Tobacco Documents Online

Juno e-mail printed Fri, 30 Apr 1999 10:16:45 , page 1 From: joanne-ralston To: sduffy@sprintmail.com Subject: FYI re Pima Co., Douglas and,Tombstone Per 9 a.m. conference call today, learned that Pima Co. Bd. Health rejected Tucson ord. Wednesday, which now includes bars, bowling alleys and restaurants, and sent resolution saying ETS is hazardous, but recommended no ban. However, the issue will move forward quicklyl Supervisors are likely to go forward with ban stronger than Tucson - i.e. added bars and bowling alleys. They are hiding behind "health issue" and only let health types speak Wednesday. The "Cleaning the Air" gang has been spurred on by the Tucson victory...they remain aggressive and are pressing ahead full steam. There is a question re whether or not a county ordinance would affect cities within county; probably half are charter cities, thus not preempted. Could end up with real mess as a result. There are lots of county islands,i.e. most resorts around Tucson are in unincorporated areas. However, suspicion exists that resorts will cut a deal. Steve: Will Lowe's Ventana Canyon (Lorilard) fight this or not? ARA Tucson is weak (not Yuhas, LaMaster) and not wired into supervisors at all. We offered to help with a phone bank and they rejected it because we'd have to say "Phillip Morris:" Tucson bars also offered to help and were rejected by ARAfrucson, which didn't "want to be connected to tobacco and alcohol." ??? So that's why I'm having trouble getting op-eds signed by Tucson restaurant folks. Restaurants are now trying to flood city with exemption requests based on receipts; bringing in an independent accounting firm. All of which is water over the dam. They are also trying to come up with a model ordinance to shop around, but there is no draft yet. They are totally disorganized and have a serious "head in the sand" mentality. We have a model ordinance, but it requires ventilation, negative air flow over smoking sections (which does NOT require physically separate facilities) and minimum size requirements. Tucson ARA won't buy it. Their attitude is that we'd spending their money, sans facing cost reality of separate facilities vs. ventilation. We'd like to get out in front of this issue and preempt it vs. getting knocked off city by city, county by county, with bans all too easily passed in this environment. The only other option I can think of is to push a LHC-type ordinance, which lets owners decide, but that seems unrealistic in light of the antis' funding base in Pima-Tucson. The same environment exists in Cochise Co. - operating out of Sierra Vista - and we now hear that Tombstone, in addition to Douglas, is also considering the Tucson ordinance. I have asked PM to bring in Will Fox and put him on the ground in Douglas and Tombstone to stir up a firestorm of local opposition and Ginny is working on it. At any rate, urgency is high and we need to hit the ground running in all 3 markets.'Joanne 2076353294 l/"