Archived copy of Tobaccoscam website and ads on smokefree hospitality is available

In 2002 I developed an educational campaign called Tobacco Scam designed to counter tobacco industry propaganda directed at restaurants and to expose the industry’s cooptation of the state and national restaurant associations. It was called “Tobacco Scam” because it highlighted how the tobacco companies were scamming restaurants and bars into opposing smokefree laws based on bogus claims that such laws were bad for business and convincing them to install expensive ventilation systems that did not actually eliminate secondhand smoke. Similar to my Smokefree Movies campaign, the Tobaccoscam campaign had two components: (1) a web site that presented the science of secondhand smoke, the actual evidence on economic impacts of smokefree laws on restaurants and bars, the undisclosed connections between the tobacco industry and the state and national restaurant associations and the purported ventilation experts who were promoting ventilation as the ”solution” to secondhand smoke; and (2) paid advertising (example below) in the restaurant trade press featuring real opinion leaders in the restaurant and bar industries endorsing smokefree hospitality and exposing the tobacco industry.

The effort stayed active until 2008, when I decided that we, combined with complementary efforts by Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, who had been showing up at hospitality trade association meetings and a former restaurant lobbyist who had been working his contacts. had largely succeeded in neutralizing the tobacco industry’s cooptation of the restaurant associations and so stopped active development. The website stayed active until 2015, when it was inadvertently deleted through a chain of improbable accidents that ended up deleting the website and all backups.

Because the issue of smokefree hospitality, particularly casinos, is still active in the US and globally, I thought it would be useful to make the website as it appeared when archived February 20, 2015 available because many of the resources it contains remain relevant today.