Tobacco Pays For Crusade Against Itself.
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer Page A01 TAMPA—Motorists driving down Interstate 275 once passed billboards inviting them to come to Marlboro Country or to swing with Joe Camel. Now they see stark scoreboards that compare the more than 400,000 estimated tobacco-related deaths that occur nationally every year with the far smaller numbers of deaths caused by AIDS, murder and traffic accidents. "Welcome to Killing Field," the billboards read. Signs like these have begun appearing everywhere in Florida, going up on the sides of roadways, the tops of buildings and the walls of stores from Tallahassee to Miami. Cigarette billboards, which remain ubiquitous in most of the country -- especially in urban centers -- no longer exist in Florida. The exchange of signs is part of an all-fronts attack on tobacco that is largely funded by the tobacco industry itself. Thousands of elementary school children statewide are receiving specially printed anti-smoking children's books, also paid for with tobacco money. Anti-smoking rallies are being organized with tobacco profits. And when Florida police write tickets for teenagers caught smoking, their pay is reimbursed with tobacco money. This is what the nation might have eventually looked like if the comprehensive tobacco bill hadn't died in the Senate. Florida, one of the first states to sue the tobacco industry to recover the costs of treating sick smokers, was the second to settle its suit. The state is using $200 million of that $11 billion settlement to kick off an unprecedented, aggressive campaign aimed at reducing underage smoking -- led largely by teenagers themselves. The death of a federal tobacco bill dims hopes of a similar program nationally. But regardless of what happens in Congress, states have continued to move forward on their own. Mississippi and Texas, like Florida, are spending some of the millions of dollars they received by settling their lawsuits to fight youth smoking, as will Minnesota. The state of Washington is scheduled to go to trial with its suit in September. "I can guarantee you this -- the attorneys general are going to keep this thing going. If we have to go state by state we're going to make this thing happen," said Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore. He was the first attorney general to file suit against the tobacco industry, and the first to settle last year. Besides the lawsuits, states have been taking action against the industry in many other ways. New Jersey has doubled its excise taxes on cigarettes from 40 to 80 cents, and the Utah and Iowa legislatures have passed measures to put cigarettes behind store counters, a safeguard against the shoplifting that is a part of youthful experimentation with tobacco. No one knows whether these individual state programs will slow the rising teenage smoking rate. Matthew L. Myers of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, who helped negotiate a proposed national tobacco deal, thinks the state-by-state approach is limited. "You can't solve this problem within a single state," said Myers. "Kids in Florida are going to see the national advertising, and there is no one to rein in the behavior of the tobacco industry if the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] doesn't or can't." Some of the state suits are stronger than others, Myers said, but "even if every state that has filed suit prevails, we're looking at years of litigation before even a substantial percentage of the American public gets the benefit of programs like those now being implemented in Florida and Mississippi." The Sunshine State has been a particularly tough venue for the politically unpopular tobacco industry. Two recent lawsuits in the state have gone against the industry -- two of only three suits over the health risks of tobacco that have ended with juries awarding damages to plaintiffs. And the industry has settled a class-action suit by airline flight attendants over exposure to secondhand smoke for $349 million. Next month a West Palm Beach courthouse will host the first class-action case brought by smokers against the industry. Those court victories for tobacco opponents, however, pale in comparison to the state tobacco settlement. The state will receive a total of $11.3 billion over 25 years and has won extensive restrictions on tobacco advertising and marketing activities in the state, including the removal of virtually all outdoor cigarette advertising and vending machines in areas accessible to children. The most visible sign of the anti-smoking program being funded by the settlement is the in-your-face billboards designed with the help of Florida teenagers at a March statewide summit. The ads are part of a $25 million campaign that also features tough television and print ads featuring the slogan: "Their brand is lies. Our brand is Truth." A second, $70 million cycle will begin on July 1. At the end of next month, a "Truth Train" will snake its way from city to city across the state, with rock concerts, beach parties and recruiting drives planned for major stops to enlist teenagers in the campaign. More quietly, the program has trained 350 specialists to help the state's teachers implement curriculum programs that cover tobacco's risks and could help students develop "refusal skills" to turn down offers of tobacco and illicit drugs. Many residents question the governor's priorities, and Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles's staff acknowledges that not all of the programs will work. The state has commissioned studies to track the success of every element of the program -- especially the thorny question of whether the anti-smoking message can actually get through to teenagers without stoking adolescent rebellion. Currently, Florida's teenagers smoke at rates that are comparable to those in the rest of the nation: 35.3 percent of Florida high school students smoked in the past month, according to surveys. The program is trying to ensure that the youngsters working in the program have something in common with those they are trying to reach, said pilot program director Chuck Wolfe. "We have kids in this program who use tobacco, and they are just as vital to us as the kids that don't." Aaron Carlton, who last week attended a follow-up summit in St. Petersburg, said he would probably "beat the hell" out of anyone who gave him a hard time for his civic involvement. A lanky six-footer from Wauchula in central Florida, the 17-year-old brushes back hair that's growing out two-toned, dark brown creeping up behind the current bright yellow dye job and shaved short up the sides to show off his ear hoops. When Carlton's mother, a nurse and anti-smoking activist, asked if he would like to attend the March summit, he recalled, "I said, 'Yeah, I'll go to the summit because I'll get to miss two days of school.' " Aaron smoked in seventh grade, but quit when he felt it slowed down his swimming. Despite his professed cynicism, however, Aaron has stayed with the program -- in part, he says, because of his grandmother's cancer, and partly because smoking is "really nasty." Jenny Lee, 18, said that she believes the squeaky-clean demeanor of most of the participants won't keep them from being able to reach Florida's mainstream teenagers. The tobacco industry, she said, communicates very effectively with young people, yet "they aren't a bunch of 10, 13, 14-year-olds sitting around the house with nothing to do. We definitely have an advantage," Lee said. Jared Peron, a 17-year-old who has taken on the role of marketing director for the pilot project's "truth campaign," said that the key to reaching his peers is to avoid preaching. The Florida program, he said, "doesn't really tell kids not to smoke -- there's no 'Just Say No.' " The program instead focuses on accusations that the industry is trying to manipulate and addict teenagers, Peron said. "What 'Truth' does is tell teens what the tobacco industry is doing. . . . It gives them the information they need to make a real choice." Chiles said that he knew that some of the teen-inspired ads -- such as one in which young people pose as terrorists making their demands for an adolescence free of tobacco -- "may be a little different than we're used to," and could upset some viewers. "If it will grab kids, I'm for doing it." Florida is seeking other ways to limit youth smoking as well. Agents from the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco send youngsters into stores for tobacco buy-and-bust operations, and agents patrol the streets to cite underage smokers for violating the state's juvenile tobacco possession laws. The state has issued more than 2,300 of the civil citations so far. First offenders get a $25 fine or 16 hours of community service. If they don't show up for sentencing, the state can yank a teenager's driver's license, or refuse to grant one. Some Floridians wonder if all of the attention paid to underage smoking doesn't indicated skewed priorities. "The way I see it," says Mikkel Hildahl, a Tampa man who sells used videos via the World Wide Web, "we've got punks stealing cars and selling crack cocaine -- and we're worried about kids smoking?" Police charged with carrying out the state's year-old tobacco possession law say they hear the same sort of sentiment on the beat. Capt. Bruce Ashley of the state alcoholic beverages division said that parents occasionally call angrily after a citation is issued to say, "Why are you harassing my child? I know they smoke, I let them smoke!" And a teenager will occasionally ask "Why don't you do some real police work?" Ashley says. Tampa police officers William Bahl and T. ("Everybody calls me T") Greiner roam the streets in a black Suzuki Sidekick. On the lookout for young smokers, they drive by several schools, convenience stores, a skateboarders' hangout, a public pool, the Tilt video game parlor and along the historic main drag of Ybor City, passing the Reggae Rock Tobacco shop, with a sign reading "Thanks for Smoking." Although Tampa has the highest rate of underage smoking in the state, according to surveys, no young smokers are in evidence. "It's too dang hot," Greiner said over the straining roar of the air conditioning. The 96-degree heat has driven youngsters indoors. Three Hispanic girls sat under a tree near Churchill High School. When the police ask if they have any cigarettes, one of the girls looked incredulous. "Smoking's bad for you," she said. The problem for law enforcement officers, Bahr said, is that so many of them smoked as teenagers themselves that they find it "kind of awkward," at best, to crack down on juvenile smokers. "It's hard to enforce something you may have done yourself," he said. Greiner, a jovial blonde who proudly shows off a new tattoo encircling her upper left arm, was troubled by a citation she wrote for a young man who was just a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday -- and who lived on his own and had a job. "We tried to impress on him that it's not us, it's the law," Bahr recalled. "It had that bit of sarcasm at the beginning," Bahr acknowledged, but added, "It's for the betterment of us all."
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