brief,'” said Pechacek, who declined to state how long an interval qualifies as “brief.”

Overall, tobacco smoke is such a minuscule fraction of air pollutants that it’s usually disregarded in air contaminant inventories, said C. Arden Pope, an air pollution expert at Brigham Young University in Utah, whose study on secondhand smoke exposure indoors was cited in the state report.

“Most of the time, it’s so small we don’t even bother trying to measure it,” Pope said. Furthermore, he added, smoke from other sources, such as wood fires, barbecues and burning leaf litter, waft for waft is as hazardous to health as secondhand smoke.

Advocates of outdoor smoking bans insist that evidence suggests — although it doesn’t confirm — that people with heart disease are indeed at risk if they routinely encounter wisps of secondhand smoke while outdoors.

Glantz, for example, said even five minutes of breathing tobacco smoke changes blood chemistry and blood vessel function enough to increase the risk of a heart attack in people with severe heart disease.

The CDC’s Pechacek also explained the reason for the surgeon general’s warning that even brief exposure could trigger cancer. “There is some risk that even a very small amount can damage a cell,” he said, setting off a chain reaction that causes cancer.

But several doctors, Siegel among them, prominently took aim at the surgeon general’s conclusions about the dangers of fleeting exposure to tobacco smoke in a 2006 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“It takes many years for these chronic diseases to develop,” Siegel said in the article. “We’re really risking our credibility (as public health professionals) by putting out rather absurd claims that you can be exposed briefly to secondhand smoke and come down with heart disease or cancer.”

Siegel doesn’t buy that five minutes of exposure to secondhand smoke poses a hazard, but he agrees that 30 minutes in a smoky room could potentially endanger a person with advanced heart disease.

But those conditions wouldn’t be met outside, he said. “In most outdoor places where people can move about, they can simply avoid the exposure.”

Nonetheless, even small odds justify legislative action against outdoor smoking, Glantz said. “If you can’t be assured the risk is zero, you should act,” he said.

‘Pushing the envelope’

Other tobacco control advocates share Siegel’s concerns that the movement has gone too far.

Columbia University researchers Ronald Bayer and James Colgrove co-authored a 2002 article in the American Journal of Public Health critiquing anti-smoking campaigns.

“Starting in the 1970s, anti-tobacco activists drew on suggestive and incomplete data to push for far-reaching prohibitions on smoking in a variety of public settings,” they wrote.

Simon Chapman, editor of Tobacco Control, the influential journal of the anti-smoking movement, wrote a scathing opinion piece in the journal titled “Banning Smoking Outside Is Seldom Ethically Justifiable.”

Prohibitions on outdoor smoking “push the envelope of tobacco control into areas where questions need to be asked to ensure tobacco control policies are firmly anchored to scientific evidence,” Chapman wrote, “and especially concern those who value the freedom of individuals to do what they please to the extent that this does not harm others.”

Laws banning smoking on public health grounds that lack evidence, Chapman added, could create backlashes by skeptical citizens that “undermine support for other tobacco policies which, if implemented, may bring profound public health benefits to communities.”

Cities take heed

Each time city lawmakers in California proposed bans on outdoor smoking in 2006, they cited findings from both the surgeon general report and a California Air Resources Board report on the health risks of even fleeting exposure to secondhand smoke, although neither report addressed health hazards of smoke encountered outdoors.

The surgeon general’s declaration that there’s no safe level of tobacco smoke in particular alarmed Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach.

On the basis of that and other assertions about the dangers of tobacco smoke, she and other council members in November voted to ban smoking citywide, except in single-family, detached homes.

“That was pivotal,” Feierbach said. “No secondhand smoke is essentially safe. It’s pretty scary.”

The city attorney is reviewing the council’s proposed law and expects to send it back to the council for a final vote in March.

“What we’re trying to do,” Feierbach said, “is make people aware that smoking is not something that should be done when there are other people around.”

Fork in the road

Glantz believes that Siegel and his like-minded colleagues are maintaining an older viewpoint in the anti-smoking movement, which accepts that there’s a level of smoking society should tolerate.

But a new way of thinking is taking hold, Glantz said, which envisions a society free from any form of tobacco smoking.

“There’s another model that if smoking drops below a certain threshold, then the whole social support structure (for smoking) will collapse,” Glantz explained.

“And I think we’re getting pretty close to that in California,” he continued. “It will be out of sight, and it won’t be something people will do in polite social circles.”

To Silk, founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, that comment smacks of an alarming form of intolerance taking root. “A very small minority of nonsmokers, along with the government,” Silk said, “have created this atmosphere that sanctions disrespectful behavior toward smokers.”

And while Glantz’s vision of a smoke-free society has many supporters, Chapman, the editor of Tobacco Control, warned that such a scenario unjustifiably restricts smokers from engaging in a legal practice and risks damaging the reputation of the anti-smoking movement.

“We need to ask,” Chapman wrote, “whether efforts to prevent people from smoking outdoors risk besmirching tobacco control advocates as the embodiment of intolerant, paternalistic busybodies, who, not content at protecting their own health, want to force smokers to not smoke even in circumstances where the effects are immeasurably small.”

For Glantz, however, there’s little room for compromise, given the health risks he’s certain are posed by wafts of secondhand smoke, even outside.

“It is socially unacceptable to pollute the air and poison the people around you,” Glantz said.

Report Reviews Secondhand Smoke Risks
Some Scientists Question Risk Level

Bridget M. Kuehn
JAMA. 2006;296:922-923.

At a June 27 press briefing launching his new report on the ill effects of secondhand smoke, Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona declared that “the debate is over.” But some scientists continue to question the magnitude and immediacy of cardiovascular and lung cancer risks attributed to secondhand smoke exposure.

The report marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark 1986 Surgeon General’s report on the health hazards of secondhand smoke and reviews data amassed since then. More than 20 scientists authored the report and more than 40 scientists reviewed it. Among its conclusions are that children exposed to secondhand smoke are at greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome and exacerbation of existing respiratory disease (http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/). The report also concludes that secondhand smoke has immediate effects on the cardiovascular system and causes coronary heart disease and lung cancer.

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‘Is it a trusted source?’
Tobacco control resources cause debate in health care community

By Stacie Crozier
Jan. 11, 2007

Are all tobacco control materials and resources created equal?

That’s a question that researchers, public health officials, health care professionals and even The New York Times are raising as tobacco companies produce and distribute tobacco prevention and smoking cessation materials to the health care community and the public.

“It seems incongruent with the mission of a dental office to display or use materials provided by companies who produce a product that when used as intended can kill you,” says Cathy Backinger, Ph.D., acting chief, Tobacco Control Research Branch, National Cancer Institute.

She cautions dentists to carefully evaluate the entities that produce tobacco control resources and materials. “Is it a trusted source?”

Materials available from the National Cancer Institute, she adds, have been shown through scientific research to be effective tools in helping smokers quit.

Smokers who want to quit and parents who want to prevent their children from smoking have a variety of resources at their disposal proven to be effective tools, she says.

“There are some 45 million smokers and we need to have a variety of ways to help them quit,” Dr. Backinger says. “Brochures are helpful for some; interactive phone quitlines and online resources provide support; physicians and dentists can provide counsel and, consistent with applicable state law, prescription medications to help. Not every individual responds to one method, but there are a variety of choices out there, and we hope they choose materials from a trusted source.”

In November 2006, when Dr. Backinger heard reports of dental offices displaying and distributing QuitAssist materials produced by Philip Morris USA, she sent a letter to ADA President Kathleen Roth.

“Dental offices are a prime location to promote the health importance of both tobacco prevention and cessation. The implied endorsement of the Philip Morris QuitAssist materials is incompatible with the aims of dental offices that are concerned with patients’ oral health,” she wrote. “The tobacco industry markets a product that is both highly addictive and lethal under normal conditions of use. Thus, dental professionals’ goal of oral health and those of the tobacco industry are fundamentally different and irreconcilable.”

Philip Morris USA spokesman David Sutton says health care providers and consumers can request free QuitAssist materials from the company or obtain them on the PMUSA Web site.

The company in 2006 also distributed 2.4 million guides to U.S. dental offices through a third-party vendor. Since the QuitAssist program was launched in 2003, its Web site has logged more than 1.5 million visits and it has been promoted through “onserts” on more than 750 million packs of the company’s cigarettes.

“We want to make health care professionals and the public aware of the resources we offer and the opportunity for them to obtain more,” says Mr. Sutton. “We are trying to raise awareness of our smoking cessation efforts.”

In her letter to Dr. Roth, Dr. Backinger said tobacco products are responsible for more than 440,000 American deaths each year.

“Because tobacco use is responsible for about 30 percent of all cancer deaths, efforts to prevent and control tobacco use are a very high priority for the National Cancer Institute. Recently, some tobacco companies have sought to portray themselves as interested in helping to prevent youth smoking, or in helping adults to quit. … Some individuals may benefit from cessation information provided by Philip Morris. However, many more will suffer, so long as the company’s aggressive marketing efforts continue.”

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the tobacco industry spent $15.1 billion to market and promote tobacco products in 2003—a 21.5 percent increase from the 2002 figure of $12.47 billion and a 125 percent increase since tobacco companies and states reached tobacco settlement agreements in November 1998 that placed restrictions on tobacco industry marketing.

(The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement was signed with 46 states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas had previously signed settlement agreements. All the agreements combined are known as the state Tobacco Settlement Agreements.)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has set recommended levels that states should spend on tobacco control activities—about 8 percent of approximately $20 billion in settlement funds received each year. According to CDC data, only three states currently fund tobacco prevention programs at recommended levels. Less than half (22 states) fund programs at less than 25 percent of recommended levels—with five states spending none of their settlement funds on such programs.

“State legislatures decide how to use tobacco settlement funds,” says Dr. Backinger. “They can and do use them for a variety of things not related to tobacco control.”

A study published in the December 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health showed “little relation” between exposure to tobacco company-sponsored, youth-targeted ads and youth smoking outcomes. But ads targeted to parents but viewed by older teens may actually increase teen smoking and reduce their perceptions of danger about smoking, researchers concluded.

The study focused on parent-directed ads from Philip Morris USA and youth-directed ads from Phillip Morris and Lorillard Tobacco Co.

“Adolescents need accurate information about the serious health consequences of smoking, and they should be wary of tobacco marketing that portrays smoking as cool and glamorous,” says Melanie Wakefield, Ph.D., lead researcher and author of the study. “An important thing that parents can do to prevent their kids from smoking is to set a good example and quit smoking themselves. Or, if they don’t smoke, make their homes and cars smoke-free.”

Dr. Wakefield, a behavioral scientist, is director of the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer for the Cancer Council Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia. The study was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute State and Community Tobacco Control Initiative, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“Parents can also support smoke-free laws, tobacco tax increases, tobacco advertising bans and funding for real tobacco prevention and quitting programs sponsored by state and federal governments,” Dr. Wakefield adds.

A statement on PMUSA’s Web site regarding the AJPH study and its television ad campaign, “Talk. They’ll Listen,” says, “Based on June 2006 research, 61 percent of parents of kids 10 to 17 years old reported being aware of at least one ad from the campaign. Of those aware, 61 percent reported having talked to their child about not smoking as a result of seeing the ad.”

Philip Morris USA established its Youth Smoking Prevention Program in April 1998—about seven months before tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement.

Since the YSP program’s inception, PMUSA has pumped about $1 billion into the program, over and above the $30 billion it has sent to the states during the last eight years through Tobacco Settlement Agreements, says Mr. Sutton.

“We believe that kids should not smoke,” says Mr. Sutton. “This is a product intended for adults only, and we put our money where our mouth is.”

YSP encompasses a variety of activities, including research and research reviews on youth behavior and smoking rates, parent communications, grant programs, and a variety of strategies designed to prevent youth from gaining access to tobacco products, Mr. Sutton says.

The program’s parent resources were created in conjunction with an advisory board of psychologists, psychiatrists and public health professionals, chaired by Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D., clinical psychologist; lecturer, Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry; and president, Health Communications Consultants Inc. Dr. Kutner is a former columnist on child development and parent-child communication for The New York Times and Parents magazine, and author of five books on those topics.

“Our advisory board is an independent group that works to ensure the scientific accuracy and developmental appropriateness of the print and online materials for parents funded by the PMUSA Youth Smoking Prevention program,” says Dr. Kutner. “Our goal is to provide accurate, practical and effective resources that parents can use to help prevent kids from using tobacco in any of its forms.”

Dr. Kutner says that in addition to the health consequences of smoking he’s seen clinically, he works in youth smoking prevention and smoking cessation for a more personal reason.

“Both of my parents were smokers,” he notes. “Both died from smoking-related cancers by the time I was 18 years old. I know the health consequences of smoking. No child should have to deal with that.”

The advisory board, he says, has no involvement in television campaigns for PMUSA print and online materials.

“We’re providing our expertise to parents,” Dr. Kutner adds. “PMUSA is getting the same advice and counsel we would provide to any youth smoking prevention group. As independent consultants, each of us would walk away from the project if we ever feel that our advice is being either ignored or misused. I was initially concerned that this effort at youth smoking prevention might be a ruse, and that our advice would be ignored. Other members of the advisory board initially had the same concerns—indeed, I’d be suspicious of any health care professional who did not.”

PMUSA’s financial resources, he says, have served to “distribute approximately 70 million co pies of our brochures through a variety of channels—numbers that most youth smoking prevention programs can only dream about.”

Philip Morris has placed paid advertisement inserts promoting the free parent brochures and tip sheets in their “Raising Kids Who Don’t Smoke” series in a variety of health trade publications, including the November 2006 Journal of the American Dental Association.

Dr. Scott L. Tomar raised an objection to the insert in a letter to JADA Editor Michael Glick.

“Philip Morris’ advertising campaign focuses on peer influence, parental factors and commercial access being the primary influences on youth smoking initiation, rather than tobacco industry marketing, inaccurate risk appraisal, price and other factors known to influence youth smoking,” wrote Dr. Tomar, professor and chair, Department of Community Dentistry and Behavioral Science, University of Florida College of Dentistry. He opined that, “The available evidence suggests that not only is this tobacco industry campaign not effective in reducing youth smoking, it was associated with lowering youths’ perceived harm of smoking.”

Even The New York Times has weighed in recently on the issue. An editorial in its Nov. 27, 2006, issue, states, “Philip Morris says it has spent more than $1 billion on its youth smoking prevention programs since 1998 and that it devised its current advertising campaign on the advice of experts who deem parental influence extremely important. But the company has done only the skimpiest research on how the campaign is working. …

“Philip Morris, the industry’s biggest and most influential company, is renowned for its marketing savvy,” the Times editorial adds. “If it really wanted to prevent youth smoking—and cut off new recruits to its death-dealing products—it could surely mount a more effective campaign to do so.”

In a published response to the editorial, Jennifer Hunter, vice president, Youth Prevention and Corporate Responsibility Programs for Philip Morris USA, said, “We understand the skepticism regarding how a tobacco company can be serious about preventing youth from smoking, but our business is grounded in competing for the largest share of the adult tobacco market. As a business and as parents, we don’t want kids to smoke, and when society feels that we behave otherwise, it actually harms our business. … While we have serious concerns about the design and conclusions of the study cited in your editorial, the study does highlight the need for continued understanding of how parent-directed youth smoking prevention advertising affects youth. We intend to pursue this issue and to engage with relevant experts to identify opportunities to improve all youth smoking prevention efforts, especially our own.”