You're listening to Tobacco Endgame Matters, a podcast produced by Action on Smoking and Health, advancing momentum for a tobacco-free California. Chris, I know who you are. John, you and I have not met before, but I've heard quite a bit about you. So I'm just going to... you know, give you all a chance to introduce yourselves a little bit more. Chris, let's start with you. And then we're going to jump over to John.
Sure. Thank you. My name is Chris Bostic. I am the policy director at Action on Smoking and Health, or ASH. I've been in tobacco control for about 20, 21 years. And for the past few years, my focus has been tobacco endgame. John, how about you? My name is John Marish. I've served on the Beverly Hills City Council since 2009. We have a rotating system, so I have been mayor three times, and I am currently a garden variety council member. Great. John, let's actually talk about your city first.
So last year, Beverly Hills was the first city in California and the world, from what I believe, to phase out the sale of commercial tobacco products. Can you describe the landscape these days and maybe even describe what the... reaction has been in Beverly Hills and in neighboring communities? Well, I think the reaction in Beverly Hills has been positive. We actually passed the ordinance when I was mayor, so that's...
almost, I'd say it's about a year and a half ago, and it took effect on January 1st. And we have had broad support, I would say, from our community, most of our community members. There were a few specific niche groups that had issues and we were forced to make a couple of compromises. But on the whole, I would say that we have. have achieved largely what we wanted to do, which is the ban of the sale of tobacco within our city. And I would say it's also a very...
logical step that we took. It was part of a longer process that started decades ago when we had initial bans of smoking in restaurants and then outdoor dining. and then multifamily housing. And we were at a point where we were discussing with the county of LA, one of their tobacco control advocates, Monty Messicks.
about a ban on flavored tobacco, which a number of cities are in the process of passing or have passed. And at that stage, I think I was the vice mayor at the time, I said, you know, this is all interesting, but why? Why not, no pun intended, just do the full Monty and ban the sale of tobaccos? Or ban the sale of tobacco products and ban the sale of tobacco?
The initial response from some people was sort of, well, you can't do that, can you? And I looked at our city attorney and said, Larry, can we? And he said, well, you know, there may be some challenges. But yes, and quite frankly, I looked at it as a matter of zoning. There are certain activities that are allowed and that are legal.
in other places that we just don't allow in our city. To give you a couple of maybe odd examples or odd couple examples, mortuaries, perfectly necessary in a legal profession and also... smelting plants or oil extraction well those are things that may be legal elsewhere they're not legal in our city and so i think i wanted to approach it from the perspective of zoning and to an extent that's what we did and so
We do not have or allow the sale of tobacco products with limited exceptions in our city. And I suppose we were prepared for some legal challenges. Touch wood, they haven't come yet, but we're prepared if they do come. And, you know, Beverly Hills' decision, as we know, is a part of something much larger, something called Tobacco Endgame. Chris, can you summarize the Endgame initiative for our listeners?
Sure. And just to start, Endgame comes, of course, from chess. And it's the part of the game where there are a few pieces left. an end of the game is going to come at some time, at some point in the near future, even if it's a draw. And tobacco endgame is basically the same thing. We're looking at the tobacco epidemic as a 50 or 75 year process.
And we're in some places, at least we are near the end of that process. And we're starting to think, how are we actually going to end the tobacco epidemic? And just to give you a definition, there's a lot of different definitions of tobacco endgame out there, but I'll give you mine.
It's a mindset where public policy aims to end the tobacco epidemic rather than merely mitigate it. And it's also kind of the end of the term tobacco control, which is the profession I've been in for over two decades.
But that word control implies that there's some level of avoidable death and disease that we can live with. And we shouldn't be okay with it. We shouldn't be okay with death and disease from something that we can easily get rid of. And for so long, every... tobacco control organization has had it in their vision statement that they look to a future where tobacco is is no longer causing disease and death all endgame does is say well let's put a plan in place and a date in place
to make that happen and not just make it over the horizon forever. And to put it into perspective of sort of other products, there are a lot of products that were legal once and then are not legal to sell later. Asbestos is a big one. Let paint, let gasoline, even lawn darts aren't available anymore for sale because two people were killed by them in the 1980s.
So people have been thinking about tobacco endgame ever since we knew that the cigarettes were were dangerous. You know, it's worth a quick story here. When the Surgeon General's report came out in 1964, which was a, it wasn't new research. They looked at all the existing research on the effects of tobacco and they concluded that it is, it causes cancer and death.
And they decided to hold the press conference for that, for the release of that report on a Saturday because the Surgeon General assumed that once... the world knew for sure that this stuff was deadly, that they'd be forced to take it off the market and assume that everyone else would assume that. And so by having it on a Saturday, they were hoping to cushion the shock to the stock market.
They wanted to give a couple of days afterwards for people to come to grips with it in the hopes that there wasn't a huge crash because tobacco was such an important... product financially and of course it wasn't banned and ever since then we've been we've been thinking about tobacco control trying to get trying to convince folks not to try it not to get addicted to it but there have always been a few
researchers and advocates who have spoken out for tobacco endgame since the 1960s. For the most part, though, there hasn't been any sort of organization behind it. And that began to change just a few years ago. There were a series of meetings from tobacco control experts talking about Endgame and talking about the ideal policy.
that would get us to tobacco endgame. That culminated in a series of meetings called Eyes on the Prize that Ash took part in. But the problem with all these meetings is they were almost purely academic. uh it was they were very interesting a lot of good research came as a result of the discussions but there was no campaign to actually get it done and so in 2018 ash started what we call project sunset
And the goal is it's a global program to phase out the sale of commercial combustible tobacco products. And now with an organization behind it that continues to push all the time and not just when you publish a paper, we're starting to see some.
some movement. I should make sure I point out that the folks in beverly hills and john marish had never heard of project sunset when they when they passed their ordinance um which just shows that you know good ideas can come from several angles um but ever since then we have of course been been
pointing to Beverly Hills as an example of what can be done when the political will is there. And we're hoping to... to start something big and we actually have we'll uh we'll talk more about it in a moment i think but uh this is uh this is a global movement now I'm glad that you brought up the global side of Endgame which we'll get to in a little bit but before we do for some of our listeners who are hearing your explanation and hearing about Endgame for the first time.
thinking that this is an attack on them or the consumer, how would you address them? I would say this is, from a tobacco control standpoint, this is the only thing that's the exact opposite of that. And I think one of the problems that we had in public health vis-a-vis tobacco over the decades is a focus on...
on demand, on the consumer, on the individual and blame for cigarette smokers. And it's only in the past two decades or so that people started to realize that they're not failing us. We have failed them. by allowing an industry to prey on them as children, get them addicted as children before they could possibly understand the ramifications of a lifetime of addiction, and then turn around and blame them for the problems of the tobacco epidemic.
What Project Sunset does and what Tobacco Endgame does is flip that and focus on the actual perpetrator of the tobacco epidemic, which is the tobacco industry. And so that's why we only talk about banning the sale of tobacco. We won't work. with a jurisdiction that wants to punish the smoker. So you can't make it illegal to purchase or to use or to possess. The last thing we need is another.
addictive drug and police walking by and saying, what's that in your pocket? That will never happen under a tobacco endgame policy because it's completely focused on the retail sale. Now, knowing that, John, if you could pinpoint one or two factors. that enabled Beverly Hills to successfully pass an endgame policy, what would you say those factors are? And what were some of the biggest challenges for the city? Well...
I would say that there was broad support in the community. We've always strived to be a healthy city, and tobacco is the opposite of healthy. It's also something about respecting other people. So the notion that we've heard the typical libertarian arguments, but smoke is something that. even if you live in multifamily, is unavoidable. So that's one of the reasons that we were able to pass the multifamily smoking ban as well. The challenges specifically in our city where we had a couple of...
basically private cigar lounges. And it's very weird because you had people from literally all sides of the political spectrum, from our congressperson, Ted Lieu, who is... was very critical of the Trump administration and would go on Twitter and stick it to Trump. But on the other side, you had Rudy Giuliani. who and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who were concerned about the potential closure of a of these these private cigar clubs. And I think from our perspective.
So that was on the one hand. And then on the other hand, we have hotels that were fearful they might lose customers. So on the one hand, the way I think that we solved the problem of the cigar lounges was that these are basically private clubs. People put themselves into that atmosphere and it's not open to the public at large. And that was by far the biggest group of people who had perhaps objections. We got a letter from former Governor Schwarzenegger that he supports our efforts.
But the, you know, but please keep the Cigar Club. And as said, calls from both Ted Lieu and Rudy Giuliani on both sides of the political spectrum about that. I guess there were important people who were invested in that. It certainly was a question of and then, of course, you had people who were going to say, well, if you make that exception, then you should basically accept everybody. And that's.
Obviously, the argument about making the perfect the enemy of the good. And on the other hand, as I said, was the hotels. And for us, the solution was we didn't want to have. tobacco products available at hotel stores because anyone could come off the street and purchase them. That said, we recognize that.
the hotel guests would have other ways of getting tobacco if they wanted. So we basically allowed it in hotels, not at an over-the-counter kind of uh purchase point but through either the concierge or room service or something along those lines because quite frankly what you could have had you could have had the concierge said send someone down the street
to a neighboring jurisdiction without a tobacco ban and they could have bought it and brought it back so it was effectively the same thing so so with with those two if you will compromises that i think are based on logic and reason and within the context of what we were doing on the larger scale, we were able to eliminate most, if not all, of the major opposition.
And yes, there were a couple of lobbyists who were hired on the part of the tobacco industry who made the same kind of typical libertarian arguments or, well, you're allowing it here, so you should allow it everywhere. It's affecting certain people. uh that didn't gain a lot of traction and uh you did have a couple of of merchants retailers
who were concerned about the impacts on them. But we did a phase in period intentionally. We offered the city's finance department to help perhaps guide businesses that were concerned about what they could replace. the lost revenue with i remember i made a statement that wouldn't it be great if instead of going to a gas station and then going in the store to to purchase um
You went and purchased kombucha or something along those lines. And we did allow a hardship exemption. But again, with a phase out that there was a process in place that people would be allowed to try. as said get an extension of that and we actually had a recent case where someone wanted like a 20-year extension it was it was pretty absurd uh that went to the council and we put the kibosh on that it made no sense at all
But as said, so there were some very unique, specific situations within our town. And I think that's important that any city or municipality that is considering taking these steps needs to consider. the specifics of their own local community. But in general, as said, we had broad support among our residents and I think a lot of our residents were also quite proud of the fact that we're the first city. to do so. Absolutely. And for folks who are interested in maybe taking a deeper dive
We do have a case study. Ash has a case study on Beverly Hills that is available for you. We'll add the link into our show notes. Now that you've described that for us, John, Chris, I want to go back to... you know, the global versus the local stage when it comes to Endgame. Now, does it look very different when we're talking about Endgame in places like Beverly Hills or California versus the rest of the world?
Well, the short answer is yes, but it's not so much that Beverly Hills and California are unique, although they are in certain ways. It's going to look different everywhere. And, you know, the second city, which is a neighbor of Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, that. out while smoking their their bill is slightly different because as john just said it really has to reflect local realities and so there is no we don't push one policy or even one set of policies
What we do with Project Sunset is try to build a political will. And once that will is there, then we can sit down and put a plan together. And just to juxtapose to Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, let me go over to New Zealand. who just last year released a plan from their Ministry of Health to basically end the tobacco epidemic within the next three years. And they have a swath of policies, including getting rid of filters, getting rid of nicotine in cigarettes, or at least...
making it non-addictive, banning sales, restricting the number of retailers and a number of other issues. And they're only focusing on combustible tobacco. And that works in their context right now. And they're going to be regulating e-cigarettes and other. nicotine products, but along a different track.
And they're focusing on getting rid of the products that are doing most of the damage first. And then we can juxtapose that with Spain. And the Spanish Tobacco Control Coalition put out a great declaration last year demanding that their government... put something in place to end the tobacco epidemic within 10 years. But instead of just saying that, they wrote a plan out. And the big difference between them and Beverly Hills is their prevalence is about 40%.
times higher than Beverly Hills was when they set out on their journey. And it just doesn't make sense to have a quick ban on products when over a fifth of adults use them every day. And so their plan includes a lot of other tobacco control policies to drive down prevalence in the meantime. And then at the end, they're going to implement tobacco-free generation, which is basically they're going to increase the minimum age of...
purchase one year every year. And so it's like a sales ban, but with a grandfather clause. And others will look even different. The Netherlands has a scheme in place where they're going to start reducing the types of retailers.
that can sell tobacco products until they get down to zero. So the obvious ones are like pharmacies, but they're going to get rid of grocery stores and then gas stations. And then just people will get, it'll be harder and harder to get. More people will quit because it's too much of a hassle to go find it. And then when they're...
When they're ready, they'll just pull the trigger and get rid of it entirely. So it's different absolutely everywhere. Our hope is... is that the beverly hills model spreads quickly to cities and states and countries that have that uh have that low prevalence rate and have already done a lot of other tobacco control measures but you know
even within California. Has this always been a hot topic or is this growth recent? And if so, what do you think has changed to really lead or drive this momentum? Right. Well, it's always been a side topic. There have been people talking about it and researching it and writing about it for decades, actually centuries, that there were monarchs in Europe that were against smoking.
when it first came from, from the new world. Of course they didn't realize it was, it was unhealthy. They just didn't like it. But it's, it's changed more recently. And a lot of that I think is, is due to. to Project Sunset, Ash is in a a great position in that we spent 15 years as the secretariat for a global consortium of civil society organizations. And we were the directorate for the secretariat. And so we still work globally.
We talked to colleagues in virtually every country. And so for several years, even before we launched Project Sunset, we would just talk to anyone who would listen. and asked them what they thought about the possibility of getting rid of sales. And at first, the number one reaction was, you can't do that.
because it's a legal product and then we had to explain to them that well products are not inherently legal or illegal but their status is decided by humans humans decide what what products are legal and illegal there's nothing inherent about it And after they learned that, then their number one reaction was, well, that would be really nice. You guys go do that because they thought it was impossible. It's just absolutely pie in the sky. And so that's why we when we first.
When I first heard about the council hearing that John mentioned where they were banning flavors and he wondered out loud why we can't get rid of everything, we jumped on that and we had other folks in California.
offer assistance in terms of testimony and information data. And we needed that proof of concept. And once there was a proof of concept, people began to really... talk more about it and uh i would say over the last past two years we've seen a real sea change in how people think of of endgame it's now become a part of every tobacco control conversation even if it's simply
Someday we want to do Endgame. It's in there now where it was not before. And I think a good example of that is a letter that we floated last year calling on governments.
every government to put a plan in place with a date that they will end the tobacco epidemic and that we put that out for signature and uh you know there's a global listserv and there's other communication platforms and we had a total of seven people push back and say, this is a bad idea, either because you're going to distract us from...
or other programs, or you're going to make us seem like radicals. So seven people, individuals. At the same time, 148 organizations just quietly signed it. Because when you really think about it, it is obvious. this is where we need to go as a public health movement. And so now it really is, we're done convincing our own community, I think. It's just a matter of getting groups to change their MO.
as they move forward. They're still gonna have to do all the stuff that we've done for decades. They're gonna have to think about smoke-free air. They're gonna have to think about banning flavors. They're gonna have to think about taxation. And some jurisdictions are only gonna be able to do that. for the next few years. But everybody seems to be planning for it now. And the biggest example I'll give for that is I'm working with some folks in Nevada who want to do this at the state level.
And that's not the first place you think of when you think of very progressive public health policy, especially in a state that's so dependent on gambling, where smoking is sort of seen as inherently part of it. But they're talking about it seriously. And their tobacco control coalition is in favor. And they're drafting a bill now for next year.
um so so who knows i i do think that we've we've turned a corner um and i but i think that corner is going to another corner is going to be turned in the next couple of years and you know one of the best examples of that is the tobacco control treaty out there. It's called the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and ASH has been part of that since its inception over 20 years ago. And for the first time...
A party, Canada, has requested that Endgame be put on the agenda for the next conference of the parties, which will be in Panama in a couple of years. And that's completely unprecedented. Endgame has never come up. When the treaty was being negotiated, no one mentioned the possibility even of restricting sales. It was all about reducing demand. And so that just shows that even in this sort of...
stayed conservative circles of international treaty negotiation, it's becoming a normal topic. To follow up on what Chris said, you know, I kind of hope that What we did sent a message, sort of, you see, it can be done. And my feeling was when people said, well, you can't do that, can you? The immediate reaction was, well, somebody has to be first, so let it be us. And it did actually take some time from when we were discussing the banning of flavored tobacco.
to get to the point where we brought it back. At the time, the mayor wanted it to go, who was at the mayor at the time, who was actually a physician, was very deliberate about it. And it went to... committees and ad hocs and other groups. And when it was my turn to be mayor, then after that, I got a little bit impatient. I didn't want to wait. And so we did go through the process.
That brought it back to us after we had had discussions with stakeholders, including not just the residents, but also businesses. And, of course... the tobacco control groups, including the county of LA, which has a robust health department and tobacco control department, and ASH. And so there were people who were very, very helpful, including one of the... I would say, giants of tobacco control, Dr. Ruth Malone from Northern California. And we got a lot of help.
I think, as said, our city, we didn't need to be convinced. We knew that tobacco was not something that was good. We knew that it's something that we should, you know, as in the past. As Chris suggested, there are policies to try to reduce the demand. But this is sort of like, you know, cutting through the Gordian knot, if you will. This project, Sunset, it makes all the sense in the world.
There are products that we don't allow anymore. And Chris mentioned a couple of them. And I certainly at the time looked at both asbestos and lead paint. And it just it. Yes, it's legal, but that. in itself doesn't mean that it's something that is going to be of any benefit to our community and that's when as said i thought also it made sense for us to accept okay it's legal but just because it's legal doesn't mean it has to be
Sold in our jurisdiction. And it was very interesting because once we did pass this and I was mayor, I was invited to go on. I forget who it was, but I think it was on Fox News and the. Stuart Varney, I think, if that's the person's name. And I think he kind of felt he had me in a gotcha moment. He's like, well, is it right that you should ban the sale of tobacco, but you allow for the sale of marijuana?
And I said, well, actually, Mr. Varney, we don't. Marijuana is legal in California, but we do not allow it in our city. It's a zoning. It is a policy issue that we have taken. And so it is not allowed. And so, as said, I think and hope the fact that. that we took that step and that Manhattan Beach followed suit closely will encourage other places to look at ways in which you can achieve this Project Sunset, the end game, and simply say,
Tobacco is not reflective of the values of our community. We don't want it in our community and we're not going to allow it to be sold here. And again, going back to what Ruth Malone said, Dr. Malone said was that, you know. Perhaps it is not surprising that someone finally says that a consumer product that is the most lethal product in the history of consumer products. You know what? Maybe we shouldn't be selling that on every corner.
And in fact, for our city, I think the response is we don't want it in our city at all. Thank you for that. So as the Endgame Initiative... continues to expand and what are you looking forward to in the next let's say three or five years john mentioned you know just hoping that more cities will implement end game and really prioritize the community in that sense Chris, what is it for you as a policy advocate?
Well, I think we're going to see a tremendous increase in momentum. And the way it's been happening over the past two years is it's a pendulum going back and forth, except it's defying the laws of physics and swinging harder each time. So when Beverly Hills did what it did, the world heard it and other countries started talking about it. And New Zealand releasing their plan last year was epic.
from a public health standpoint. And that pushed that pendulum even harder back over here. And people like people in Nevada learned about what was going on. They knew about Beverly Hills, but now there's a whole country. that's doing it. So I'm hoping that momentum continues to increase, that the snowball gets bigger and rolls harder. I'm particularly looking forward in the next five years to what happens in California.
We haven't touched on it much yet, but the California Department of Public Health has put Endgame in their sights, and they want to basically eliminate the tobacco epidemic. in the state by 2035 and they've put a lot of resources behind it and ash is proud to be one of the the grantees to provide technical assistance to cities and counties that want to do this
But we're going to see a lot more communities in California following Beverly Hills. Next month, look for it in South Pasadena. The boat is coming up in the council. But just last week, I was on a phone call with 10 different jurisdictions that are looking to do a phase out.
pretty quickly as opposed to long-term. At the same time, there are some counties and cities that just aren't there. They might have 20% prevalence. They've got to do some other stuff first. But because of the way that California is doing this, it has to be in their long-term plan. to get the endgame. So as that happens, that is going to have...
That's going to be heard around the world every step of the way. California is the fifth biggest economy on earth. And what happens there matters to the rest of the world. And we actually have a model for this from 20 years ago. in tobacco control, there were virtually no limitations on smoking indoors in restaurants and bars and concerts or anything except for California.
California had a law starting in the early 90s that was very comprehensive in banning smoking in public places. And that eventually... just took off. So once again, California will be leading the way. You know, I should point out too that this is not going to be easy. The tobacco industry is extremely powerful and tobacco endgame.
is a is a death sentence for them financially so they're going to fight back uh john mentioned earlier that they were sort of anticipating litigation which hasn't come yet they have sued brooklyn massachusetts that passed a tobacco free generation law last year. I'm not sure why they haven't sued Beverly Hills yet. There's two things I can think of. One is they don't want to draw more attention to it. And then the other is they might not know how they could do it.
It's a very difficult thing to sue over this. You know, L.A. County banned flavors last year and they got sued. And it was because there were exceptions, right? They banned flavors, but they didn't blame it. ban the sale of other types of tobacco products and then you get all these new arguments like equal treatment and everything else. When you ban everything, there's no one doubts that this is within the sovereignty.
of a city government to do and uh they don't mind losing the tobacco industry doesn't mind losing but they don't like having their cases thrown out right away they want to be able to you know incur some legal costs on there on the cities and states and countries that do this so um we we're still waiting to see what how they're going to react now that this is clearly not an aberration right well chris if they're smart they're gonna
try to retool their business the way that we've said that some of the tobacco outlets that are selling tobacco should try and retool their business as well. that instead of just selling gas and tobacco, that some of these convenience stores at gas stations maybe start selling lottery tickets or something else, or kombucha asset. That's even better.
But you're right. There's a lot of money at stake. But you've also correctly said that very clearly, I think maybe one of the reasons they're not suing is because they understand that. they will lose. And if they don't mind losing, that's one thing, but it also could. could be an embarrassment. And it could also maybe alert other cities that, hey, guess what? It is legal. Maybe we should be doing this as well. There probably are a lot of cities that are still laboring under the...
thought that you can't do that, can you? I'm guessing that you and Ash and other groups are trying to alert them to the fact that indeed you can. And you should. And it's good for the health and safety of your residents. But there are probably a lot of places that think that it is not legal or not possible to ban a product that itself is legal.
Yeah, that's a really good point, John. And actually, the people that you're talking about that don't know it's legal, that actually, that group is ahead of some others. Our biggest challenge in this is making people understand that it's even possible at all. And just every time somebody learns that.
There's a new push in the city. And that moment, that eureka moment that you had in the council hearing on flavors, I've watched that on other city councils. It happens, every place that's gone far or is planning to go far. has had that moment where somebody just says, wait a minute, why are we still dealing with this stuff? Why are we chipping away at the edges? But that is our biggest problem is just making people understand that.
This is a possibility. And that's another thing that Momentum is going to do for us. It's going to be harder and harder to find people that don't know this is going on. Well, and I would encourage anyone who has any questions about what we have been through as a city, I'm happy to talk to anybody as well. But I guess my message is, as I said earlier, you see, it can be done. There you go. You heard it here first on Tobacco and Game Matters by John Mearish. Thank you both so much.
Thanks for listening to this episode. To learn more about Ash California, visit us at ntobaccoca.ash.org.