Legislature Aims Fusillade of Bills at Tobacco Industry : Health: Anti-smoking lawmakers are buoyed by recent EPA report on risks of secondhand smoke.

SACRAMENTO — Armed with a new study about the hazards of secondhand smoke, anti-smoking legislators believe 1993 could be a turning point in the long history of legislative domination by the tobacco industry.

With renewed vigor, anti-smoking legislators are pushing bills to blunt tobacco advertising, nearly double cigarette taxes, open the industry to lawsuits and ban smoking inside all buildings.

The primary reason for their optimism is a landmark report by the Environmental Protection Agency declaring that secondhand smoke is a leading cause of cancer in nonsmokers. Soon after the January report, Gov. Pete Wilson issued an executive order to ban smoking in all state buildings.

“The EPA study changes the politics of this issue forever,” said Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood), among the Legislature’s most passionate anti-smokers. “Californians know that it is no longer a matter of annoyance. It’s a matter of life and death. They are going to fight to protect their lives.”

At the same time, according to a new report by the state Department of Health Services and UC San Diego, smoking is at an all-time low in California. An estimated 20% of the state’s population smokes, down from 26.7% five years ago.

Friedman is carrying perhaps the year’s most important anti-smoking bill, which seeks to impose a flat-out ban in every indoor place where people work, other than the home.

If it passes the Legislature in its current form and Wilson signs it into law, Friedman’s bill would result in the most sweeping state-mandated smoking ban in the nation. From bars and card parlors to auto garages and convention halls, smoking would become a crime, punishable by a $100 fine.

“Smoking is on the ropes this year,” said Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), a co-author of Friedman’s bill. “The nonsmoker has been at the mercy of people who smoke. Now the pendulum swings. I don’t think that’s bad.”

If Friedman and Archie-Hudson are correct, the change would be major. As recently as last session, the Legislature approved a major tobacco industry-sponsored bill to prohibit employment discrimination against smokers. Wilson vetoed it, but the idea has resurfaced this year.

The Legislature has not passed a significant anti-smoking bill since 1987, when Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland) pushed a measure through to ban smoking on in-state airline flights. Ever since, cities and counties have led the way. At least 53 California municipalities have passed some type of smoking ban, according to the Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.

Aware of the Legislature’s track record and of the power of the tobacco lobby in Sacramento, some anti-smoking advocates are skeptical.

“I cannot be too paranoid about the California Legislature,” said Stan Glantz, a UC San Francisco professor of medicine who researches tobacco’s hefty political donations.

If the tobacco industry is worried about the renewed legislative attacks, it is not showing it. “Our industry always faces challenges,” said John Boltz, spokesman for Philip Morris in New York, adding that there is a “significant reservoir” of public support for reasonable limits on restrictions.

“As long as we stay with our messages,” Boltz said, “that should have a pretty receptive ear.”

In California last year, Philip Morris and RJR-Nabisco reported donating a combined $2.8 million to legislative races and initiatives. Those companies, plus the industry-funded Tobacco Institute, spent $812,000 more on lobbying. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who has enormous power over most bills, was last year’s single largest individual recipient of donations from the two companies, collecting $72,300. Brown distributes much of the money he raises to other legislative candidates.

Politicians from both major parties take campaign money from cigarette manufacturers and tobacco lobbyists’ gifts, ranging from dinners to liquor at receptions to hard-to-get tickets to Sacramento Kings basketball games.

This year, tobacco lobbyists have their work cut out:

* Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill to impose a 27-cent-per-pack “sin tax” on cigarettes. Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Los Angeles) has a bill to add a 2-cent-a-pack state tax, with the funds paying for breast cancer research and early detection for poor women.

* Terry Friedman revived a bill to prohibit tobacco companies from using cartoons in cigarette advertisements. It is aimed at RJR-Nabisco’s campaign featuring caricatures of a camel in ads that anti-smokers say targets children.

* Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto) dusted off bills to give Californians the right to sue over cancer and other ailments caused either by their own habit or secondhand smoke. The legislation, introduced in each of the past four years, has never made it out of the Judiciary Committee.

Assemblyman Phil Isenberg (D-Sacramento), Assembly Judiciary Committee chairman, says the bill has a better chance of clearing his committee this year, given the infusion of freshman legislators. But whether the bill will clear the Legislature is another question.

Isenberg notes that tobacco companies could face huge court costs if the bills become law, and says they “will fight Byron’s bill to the death.”

Isenberg is proposing a measure to ban smoking in the one state building where it remains legal, the Capitol. The governor’s ban on smoking in state buildings does not extend to sections of the Capitol controlled by the Legislature.

The smoke was especially thick last Wednesday in the hallway outside the hearing room where Friedman’s bill to ban smoking in the workplace faced its first obstacle, the Assembly Labor Committee, where the bill died last year.

Friedman chairs the Labor Committee and the bill has endorsements from U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Coello Novello and the California Medical Assn., among the most powerful and richest of all lobbies. But Tony Najera, lobbyist for the American Lung Assn., counted 24 lobbyists working the hallway for the tobacco industry at the hearing.

Leading the opposition, Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), one of the lower house’s few smokers, shuttled from the hearing room to the hallway, where tobacco lobbyists filled the air with cigarette smoke and the lawmaker with strategy suggestions.

When three of Friedman’s allies left to tend to other business, Tucker tried to tack on six amendments, including one to prohibit employers from discriminating against smokers.

Friedman denounced the move as “absolutely hostile” and stalled to give his allies time to return.

Once they arrived, Tucker knew he had lost and left without voting. “The public perception that all smokers are worse than child molesters and one step above lepers is so prevalent that I don’t think anything can stop this,” Tucker said.

The measure cleared the committee on 7-1 vote. The no vote came from Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard), a freshman who opposed it because it would strip local government of its authority to regulate smoking indoors.

Even if Friedman’s bill passes the Legislature, it is unclear whether Wilson will sign it into law. The governor has not taken a position. However, his health director, Dr. Molly Coye, told lawmakers in her testimony that, based on the EPA report, there is “an airtight case” that secondhand smoke is a killer, responsible for 6,000 deaths in California a year.

“We look forward to having a position very soon,” Coye said.