Tobacco Documents Online

This 1988 Tobacco Institute political strategy document describes how the tobacco industry operates politically in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming. "Proactive legislation" refers to legislation the tobacco industry drafts and pushed through states in order to stop public health tobacco control activity at the local level.

In Colorado, the tobacco industry noted that widespread sentiment existed for a statewide smoking law, and that even the Colorado Restaurant Association favored such legislation. To head this off, the industry planned to introduce weak measure ("with moderate provisions") that would "institutionalize certain smokers' rights and dramatically weaken one of the strongest statewide GASP organizations in the country."

The current (2003) governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, is identified as a "friendly member of the House Local Government Committee (consistently favorable to tobacco interests) who could "offer a substitute bill with desireable provisions with a good chance of having it adopted and passed out of committee..."

The writer of the memo states,

"Publicly, tobacco industry advocates should express the position that NO smoking restriction law is desireable. If pressed, they should acknowledge that uniform regulation throughout the state is preferable to the state of confusion which now exists. Privately, our lobbyists would of course encourage legislators' support of the substitute bill."

This letter from the Tobacco Institute discusses "smokers' rights" legislation in Oklahoma. The writer, Stan Boman of the Institute, equates smoking with a personal trait, stating that employers who require employees be nonsmokers subject smokers to "spiteful and unreasonable discrimination in employment practices." The letter says that the industry felt "something must be done" about this, and "as a result, non-discrimination legislation has been introduced in 27 states and passed in 9 of them."

This document indicates not only the tobacco industry's view of nicotine addiction as a protected characteristic the equivalent of race, sex, and disability, but also indicates the industry's power to manipulate state legislative systems to advance corporate goals.