Smokefree Progress in California: The Role of Grassroots Advocacy

This presentation will review the history of the nonsmokers' rights movement and the role of advocates in initiating a policy strategy that evolved over the past four decades. While the role of advocacy in public health has been acknowledged, it has not been sufficiently documented in the literature in part because ordinary citizens initiated the movement. Case in point is the early days of the nonsmokers' rights movement when local citizens acted on their own concerns about smoke in their workplaces by organizing in living rooms and libraries across the state to seek solutions to the unwanted exposure to cigarette smoke. In addition, an overview of the role of nonsmokers' rights advocacy from the 1970's when there was little to no science base about the health hazards of secondhand smoke to nonsmokers, no “best practice” solutions or model policies, and no funding for tobacco control programs through the late 1980's – 1990's when both the science base and financial resources grew to support tobacco control programs and services, to present day where finances are leaner and the role of tobacco control advocates to sustain the movement during lean times critical. Policy accomplishments and the resultant public health benefits and the decline in smoking prevalence will be reviewed, as well as the important role of ongoing advocacy from a “non-funded” base of committed nonsmokers' rights advocates who have the ability to advocate and lobby when funded governmental agencies or organizations funded with government funds cannot, and who sustain the movement over time.