Tobacco Scam: Smokefree Restaurants: Fake Economics - Cooking the Books

Anchorage, Alaska

Big Tobacco strategy:

Bring in paid "experts" to make the case against smokefree measures.
Create a hospitality front group to disguise Big Tobacco involvement.
Fabricate business loss claims after smokefree measure goes in effect.

In a typical local battle, public health advocates and Big Tobacco's "accommodation" fronts went toe-to-toe both before and after the Anchorage, Alaska, City Council enacted a smokefree restaurant measure in June 2001.

In September 1999, the newly-formed Smokefree Anchorage Coalition called for most workplaces and public places, including restaurants but not bars, to go smokefree. In response, Philip Morris arranged for its "ventilation expert," the Chelsea Group, to present at Alaska's annual hospitality convention in February 2000.

The debate escalated through the spring and summer. Days before the City Council's June 2000 hearing on the measure, Philip Morris hosted another meeting in Anchorage to organize opposition within the hospitality industry. It flew in the Dolphin Group, a lobbying and PR firm Philip Morris had used in unsuccessful attempts to block or roll back smokefree restaurant measures in California. Philip Morris and its astroturf National Smokers' Alliance also organized a phone campaign against the measure.

Smokefree Anchorage Coalition mounted a strong public education campaign itself � 77% of voters polled supported the measure � and despite Big Tobacco pressure, the City Council passed it 9-2, slating implementation for January 2001.

The tobacco industry did not give up. By November 2000, working through its ally, the National Licensed Beverage Association Big Tobacco had formed the "Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant, and Retailers Association of Alaska" to oppose the measure's implementation. The Smokefree Anchorage Coalition was vigilant and exposed this tobacco front.

Eleven days after the smokefree measure went into effect, the "association" claimed to local media that the measure was shifting business from restaurants to bars and cutting into waitresses' tips.
Implementation actually went quite smoothly. The city received many public complaints in the beginning about smoking in workplaces and public places, including restaurants, but businesses rapidly came into compliance without being cited. The first citation wasn't issued until April, to Hooters. At first threatening to sue the city on constitutional grounds, Hooters also complied.

In October 2001, the city released a report finding:

More than 7,500 Anchorage workers were no longer exposed to secondhand smoke in the hospitality industry alone.
The measure was popular and few enforcement issues remained.
Contrary to propaganda generated by Big Tobacco's allies and fronts, Anchorage restaurants experienced no negative impact. In fact, restaurant employment had grown faster in the previous ten months than the economy as a whole.

In November 2001, the Alaska Native Health Board commissioned a public opinion poll on Anchorage's smokefree measure. Mirroring results in other locales, 80% of citizens supported it and 22% said they planned to eat more often than before restaurants went smokefree.