In television commercials and court battles, smokers are portrayed as innocent victims of Big Tobacco, and Big Tobacco is portrayed as evil men in suits who’s scheme is to hook a new generation on a dangerous drug.

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

In television commercials and court battles, smokers are portrayed as innocent victims of Big Tobacco, and Big Tobacco is portrayed as evil men in suits who’s scheme is to hook a new generation on a dangerous drug.

If that’s the case, why does the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco choose to treat smokers as criminals rather than as victims who need help?

MPAAT, funded by the tobacco settlement won by the state of Minnesota, has directed an expensive effort in the last three years to get local cities and counties to pass ordinances that ban smoking in restaurants. But the goal set forth for the group when it was created after the tobacco settlement was to help smokers quit, not to engage in political activism or to force new laws on business owners.

Making matters worse, the anti-smoking campaigns have done more to divide communities than to keep people from smoking. And most of the proposed ordinances have not passed.

Common sense suggests that motivating and helping smokers to stop altogether is a more effective strategy than keeping them out of public places. The people most likely to be hurt by second-hand smoke, for instance, are family members, not somebody sitting across a restaurant. And banning public smoking does nothing to stop people from continuing the habit in their homes or cars.

The group spent $50,000 of its $202 million budget to pay for nicotine patches a few years ago, but that’s the farthest it has gone to help people kick the habit. Tom Pursell, the group’s lawyer, says all the money needn’t be spent to &uot;slap patches on people&uot; – an attitude that reveals more of a disdain for smokers than a willingness to help them.

The legal case against the tobacco companies was supposed to be about recovering the health-care costs brought on by smoking, and using the money to help people quit would be a reasonable way to cut that expense in the future. That’s exactly why the court order that created the group explicitly stated &uot;cessation&uot; programs as one of its responsibilities.

If the group truly wants to make a difference, it ought to shift its focus to efforts that help people instead of bullying them.