Eyes on the lies; how black leaders and cigarette companies have turned indoor smoking into a civil rights issue.

• Author: Milligan, Susan
• Position: Includes related article on cigarette promotion

EYES ON THE LIES

Scott Stapf sat before the New York CityCouncil in January and warned of an impending problem of massive racial discrimination against black New Yorkers. Legislation the council was considering, he said, "would encourage discriminatory enforcement at the expense of the city's minority communities.' The council members looked skeptical but Stapf pushed on, pointing out that the legislation would affect thousands of working blacks in New York and that "minority groups see them as a frighteningly familiar discriminatory element.'

This civil rights worker was none other thanthe assistant to the president of the Tobacco Institute, the lobbying arm of the tobacco industry. The "discriminatory' legislation he was so ardently opposing was a proposed ban on indoor smoking in New York City. How is this an issue of racial discrimination? The bill, in addition to requiring large restaurants to create nonsmoking sections, prohibits employees from smoking in most open office areas, whether in government departments or private businesses. So the tobacco lobby argues that the office provision is discriminatory because clerical-type jobs are held largely by minorities. They correctly note that white male executives can puff away in their private offices but the black clerical staff, being in the open areas covered by the smoking ban, must put out their cigarettes. Therefore, the "rights' of blacks are being disproportionately affected.

Black leaders have come to the Tobacco Institute'sside, lobbying against the city council legislation and assailing a New York State Public Health Council ruling--now being challenged in the courts--that implemented the indoor smoking ban. The Institute assembled an impressive list of local minority leaders to join the "Committee for Common Courtesy,' a coalition opposing the ban. The group included Hazel Dukes, president of the New York State branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Wilbert Tatum, the outspoken editor of The Amsterdam News, the city's leading black weekly; Nat Singleton, executive director of the Association of Minority Enterprises; Ray Hostock, president of the Caribbean-American Chamber of Commerce; Jewel Jackson McCabe, president of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women; and James Hargrove, president of the National Black Police Association.

In testimony before the Council's Health Committeein January, the Institute's lobbyists also trotted out their...