The conviction was overturned.In response, the city adopted an amendment by a 6-1 vote to the existing ordinance on January 28, 1980, removing restaurants entirely from the ordinance.In the meantime, the tobacco industry used the Alford decision as a tool to block other localities’ efforts to institute smoking controls. In remarks in 1980 to the Tobacco College, a Tobacco Institute orientation program for new employees of Tobacco Institute member companies, John P. Rupp, an attorney from Covington & Burlington , described Alford as a “gratifying” but narrow holding, useful for making the case that such ordinances will be resisted in judicial interpretations. However, Rupp also noted that the tobacco industry was shying away from using legal process to further their purposes because neither Alford nor similar decisions in other states stood “for the general, and quite useful, proposition that public smoking restrictions generally are invalid – nor do they suggest a generally applicable basis for challenging public smoking restrictions.” For these reasons, he stated, “we generally have concentrated our efforts … on attempting to influence the legislative process – rather than on mounting legal challenges to legislative restrictions adopted over our opposition.” In other words, Alford represented a rhetorical tool to influence legislative process rather than the basis of a broad strategy of proactive legal challenges.Tobacco control advocates attempted to portray the law as a narrow holding that only applied to the facts of the particular case of presented in Alford, a position that the industry, as noted above, took internally.
Action on Smoking and Health ,mobile shelving unit a national organization based in Washington DC that specialized in legal issues around smoking, presented the Alford case in a positive light in its November 1979 newsletter, noting that it left the ordinance intact and, facially, only required a different enforcement mechanism.The newsletter mentioned that Newport News’ city attorney had informed ASH that the city council would consider amending the enforcement scheme to comply with Alford in a soon-to-be-conducted city council meeting. Furthermore, a close reading of the Alford holding actually supported the notion that no-smoking areas were ineffective if secondhand smoke would still be ambient in the area, affecting nonsmokers. Despite this hopeful spin on events, as noted above, Newport News’ city council decided to remove restaurants altogether rather than change their enforcement scheme.Early in 1980, the city of Falls Church considered an ordinance sponsored by city council member Robert L. Hubbell that sought to restrict smoking in many public places, including retail stores, school buildings, and healthcare facilities. The ordinance did not include restaurants, and also allowed for the formation of smoking areas. It also required the posting of signs in any building where smoking was prohibited. The penalty for violation was $25.The Tobacco Action Network was alerted to the bill, and sent out an “Action Request” for TAN members who lived or work in the area to attend the hearing on the ordinance. The Falls Church City Council met on February 25 and TAN appeared with a contingent of seven Lorillard, one Liggett, and two Tobacco Institute representatives.
One of the speakers for the Tobacco Institute was Robert Hobson, who spoke at length about several objections to the ordinance, and, despite Rupp’s caution that Alford was not generally applicable, argued that the Alford decision applied to “similar” ordinances like Falls Church’s, making the Falls Church ordinance an unconstitutional exercise of the city’s police power. After a long discussion, the City Council defeated the ordinance.The 1977 Falls Church ordinance debate was an illustration of the use of the Alford holding by the tobacco industry as a measure to frustrate the implementation of local ordinances, as it had in Newport News two years earlier.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were two main tobacco control organizations in Virginia promoting clean indoor air laws. The first was the Inter agency Council on Tobacco OR Health , which was comprised of the local chapters of the national voluntary health organizations: the American Heart Association , the American Lung Association , and the American Cancer Society . Other groups, including the Virginia Nurses’ Association and the Virginia Medical Society, as well as local and regional health groups, were at times associated with this coalition. The structure of the Inter agency Council and level of involvement of its constituent groups varied from year to year as the group advocated for clean indoor air legislation and local smoking restrictions. The second organization involved in tobacco control was the Virginia Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public , which had been advocating for clean indoor air laws since their founding in late 1985. GASP was an all-volunteer group, with very limited funding.While it had many members, for years the predominant face of GASP was Anne Morrow Donley.
Other important GASP volunteers included Hilton Oliver, Lynne Cooper, Dorothy Jones, Kevin R. Cooper, M.D., Georgie Myers, and Arthur Franklin Crisp.Early on, GASP was a part of the Inter agency Council. However, GASP was in favor of more comprehensive tobacco control laws than the other members of the Inter agency Council were comfortable supporting. Disagreements between the two groups led to a division among tobacco control advocates in Virginia. In general, the ALA, ACS, and AHA were in favor of tobacco control legislation, but were concerned that supporting tobacco control measures as comprehensive as those that GASP promoted might offend their donor base. Particularly, they worried that a large employer, like Philip Morris, would instruct their employees to stop contributing to the organizations if they took an anti-industry stance as “radical” as GASP’s. Kevin Cooper, the ALA representative on the Tri-Agency Council, recalled in 2009 that AHA was the least enthusiastic of the three health voluntary organizations about supporting strong clean indoor air legislation, primarily because of the threat of a tobacco industry boycott on donations.As a result, in the late 1980s the large voluntary health agencies decided to exclude GASP from their decision-making structure and changed their name to reflect the change, becoming the Tri-Agency Council, with ALA, ACS, and AHA as the lead organizations.GASP still attended some meetings, but were not invited to ones that directed the Council’s legislative strategy.In 1990, the Tri-Agency council formed a coalition called Virginians for Clean Indoor Air , to recruit other organizations to oppose preemption bills and to sponsor Tri-Agency supported bills . This coalition did not include GASP. Despite being excluded from the Tri-Agency Council and from the VCIA, GASP played a significant role in Virginia tobacco control, especially from 1988 to 1990 when the bills that would become the Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act were being considered. GASP was not as directly involved in the lobbying effort as the large health groups,vertical drying rack due to the fact that GASP could not afford to pay a contract lobbyist.Instead, GASP relied on two volunteer lobbyists: Anne Donley and Lynne Cooper . GASP functioned mainly as an organization that was willing to adopt positions supporting laws that were stronger than the “mainstream” voluntary health organizations. GASP also brought public opinion to bear on issues of clean indoor air by aggressively seeking headlines and engaging in a media “war.”Kevin Cooper felt that GASP, by pushing for stronger smoking restrictions than the Tri-Agency Council would support, helped to make the Tri-Agency’s position on the issue seem more moderate by comparison.
Before and during the passage of the VICAA, Sen. Thomas Michie and Del. Cohen , were the most important advocates for tobacco control legislation. They tended to introduce versions of the same bill into both houses and worked together to introduce many comprehensive clean indoor air bills. They were instrumental in the passage of the VICAA in 1990 and worked to strengthen the bill through amendments after it passed in 1990. In late 1985, before GASP was officially formed, Anne Donley worked with Delegate Bernard S. Cohen on HB 1092, which sought to authorize state agencies to restrict smoking in public areas of agency-occupied buildings.Donley recruited friends, many of whom later became official GASP volunteers, and called legislators to promote Cohen’s bill.Cohen eventually withdrew the bill after being misinformed that agencies already had the power to restrict smoking without new legislation.Donley’s assistance combined with the frustration of unnecessarily withdrawing HB 1092 inspired Cohen to continue pushing for clean indoor air legislation.Around 1985, Philip Morris initiated an unofficial boycott of Virginia businesses and organizations that had gone smoke free, as part of an attempt to promote their agenda of “accommodation” and to protest the notion of compulsory smoking restrictions.GASP had uncovered evidence of this soon after their formation. In addition, in 1985 the Corporate Affairs Department of Philip Morris took out an advertisement called “Oops, Wrong Number” in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that attacked the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone company for adopting a clean indoor air policy for their 43,000 employees .Donley recalled in a 2009 interview that evidence of the boycott combined with the incendiary nature of the “Oops” ad helped solidify Cohen’s support for legislation that GASP sought to introduce.After GASP formed in 1986, Donley sought partners in Virginia to promote clean indoor air legislation. Initially, Donley approached the American Lung Association, which had assisted the GASP program in South Carolina with funding and office space since 1973.However, the Virginia Lung Association decided not to associate with Virginia’s GASP. Donley surmised that this was because of a falling out that had occurred between the Florida chapter of GASP and the local affiliate of the American Cancer Society, leading the large national voluntary health organizations wary of affiliating with “radical” tobacco control groups like GASP.GASP was active before the 1988 legislative session when GASP planned to have a legislative sponsor introduce their favored legislation. Donley held colorful press conferences that generated large press attendance, which became a strength of GASP’s efforts.GASP conducted two surveys of restaurants in the Richmond area in order to publish a guide for smoke-free dining.81 GASP also recruited people to call and write letters to Richmond-area businesses, legislators, newspapers, call-in radio shows and local cable TV shows to generate interest in clean indoor air legislation.On January 19, 1988, Del. Cohen and Senator Thomas J. Michie, introduced the initial version of the Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act as HB 430 and SB 130, respectively, with the support of GASP.GASP had tried to involve the Virginia chapters of the American Lung Association, American Heart Association and American Cancer Society, but they declined to support either bill.81 These bills had identical language that would have required nonsmoking areas in public places, which included any enclosed indoor area used by the general public such as restaurants, grocery stores, and auditoriums as well as government buildings. The bills exempted bars and partial exemptions for single-room establishments . Advocates introduced identical language in both houses to ensure that at least one bill would pass during Virginia’s short legislative session, a common practice in Virginia and elsewhere.Neither bill included preemptive language. The tobacco industry began to support preemptive tobacco control laws in the mid-1980s because it recognized that the industry is weaker at the local level than at a state level and, conversely health groups are stronger.The industry used these preemptive state laws to cut off the ability of localities to pass strong clean indoor air ordinances. There are two general types of preemption: explicit preemption, in which the preemptive language is written clearly in the law, and implied preemption, in which a measure adopted by the state legislature could be argued in the courts to “occupy the field” in question and therefore prevent local regulation.The introduction of the two bills generated significant press in Virginia after Donley held a GASP press conference to publicize the two bills. In a 2009 interview, Donley recalled that the press response was “tremendous,” in part due to GASP’s successful news conference in 1986, and the simple fact that a strong comprehensive statewide clean indoor air bill was being introduced in a tobacco-growing state.GASP capitalized on the media attention by continuing to utilize volunteers to make calls and write letters.The bills, however, also promoted the use of ventilation and smoking rooms to minimize the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. Sen. Michie and Del. Cohen were both motivated by the 1986 Surgeon General’s report, which identified secondhand smoke as a cause of cancer and respiratory problems in children.