Despite the decreasing importance of domestic tobacco farming to the tobacco industry, tobacco growers represented an important source of legitimacy for the tobacco manufacturers’ political goals. Therefore, despite the increasing divergence between the two groups, maintaining a seemingly close relationship was beneficial to the tobacco companies because, as one Philip Morris representative put it in 1990, “local growers have more credibility in legislatures than do hired guns.”The importance of the relationship also extended outside of merely legitimizing their lobbying efforts, resonating in the public sphere as an important public relations tool. Thus it was in the tobacco industry’s best interest to maintain an appearance of commonality with tobacco growers, despite the underlying tensions over quotas. In the late 1990s, several proposals circulated in the federal government to eliminate the quota system, all of which would have included a “quota buyout” to compensate existing quota holders . Tobacco manufacturers preferred to maintain the quota and price support systems, because the system gave them considerable flexibility and control over the market with the fall back of the price support system for growers. Manufacturers argued that the cost of eliminating the program and compensating quota holders would have exceeded the amount gained for manufacturers by lower prices achieved without a price support system. The disparate positions of growers and manufacturers over the regulation of the tobacco market was the root of a series of conflicts between 1997 and 2004 which distanced tobacco companies from their traditional grower allies.The changing attitudes of tobacco growers in Virginia did result in the formation of the Southern Communities Tobacco Project ,racking company a dialogue between farmers and tobacco control advocates intended to find common ground.
This dialogue led to an understanding between farmers and advocates that MSA money would be spent both on tobacco community revitalization and restrictions on youth access to tobacco. At the same time, health groups nationwide began to push for the inclusion of tobacco within the regulatory purview of the federal Food and Drug Administration . Health groups, particularly the Washington DC-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the voluntary health organizations leveraged the distance between tobacco growers and tobacco manufacturers over a quota buyout to garner growers’ support for FDA regulation of tobacco products in exchange for support of a quota buyout. Building tobacco control alliances with growers increased the impression among tobacco growers that their interests were divergent from those of manufacturers. Public health groups had already begun a partnership with tobacco growers at the urging of President Bill Clinton to find ways to limit smoking while protecting tobacco producing communities, resulting in the March 1998 Core Principles document to that effect signed by prominent grower and public health organizations.The first serious consideration of a tobacco quota buyout took place within the context of the 1997 proposed “global tobacco settlement” of multi-state lawsuits against the tobacco companies seeking compensation for Medicaid expenditures of tobacco-related illnesses. This “global tobacco settlement” took the form of the U.S. Senate’s consideration of the controversial “McCain bill,” which was eventually defeated, setting the foundation for the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998. The McCain bill would have included both FDA regulation of tobacco and a quota buyout plan as well as de facto immunity from future lawsuits for the manufacturers. Tobacco companies secured the support of many tobacco growing organizations to join them in opposing the McCain bill and its quota buyout provisions by promising a $28 billion payout to growers under a separate settlement.
The McCain bill failed to pass and was replaced by the private Master Settlement Agreement , which included a separate settlement between manufacturers and tobacco growers, known as Phase II, to compensate growers for potential loss of revenue associated with the MSA’s provisions. However, under the MSA’s Phase II payments to tobacco growers, the growing community was to receive only $5.2 billion, not the promised $28 billion. This failure by tobacco manufacturers to stand by their agreement with growers led to the first major break of the manufacturer-grower organization alliance. In December 1999, tobacco farmers filed a classaction lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers, DeLoach vs. Philip Morris, alleging that the tobacco companies misled farmers when they encouraged them to oppose the removal of the quota system and accused manufacturers of rigging the federal price support system to keep prices low. This suit was settled by Philip Morris and other major tobacco companies in 2003 and by RJR in 2004, after 175,000 tobacco farmers had joined the suit, providing approximately $254 million to those growers .In March 2000, Philip Morris exacerbated existing tensions with growers by announcing that it had developed a direct contract system for purchasing burley tobacco, under which they would arrange to buy a set amount of tobacco from a specific grower at a set price, circumventing the Tobacco Price Support Program by setting the price and purchasing the tobacco prior to the tobacco reaching federally-controlled auctions. The direct contract system provided little protection and high risks for farmers compared with the federal tobacco program, and the expansion of this program would undermine the quota and price support system further by manipulating both supply and demand outside the system. Philip Morris began executing this system in 2000 over opposition by most growers and grower organizations. It was not until 2004 that a bill ending the federal tobacco program made significant headway.
House of Representatives in early 2004, generating a significant push by public health advocates partnering with tobacco growers to pass a buyout bill that would include FDA regulation of tobacco as well as a quota buyout. The final version of the federal tobacco quota buyout passed in October 2004 and dismantled the 70-year-old price support, tobacco quota and allotment system. In exchange, quota holders received $10 per pound of their 2002 quota, with $7 to quota holders and $3 to growers if the allotment had been leased. This amounted to a total $10.1 billion buyout.The buyout resulted in a shift to fewer, larger tobacco farms and therefore fewer individual growers directly engaged in tobacco growing. It also led tobacco grower organizations to actively oppose the tobacco industry’s lobbying force and instead partner with public health groups over a tobacco control measure, FDA regulation. Both of these factors had a tangible effect on tobacco growers’ opinions of tobacco control and of the tobacco companies. Research on North Carolina tobacco growers’ attitudes towards tobacco control, public health and tobacco manufacturers quantified this shift. It showed that tobacco farmers’ perceived public health and tobacco control efforts as 7.5 times more threatening in 1997 as in 2005, that tobacco farmers decreasingly associated tobacco companies’ interests with their own and that they increasingly perceived risk from foreign tobacco production. Additionally, a 2005 survey of North Carolina tobacco growers and ex-tobacco growers indicated that 80 percent would be neutral or actively support comprehensive tobacco-free school policies.Nationwide and in Virginia, the net effect on farmers was that many immediately stopped producing tobacco. Moreover, the remaining production was consolidated on fewer but larger farms. Finally, some Virginia production of flue-cured tobacco,tierer rack free from the geographical constraints of the quota system, moved to regions with lower production costs such as North Carolina.As far as impact on tobacco control advocacy, the MSA’s quota buyout provisions gave the tobacco companies an excuse to divert significant funds away from tobacco control measures and into tobacco community revitalization, which was intended by the tobacco industry to placate tobacco farming interests. In Virginia the tobacco farming organizations did not publically break lockstep with the tobacco industry and continued to support industry tactics to oppose tobacco control efforts. For example, in the mid-1990s, the Virginia Farm Bureau, the Virginia Agribusiness Council, and the Virginia Wholesalers Association worked closely with Philip Morris to develop a public relations measure that pretended to address youth access to tobacco. In reality, this move was intended to prevent effective youth tobacco access measures from being implemented .
This situation was different from that in South Carolina, where the animosity between tobacco growers and the tobacco industry led traditional tobacco industry allies like the Commissioners of Agriculture and the South Carolina Farm Bureau to shift to neutral positions on tobacco control efforts.South Carolina legislators representing tobacco-growing regions also became less hostile towards tobacco control legislation.All of these factors fundamentally weakened the tobacco industry in South Carolina and it could no longer dominate the tobacco control debate in South Carolina.Unlike South Carolina, however, the formation of the SCTP did not lead legislators representing tobacco-growing regions to become less hostile towards tobacco control, and did not cause any major tobacco grower association to shift to a neutral position on tobacco control. Tobacco manufacturers in Virginia remained able to control the dialogue on tobacco control despite the diminished presence of tobacco manufacturing in the state and the strains in their relationships with tobacco growers nationwide. This does not preclude the possibility that these divisions may occur in the future, and if they do, tobacco control advocates in Virginia should exploit them. The national nonsmokers’ rights movement began in the early 1970s, with loose networks of grassroots activism. The most prevalent among these loose networks was the Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public . Early successes occurred in Arizona in 1973 when smoking was restricted in a limited number of public places like elevators, libraries, and theaters.Minnesota mandated separate smoking areas in restaurants in 1975.In 1977, Beverly Hills passed a city ordinance mandating separate no-smoking sections in restaurants and restricting smoking in indoor public spaces.On May 15, 1978, Newport News passed a city ordinance that prohibited smoking in elevators, healthcare facilities, cultural facilities and public schools. There were exceptions, primarily to allow smoking areas in parts of restaurants, in theater lobbies, and in some in-patient sleeping facilities.While the mayor of Newport News, Joseph Ritchie, opposed the ordinance as an intrusion on personal liberty, other city officials supported the move after hearing from emphysema victims during the council meeting. Tobacco industry representatives were present to speak against the ordinance, but it was passed by a vote of 4-3.The law went into effect on May 25,but enforcement was lax. The city attorney for Newport News allowed restaurants to set aside just one table as a no-smoking area to avoid being fined for noncompliance.The next month, in June, restaurant owner Phyllis Alford was fined $10 for refusing to post the sign required by the city’s ordinance designating a no-smoking section. Appearing in court, Ms. Alford pled guilty because, as she put it, “I’m not going to stand up and lie. I refused to put up the sign.”Her refusal was based on an argument that the requirement was unconstitutional, an argument that eventually reached the Supreme Court of Virginia in the case Alford v. Newport News.Alford was represented by several attorneys including Charles Morgan, Jr. of Charles Morgan, Jr. and Associates. Morgan worked closely with the Tobacco Institute, attending at least two of their Executive Committee meetings.At the 64th Meeting of the Tobacco Institute Executive Committee, Morgan spoke about contemporary efforts to restrict smoking, and “commented that the approach of some of the anti-smoking groups might well be described as ‘fumiphobia,’ and he indicated that he would consider possible methods to reply to some of the current anti-smoking campaigns.”It is not clear whether the Tobacco Institute or other tobacco industry organizations paid for Ms. Alford’s defense, but her attorneys were closely aligned with tobacco industry views. In the decision of Alford, handed down on November 21, 1979, the state Supreme Court found that Newport News’ police power “may not be used to regulate property interests unless the means employed are reasonably suited to the achievement of that goal.”The court found the enforcement of the ordinance, merely allowing one table to satisfy the no-smoking area requirement, was “not reasonably suited to the achievement of the legislative goal” of protecting the health of restaurant goers from toxic smoke exposure. Furthermore, the signs required by the ordinance could “lead the non-smoking diner to expect the place he has chosen to patronize is a wholly protected environment,” when in fact that diner would be almost certainly be exposed to smoke because of the city’s enforcement of the ordinance. Due to these factors, the court held that in this specific case, the ordinance was an unconstitutional exercise of the city’s police powers, because the sign posting requirement was held to be an unreasonable regulation of the use of private property.