The Local Lead Agencies
While the media campaign was jump-starting the Tobacco Control Program, the LLAs were still getting organized. In addition to the efforts within each local health department, each LLA was required to encourage the formation of a “local coalition” made up of players from the private and nonprofit sectors, including local units of the voluntary health agencies as well as new players in tobacco control. These local coalitions would play an increasingly important role in the evolution of California's Tobacco Control Program. The counties were required to submit preliminary plans in December 1989, before the media campaign had reached the public.
For most counties the tobacco revenue represented a substantial amount of new money, especially since Proposition 13 had hit the counties so hard. Each county received at least $150,000 a year, with the larger counties receiving considerably more: Los Angeles ($12.2 million), San Diego ($1.8 million), San Francisco ($1.6 million), and Santa Clara ($1.6 million). Even medium-sized counties like Ventura and Sonoma received over $460,000.[19]
TCS recognized that, in addition to guidelines, the LLAs needed a state infrastructure that would provide them with ongoing training and technical assistance. TCS hired a contractor to establish the Tobacco Education
Getting the LLAs off the ground, however, was a cumbersome process. Although Kizer had forced DHS to help TCS get up to speed quickly, most county tobacco control operations got no such special treatment. The slowness of county paper processing and the complex nature of county procedures impeded rapid program development. Part of the problem faced by one LLA director had to do with the unusual nature of her program design. She said, “The reality is no one had really had money like that to do anything innovative in the health department. So I think people had to get used to the idea of something different, including purchasing. I mean, you never had people buying some of the things we were buying before all this. Now they're used to it but it was unusual. …it took a lot of work, we had to go back two, three times sometimes.”[20] Eventually some LLAs cut back the number of grants to local groups for tobacco control work simply because of the time it took. On the other hand, some county administrators and politicians were important program advocates. Another LLA director described her
In contrast to the state level, the earliest local program designs reflected a traditional view of public health, focused on promoting smoking cessation, even though “policy” and “media” were part of the NCI model. But smoking cessation programs were comfortable. Most people who had trained in public health were familiar with providing direct services, especially cessation. The tobacco industry generally sits quietly when people run smoking cessation programs because such programs are expensive and not very effective. Generally only about 10 percent of those enrolled in cessation programs are still abstinent a year later, and cessation programs, because they approach smokers one person at a time, simply cannot reach a significant portion of the smoking population. Cessation programs do nothing to keep people from starting to smoke.
The media campaign was launched in the midst of the LLAs' efforts to get their programs up and running. Cynthia Hallett, then with the Los Angeles LLA, thought the advertisements were “great” but that they hit the streets almost too fast: “In trying to launch our education campaign, it was really difficult, given that media was out there and talking about how bad the tobacco industry was. And here we were just trying to start our program. People were calling us saying, `Those ads. Well, what are you guys doing? And can I get some service?' And we were still training staff.”[22] Whether intentional or not, the anti-industry focus of the media campaign began to shift the emphasis of the other programs toward policy interventions. In addition, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights was continuing to support communities in developing and passing local tobacco control ordinances. ANR's policy-oriented approach already permeated the state and the LLAs felt its influence. Even so, it took a year or so to move beyond cessation programs to activities that would change the social environment enough to reduce tobacco consumption.
One LLA director commented that she moved into other programmatic areas almost immediately because she had done cessation before and did not want to do it again. But for most LLAs the transition to community-based strategies took longer. One LLA director described the process:
We ended up funding Stop Smoking and Smoking Prevention Programs for every ethnic group and every age group. We even had a preschool program. It was very much a cessation model, helping individuals quit smoking. People
― 133 ―thought that was the logical way to spend the money. …We had a Stop Smoking Program for the Vietnamese, another one for the Spanish-speaking. We had another one for African Americans. We had another one for senior citizens. We had one for teenagers. (laughter) I remember thinking, driving around one year later, “Is my program having any effect on this community?” Because everywhere I looked people were smoking inside and outside. I just had the sense that I was wasting public dollars.And meanwhile, people were calling me with bad secondhand smoke problems at their workplace. Totally bombarded. I would look up their [local clean indoor air] ordinance and say, “There is nothing I can do for you. Your employer can smoke at your workplace.” So the laws were very bad at that point. …So I remember driving down the street one day, thinking maybe we could just make everything smoke free.
So I talked to one of the higher-ups in the county, and said, “Why don't we just get a good county ordinance going here?” And she leaned over and she patted my hand and she said, “Oh no, dear, you don't know what you are talking about. This person on the Board [of Supervisors, the county legislative body] smokes, that person on the Board smokes. Their secretary smokes. Don't do it, don't even consider this.” So I said, “Well, OK, what if the cities passed ordinances and that would like peer-pressure the county into it?” And she kind of smiled. So I just hung in and got started, changed the whole program orientation to policy and ordinances.[23] [emphasis added]
This interest in doing policy work was not, however, universal. People worried about getting involved in local controversies and wanted to avoid confrontation with the tobacco industry and its political allies. People in public health departments who had trained as traditional health educators were not used to being confrontational or political. Their lack of experience was exacerbated by the ambivalence of coalitions consisting of other public health professionals or representatives of local units of the voluntary health agencies who were reluctant to get involved in politics.
Over time, however, the values and approaches of the Tobacco Control Program changed, and most program participants became more policy-oriented. In 1998, when asked what she would do differently if she had it to do over again, one of the reticent directors responded, “I would be more pro-active with local leaders. I would probably get into it, and say, `Oh well, if we're going to have a conflict, let's just go for it.'”[24]