Clearing the Air

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8

Chapter 3: The 2006 Elections
A monumental event in the fight for smokefree air occurred prior to the 2006 elections, when U. S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona issued his landmark report The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke. The report proved that there is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure and stated that the only way to protect people from the risks associated with secondhand smoke is to eliminate smoking indoors. Two times before, in 1966 and 1986, the surgeon general issued a report on tobacco. In every generation, the evidence became more overwhelming on the dangers of tobacco. The 2006 report, in essence, put an end to the debate over the dangers of secondhand smoke. The surgeon general’s report became a rallying cry around the country and a large focus of a future economic impact study the Campaign planned to prepare on the issue.

Nonprofit organizations are prohibited by the Internal Revenue Service from participating directly in political campaigns. That meant we could encourage our advocates to ask candidates their position on smokefree air, but we could not endorse candidates or in any other way engage in the electoral process. Fortunately for us, however, the news media were interested in this issue and repeatedly posed the question in gubernatorial debates. Governor Jennifer Granholm and Republican nominee Dick DeVos were asked time and time again about their position on the proposed smokefree law. While this media attention did not cause the legislature to act before sine die — the end of the 2005-06 legislative session — it increased interest in the Campaign and boosted our number of advocates.

A series of events that we didn’t realize at the time would have such a large impact on our future was the elections that took place in Ohio, Arizona and Nevada that November. Three counterparts to Michigan’s Campaign for Smokefree Air in those states went to the ballot. Until this point in time, only Florida and Washington had gone to the ballot. Big Tobacco — funded primarily by Reynolds Tobacco (RJR) — decided to fight at the ballot in those three states by putting up competing ballot measures. RJR and its allies spent in excess of $30 million in all three states. By contrast, the Ohio Smokefree Campaign spent under $4 million.

Big Tobacco’s strategy in those states was simple: create a “smokeless” campaign to compete with the “smokefree” campaign. In Ohio, Issue 5 was “smokefree” and Issue 4 was “smokeless.” Issue 4 still banned smoking in certain areas; it just created a laundry list of exemptions. Ohio voters didn’t fall for the trap. Issue 5, the smokefree question, passed by a vote of 58 percent to 42 percent and competing Issue 4 lost by a vote of 64 percent to 36 percent. The numbers were nearly identical in both Arizona and Nevada. What these elections showed us in Michigan was the length, and dollar amount, our opponents would go to in efforts to prevent smokefree policies from taking shape. It also prepared us that we would need to raise as much as $10 million for a successful ballot campaign in Michigan should we ever decide to go down that path.

The November elections passed, followed by the traditional lame-duck session lasting until the end of the year. Lame duck is often the best time to pass controversial legislation that can’t win approval during the regular session, because lawmakers — chiefly those leaving the legislature — are more open to voting how they want rather than how they believe they must vote to win re-election. An unusual occurrence in this lame duck was the number of bills amending the public health code that were sitting on the Senate floor awaiting final action. This is usually a recipe for mischief or disaster. New and possibly unnecessary hospitals are literally built under these circumstances. This year, perhaps, smokefree air could take similar advantage to win approval. Sen. Basham was ready, willing and prepared to attach a smokefree amendment to every public health code proposal.

It was a good strategy, but went nowhere because public health code bills came to a screeching halt on the Senate floor when leadership caught wind of our plans. Sen. Sikkema was not going to hold a vote on any Basham amendment, so he refused to move any public health code bills.

Softening that setback for us was word that came late on the final evening of the session. Sen. Basham received a commitment from the governor that she would include a plea for the legislature to pass a smoking ban in her next State of the State address.

Chapter 4: Hope for 2007
Although we had played through a scenario of the Democrats taking control of one of the chambers in the 2006 elections, it was never really something we thought would happen. But it did, as the Democrats seized control of the House, going from a 52-58 minority to a 58-52 majority. As a result, we started the 2007 legislative session with more hope and optimism than we had to date. With the successful ballot campaigns in Ohio, Nevada and Arizona that same fall, there were now 26 states with smokefree air laws, and our coalition had grown to more than 200 organizations.

Momentum was on our side, with national pressure growing. In three short years, the country had witnessed nearly 20 more states become smokefree and, at that point, half of the U.S. population was living in a community protected from exposure to secondhand smoke.

Following the intense race for a Democratic speaker, Andy Dillon emerged victorious, and Rep. Andy Meisner, who lost the close race for the leadership position, was given chairmanship of the powerful House Commerce Committee. Rep. Meisner had not really been on our radar previously. But the new chairman shocked us in our first meeting when he said we “weren’t asking for enough” in our bills. He was prepared to go beyond all workplaces and take up the issues of smoking in cars with kids present, smoking at public beaches and any other smokefree policy adopted or considered by another state.

Rep. Meisner urged us to write a stronger bill and said he wanted to run it through his committee and really showcase the issue. We couldn’t have been more surprised and pleased. While we didn’t end up adding all his additional items, we worked with him throughout the early spring. Our campaign was able to plan a series of committee meetings in which we brought in cancer survivors, those whose health was affected by secondhand smoke, restaurant owners who supported the legislation and numerous others. Rep. Meisner also was crucial in convincing other House Democrats to support the legislation and helped bring a groundswell of support within his caucus, including some support from Speaker Dillon.

Another bonus was some public support from the governor. Although our issue had popped up a few times during the campaign debates between Granholm and DeVos, it had never been a very public issue for the her. However, during her fifth State of the State address, in February, Granholm asked Michigan lawmakers to enact smokefree workplace legislation, as she had told Sen. Basham she would.

Our original two bills had died along with all the other unsuccessful legislation at the end of the 2005-06 session, which meant we had to introduce them again in the new session. Our three returning sponsors, Sens. Basham and George and Rep. Clack, each introduced legislation early in the year.

Nonsmoking sections
By spring we were able to finally wrap up a research and media project that our campaign had been working on for nearly two years — an air quality test of Michigan restaurants and bars. Our air quality tour, made possible by the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), which agreed to crunch the volumes of data for us, allowed us to test smoking and nonsmoking sections of the same establishment and prove that nonsmoking sections were not protecting patrons or employees from secondhand smoke. We wanted to shoot down the argument that by choosing the nonsmoking section, customers were protected from secondhand smoke. To us, nonsmoking sections were as silly as saying you could have non-peeing sections of swimming pools. But we needed the data to prove it.

From October 2005 to April 2006, the air quality of 90 bars and restaurants had been measured in eight Michigan cities: Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Novi and Saginaw. Each location was measured using the TSI SidePak AM510 Personal Aerosol Monitor, which MDCH had helped us obtain. Looking at the high level of fine particle air pollution in nonsmoking sections also proved that restaurant workers are exposed to toxins every day regardless of whether they work in the smoking or nonsmoking sections.

We received significant media coverage of the study, and we credited it with also helping lawmakers understand that restaurant and bars were places of employment, too — and that the workers there deserved the same protection that workers in hospitals, offices and factories deserved under our legislation. Secondhand smoke exposure at work causes bar and restaurant employees to be 50 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than the general population. It also will cause 12,000 otherwise healthy nonsmokers to die from some form of cancer, 3,000 specifically to lung cancer.

States with part-time legislatures rushed to enact smokefree legislation after the success of the three ballot measures. We watched as six more states passed laws going smokefree, bringing the total in the U.S. to 32.

First big victory
By June, Rep. Meisner had received enough support from his colleagues to start hearings on our House bill. Throughout June and into late July, he held a series of hearings that allowed us to bring in a broad range of supporters on HB 4163, Rep. Clack’s bill, including supporters like Dr. Kenneth Warner, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, Dr. Greg Holzman, chief medical officer for MDCH, various associations, heads of the major health groups and three passionate advocates who answered our call for help time after time.

Passionate advocate one was Dr. Ron Davis, then president of the American Medical Association (and the man we eventually had the law named for, following his death from pancreatic cancer during our campaign). He testified with great emotion about the medical effects of secondhand smoke on everyone in Michigan and the healthcare costs associated with it. Passionate advocate two was Daniel Haberman, owner of the bosco bar and lounge in Ferndale. He was our most outspoken bar owner and helped lawmakers understand that outlawing smoking was no more intrusive than the long list of health code policies he already had to adhere to, and that many bar and restaurant owners in Michigan wanted this bill to create a level playing field.

By far, the most moving testimony came from passionate advocate three, Carrie Klein, a lawyer from Kalamazoo. Carrie brought a picture of her sister to display at the witness stand. She started her testimony by expressing disappointment that she could not bring her sister with her to testify at the hearing. Her sister, a former Michigan newspaper reporter (who had covered her share of smoky government meetings in her stint as a Capitol reporter for Booth Newspapers), died due to cancer caused by secondhand smoke and had never smoked. There were few dry eyes in the committee room after Carrie was through giving her testimony.

It was also at this time that a new partner stepped up internally in the campaign with new funding, ideas and intensity. It was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had developed and was marketing a smoking cessation drug. Additional funding from the pharmaceutical company allowed our campaign to use some creative approaches to messaging our campaign, including podcasts and video vignettes. We were able to capture the passion of our advocates who testified and use their presentations repeatedly through social media channels.

On July 27 our campaign scored its first major victory when House Bill 4163 was reported from the House Commerce Committee, mostly along party lines, 12-4. Most of the attempts by Republicans to weaken the bill were defeated, and the bill emerged with exemptions for only cigar bars and tobacco shops. The Detroit members of the committee voted “yes” with the expectation there would be further discussion on the House floor about how to address the unique issue of the Detroit casinos and their competition from tribal casinos, which would not be subject to a state-imposed smoking ban.

Our opponents felt confident that we would get no further, that we had emerged from committee due only to Rep. Meisner’s influence, but that Speaker Dillon wasn’t going to give us the same opportunity.

We turned up the heat immediately on our grassroots advocates to focus on all House members. What we had not anticipated, however, was the budget fiasco and Michigan Business Tax debate that dominated the fall of 2007. Any momentum we had established in the spring and summer of the year came to halt.

While the legislative leadership was focused on the budget (a “focus” that lasted past the September 30 adoption deadline and resulted in a brief shutdown of state government), we focused on coffee. Our grassroots advocates took to the House districts and met with every House member who was not a solid “yes” already. We also met with many who voted “no,” looking to change votes. Based on our experience in the House Commerce Committee, where a number of members changed their minds after receiving information from constituents, we decided to continue to use our “People Power.”

After the budget was finally resolved in October, we started to gain more traction with House members. We made a push with lawmakers based on the argument that after the debacle of the government shutdown, the legislature needed to pass a bill popular with the voters — smokefree air. On December 5, slipping through on the skin of our teeth, HB 4163 squeaked by the House, 56-46, a one-vote majority. In the lengthy debate that had ensued that day, our campaign fought off exemptions for every organization that feared the bill — bowling alleys, private clubs, hookah bars, restaurants, bars, bars that only serve adults, restaurants that would stop serving kids after a magical hour…the list went on and on. Reps. Meisner and Clack were indispensable in their leadership and their ability to fight off exemptions and amendments from both sides of the aisle. In the end, we emerged with a strong bill that added exemptions for the Detroit casinos, race tracks and charity (read: Democratic) bingo.

We finished the year on an emotional high from our success, and the clarity of needing to intensify our efforts only on the Senate. Another round of newspaper editorials weighed in on why Michigan needed to finally get its act together and pass this issue once and for all. The win also helped us internally with those in our campaign who wanted to make 2008 the year we would go to the ballot. Having the success of moving through one chamber under our belt, we were able to advocate successfully for keeping on the legislative track. We were finally moving in the direction we wanted, and it was important to stay focused — focused on the GOP Senate, a larger hurdle than the House.

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapters 5 | Chapters 6, 7, & 8