No ifs, ands, or butts, Canada showed how to beat the tobacco lobby. American antismoking groups, take note.

• Author: Mintz, Morton

NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTTS

On the morning of January 25, 1988, an extraordinary advertisement filled page three of Canada's most influential newspaper, The Globe and Mail. The ad featured two friends who weren't anxious to have their friendship advertised: Brian Mulroney, the prime minister, and William H. Neville, the newly appointed president of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council.

The headline was big and black: HOW MANY THOUSANDS OF CANADIANS WILL DIE FROM TOBACCO INDUSTRY PRODUCTS MAY BE IN THE HANDS OF THESE TWO MEN. Below the headline were photos of Mulroney and Neville, the best-connected lobbyist in Ottawa. Neville had been in charge of setting up Mulroney's office when he became prime minister. He'd also been a major strategist for Mulroney's Conservative party and chief of staff for a former Conservative prime minister.

The ad ran only hours before a House of Commons committee dominated by Mulroney's Conservatives, would begin to mark up a bill that would revolutionize Canada's system for warning about tobacco hazards, while setting stunning global precedents (see "It's the Law," p. 35, for the key provisions). For example, the Tobacco Products Control Act would outlaw cigarette advertising and promotion in new newspapers and magazines, starting on January 1, 1989.

The industry had reason to be concernred. If parliament--first Commons, then the Senate--were to enact the Tobacco Products Control Act and the complementary Non-smokers' Rights Act, which would impose severe new restrictions on smoking. Canada would become the world's pacesetter for antitobacco laws.

Enactment would "propel companion U.S. legislation forward," former U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Michael Pertschuk testified in Canada's Parliament. Tobacco lobbyist Neville agreed. "There is no question that the health lobby is international, well coordinated and networked, and therefore, if [the legislation] passes, it is going to be encouragement for similar forces in other jurisdictions," he said. In short, if Canada can virtually ban cigarette and advertising, so can we. But the Canadian experience shows that to do so, American anti-smoking groups must shift their interests and sharpen their tactics.

The Mulroney ad had been created in 36 hours by C. Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-smokers' Rights Association (NSRA), and was known as his "master stroke." The NSRA and the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), which had become the NSRA's closest ally, published it two days after Mahood finished it. It was the perfect moment. The ad devastated Neville's influence by personalizing the tobacco lobby and making whatever success it might have politically damaging to Mulroney. It "made that lobbyist so famous [that] the government could not be seen giving in to him," says Ottawa lawyer David H. Hill, past national vice-president of the CCS. In all but destroying Neville's credibility, the ad also all but destroyed the industry's hopes. The committee approved the draft of the Tobacco Products Control Act the same day. Six months later Parliament passed both bills.

You probably haven't heard the Canadian story, because the U.S. press missed it. The Mulroney-Neville ad was just one of dozens of aggressive, creative strikes in Canada against the immensely rich and powerful tobacco industry. For all their impact in Canada, their most important consequence is the strong message they send to Americans, particularly at a time when the industry is increasingly on the defensive here: voluntary health associations can become the David that fells the tobacco Goliath.

Thy RODDS and thy staff

The key to the success of the Canadian antismoking campaign was the recognition of the hopelessness of the traditional strategies, such as trying to fight the plague of tobacco-induced diseases with sweet reason, gentle persuasion, and endless fund-arusing for biological research.

Instead, the Canadian antitobacco forces played adroit, tenacious hardball: using advertising and public relations to win the support of the man in the street and lobbying to make allies of the movers and shakers--government officials, legislators, publishers, and popular artists. "Generally, every single strategic move that was made by the tobacco industry was countered in similar terms by the health lobby," says Globe and Mail Parliament reporter Graham Fraser. "There were times it was almost unnerving, the sheer intensity of the lobbying."

Exquisite timing was decesive in another NSRA ambush. It began when Mahood asked McCarthy & McCarthy, probably Canada's most prestigious law firm, to answer two questions, assuming that cigarettes are lethal and addictive: Does Canadian tort or common law impose on tobacco companies and executives the duty to warn of hazards that are or should be known to them? And if such a duty is imposed, could they be held criminally negligent for failing to honor it?

The firm's David Doherty, former Crown counsel for the Province of Ontario, delivered the opinion in April 1987, and it was a time bomb: charges of criminal negligence could indeed be filed against the tobacco executives. Again Mahood waited for the perfect moment to detonate it in The globe and Mail, this time in the news columns. The moment came nine months later--the day in January 1988 when tobacco executives were making their case against the Tobacco Products Control Act before the House of Commons committee.

Meanwhile, when the industry fathered "smokers" rights" groups, antitobacco forces fathered RODDS (Relatives of Dead and Dying Smokers). The goal was, in Mahood's words, "to attach an air of criminality to tobacco industry executives and their dishonest, callous marketing practices." News stories blossomed with headlines such as JAIL TOBACCO BOSSES, GROUP SAYS.

"Both sides were waging a war for public opinion, and the NSRA, which pioneered in this area, taught the rest of the health lobby an important lesson about using the media," CCS CEO Douglas Barr said in narrating "Lobbying for Lives," a compelling TV documentary. The lesson: "Politicians are sure to hear...