Political heat about smoking ban crusade is long overdue

January 2002-Minnesota-D.J. TICE

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch has again been inspired to question the activities of the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco.

Hatch recently asked MPAAT, a nonprofit organization funded with proceeds from Minnesota's tobacco lawsuit, to stop pushing restaurant smoking bans and focus instead on the group's "bread-and-butter" mission to help Minnesota smokers kick the habit.

It is high time Minnesota's elected leaders start scrutinizing the peculiar results of Minnesota's tobacco litigation. Billions of dollars are changing hands, ostensibly to redress the harm tobacco firms have done by pushing an addictive product. But the settlement has not directed any of the compensation to the people harmed.

Smokers, arguably Big Tobacco's most direct "victims," are actually paying for the settlement, through steeply higher cigarette prices forced by the litigation. Their money is largely buying them persecution, in the form of ban campaigns.

The billions of dollars from the lawsuit have gone not to taxpayers or insured people who supposedly subsidized smokers' higher health care costs, but to lawyers and the public health industry, especially the anti-smoking movement.

Hatch's predecessor, former Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, created MPAAT. As part of their settlement with the state, big tobacco firms are directly funding MPAAT's $202 million endowment. By design, the MPAAT board is dominated by people involved in anti-tobacco organizations.

Early on, MPAAT's focus shifted toward "increasing smoke-free environments'' and transforming "the social environment'' that tolerates smoking. MPAAT has made grants totaling $1.4 million to organizations that have pushed restaurant smoking bans in numerous Minnesota towns and cities, lobbying local officials and in several cases participating in referendum campaigns. A few of the ban efforts have been successful; all have been divisive.

MPAAT has also been funding a $5.5 million advertising campaign, about half of which, according to an MPAAT spokesperson, is devoted to warning of the dangers of secondhand smoke -- at least indirectly advancing the cause of smoking bans.

Last fall, the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune published front-page stories about MPAAT's role in promoting smoking bans. A rash of complaints to Attorney General Hatch has followed. Last week, Hatch asked MPAAT to voluntarily reconsider its priorities. The organization is pondering its response. The group had been poised to make more ban-related grants as soon as today.

This wasn't the first time Hatch voiced concerns about MPAAT. Soon after taking office in 1999, he complained to MPAAT's attorney, Tom Pursell, formerly a top Humphrey aide, about excessively close relations between the attorney general's office and the nonprofit. The attorney general regulates nonprofit organizations.

In August 2000, Hatch wrote to MPAAT raising questions about the group's habit of making grants to organizations that employ its board members.

In neither case did Hatch pursue his concerns any further. Hatch's request that MPAAT "get out of the political business" is the most public intervention in MPAAT's affairs by the outspoken attorney general, who has rarely been shy about using the "bully pulpit" of his office to criticize businesses and organizations.

Is MPAAT's promotion of bans a violation of its court-ordered mission? MPAAT officials and supporters have long argued that smoking restrictions are simply an excellent way of inspiring smokers to quit.

However, MPAAT's court-approved articles of incorporation contain this limitation: "No substantial part of the activities of the corporation shall constitute the carrying on of propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation, or initiative or referendum before the public..."

Lawyer Pursell says this passage is routine "boilerplate" language for a nonprofit organization, and that MPAAT's political activities are not large enough to represent a conflict.

This is characteristic of the way MPAAT has brushed aside most criticism, including Hatch's earlier complaints. Fact is, it's not certain policymakers can alter MPAAT's strategies. From the beginning, MPAAT's founders made it clear that the reason for creating the private organization was to put anti-smoking programs safely beyond the reach of meddling public officials.

But if politicking for smoking bans is a questionable use of settlement proceeds, policymakers should note that MPAAT isn't alone. The Minnesota Health Department is administering an anti-tobacco endowment that is more than twice as large as MPAAT's war chest -- nearly $500 million. That fund is entirely under the Legislature's control.

Promotion of smoking bans is among the activities of both local and statewide initiatives funded by the Health Department. Endowment director Mary Sheehan says it would be impossible to specify how much of endowment-backed spending is devoted to promoting smoke-free environments. But it is commonly listed among the goals of fund recipients

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the state's co-plaintiff in the tobacco lawsuit, is also planning to use settlement proceeds to "provide communities working on smoke-free policies with needed resources..." Blue Cross is currently seeking the Commerce Department's approval to begin spending its proceeds. An earlier plan was rejected by Commerce, partly because anti-smoking efforts in that plan seemed to duplicate MPAAT and Health Department programs.

In short, if policymakers have come to wonder whether large sums of tobacco settlement money ought to be spent advancing one side of a polarizing policy agenda, they have a number of opportunities to slow the campaign down.

Write Tice at [email protected]

or at the Pioneer Press, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101.