Tobacco Opponent Named to State Advisory Panel

SACRAMENTO — Tweaking the tobacco industry, the state Senate has appointed one of the nation’s leading anti-tobacco advocates to a board that oversees California’s anti-tobacco advertising, research and education.

The Senate Rules Committee appointed Stanton Glantz, a medical school professor at UC San Francisco, to the Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which advises the Department of Health Services on $100 million in annual expenditures for anti-tobacco campaigns and research.

“We’ll call it like we see it,” Glantz said after the announcement of his appointment last week, promising that Wilson administration officials were “not going to be able to shine me on. I know the right questions to ask.”

For more than a decade, Glantz, 51, has been one of the leading critics of the tobacco industry and of politicians who take campaign donations from tobacco companies. Word of his appointment was greeted with disdain by tobacco spokesmen, and lauded by people in the anti-tobacco movement.

“It’s wonderful,” said Dr. Lester Breslow, a UCLA professor and leading anti-tobacco researcher who had been on the committee until last year. “It’s a good sign.”

Glantz has been critical of Republicans and Democrats, including Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), chairman of the Rules Committee that appointed him. In particular, Glantz has cited to Lockyer’s co-authorship of legislation a decade ago that exempted tobacco companies from liability lawsuits in state court.

Lockyer, in turn, said Friday that he believes some of Glantz’s comments have been “unfair and unduly political, but this is an advisory board.

“We thought he was qualified and we appointed him,” Lockyer said.

One of Glantz’s main political targets is Gov. Pete Wilson. Glantz has blamed a recent increase in smoking in California in part on efforts to transfer money from anti-tobacco education to other health programs for poor people, a shift supported by Wilson, as well as Lockyer and the Legislature.

As recently as Friday, Glantz accused the Wilson administration of weakening California’s anti-tobacco program, which is funded by a 25-cent-a-pack tax on cigarettes imposed by voters in 1988 when they approved Proposition 99.

“The Wilson administration has . . . taken a program that at one time was a world leader and have bogged it down in bureaucracy,” Glantz said.

Sean Walsh, Wilson’s spokesman, responded by saying: “Mr. Glantz certainly is colorful, and he will be an interesting addition to [the tobacco oversight committee]. But with comments made by Mr. Glantz, an appointment as spokesmen to the World Wrestling Federation may be more appropriate.”

Glantz’s appointment by the Democrat-controlled Senate is in contrast to the decision last year by then-Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) to replace two physicians who had long experience in anti-tobacco efforts with a retired aerospace executive who is active in the American Cancer Society and a restaurant chain president.

“It’s terrific. He certainly he brings a lot of expertise and energy,” Lynda Frost, spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, said Monday.

Some tobacco opponents believe that Glantz on occasion has been too aggressive. One said his appointment could heighten the tension on the oversight committee, which in recent months has had a strained relationship with the state Department of Health Services.

Earlier this year, the chairwoman of the committee criticized the department for delays in releasing anti-tobacco television advertisements.

“Certainly, Stan Glantz is a one-of-a-kind tobacco control advocate who has made a tremendous contribution . . . in the state and nationally,” said Paul Knepprath of the American Lung Assn. of California.

By contrast, Gary Auxier of the National Smokers Alliance, a group funded by tobacco companies, said he was disgusted by the appointment and intends to ask the Senate to rescind it.

In recent months, Auxier’s group, with the public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller, has been trying to generate media attention to a study that challenges one by Glantz that concluded smoking bans in restaurants do not harm business.

“Using the same standard, they should have appointed us, if bias makes no difference in overseeing these things,” Auxier said.

Glantz said his restaurant study has withstood review by other scientists, and noted that Auxier’s group was established with money from the nation’s largest tobacco company, Philip Morris.

Glantz has been involved in the politics of the anti-smoking movement since 1978. At UC San Francisco Glantz’s research has focused on how the heart functions--including the effects of secondhand smoke on the heart muscle.

“The way I view it, cigarettes are the contagion that spreads heart disease and cancer,” Glantz said. “It’s like if you want to understand malaria, you study mosquitoes.”

Glantz gained national recognition when he received a box of internal tobacco industry documents and published them on the Internet, despite a suit by a tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, seeking to block their dissemination. He published a book last year analyzing the documents titled “The Cigarette Papers.”

Glantz said he received a four-year $484,000 research grant, which ended in 1994, from Proposition 99 funds, but has no plans to seek additional grants from the tobacco tax money.

“Lockyer deserves a lot of credit for being willing to put me on there. I’m sure I’m not his very favorite person,” Glantz said, adding that he plans to continue to issue reports on tobacco industry campaign contributions to politicians.