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Case study methodology was used to investigate the tobacco industry's strategies to fight local tobacco control efforts in Duluth, Minn.
The industry opposed the clean indoor air ordinance indirectly through allies and front groups and directly in a referendum. Health groups failed to win a strong ordinance because they framed it as a youth issue rather than a workplace issue and failed to engage the industry's economic claims. Opponents' overexploitation of weaknesses in the ordinance allowed health advocates to construct a stronger version.
Health advocates should assume that the tobacco industry will oppose all local tobacco control measures indirectly, directly, or both. Clean indoor air ordinances should be framed as workplace safety issues. (Am J Public Health. 2003;93:1214-1221)
DURING THE 1990S, THE primary focus of tobacco control policymaking shifted from clean indoor air to issues surrounding youth smoking. In those areas that did focus on instituting measures involving clean indoor air, the tobacco industry used a recurrent set of strategies-front groups to promote smokers' rights or oppose government intrusion, economic arguments, litigation, and referendum campaigns-to oppose these measures1-5 while attempting to remain invisible in the public debate. Since 2000, the clean indoor air movement has reemerged around the United States and internationally, and the industry has responded with updated versions of their earlier strategies. The tobacco industry is highly motivated to oppose smoke-free workplaces because they lead to a 29% reduction in cigarette consumption rates.6 The battle over a local ordinance in Duluth, Minn, from 1999 to 2001 illustrates how the tobacco industry opposes local clean indoor air ordinances in the 21st century.
Duluth is a harbor community of 87 000 residents located in northeastern Minnesota, on Lake Superior.7 Its accommodation and food service sector generates a payroll of about $73 million per year and employs about 9000 people. Duluth was the second city in Minnesota to pass a clean indoor air ordinance; the first was the small town of Moose Lake, which had only 9 restaurants. In Duluth, the tobacco industry mobilized restaurant and bar owners to oppose the ordinance, encouraged the use of ventilation systems, predicted economic chaos, used task forces to delay enactment of the ordinance, and organized defiance of the law once it passed.
Originally, Duluth health groups accepted a...