With approximately 40% of Arizonans covered under some sort of clean indoor air ordinance by 2004, many of these tobacco industry-allied organizations saw their opposition efforts as merely delaying the inevitable.Lopez was not able to get HB 2629 a hearing in the House. House Speaker Jake Flake was approached jointly by Rep. Lopez, a former Republican legislator, and her ally Eric Emmert, Republican lobbyist for the East Valley Chamber of Commerce, to negotiate the introduction of the bill. Flake said he did not like the legislation because he said in “libertarian” Arizona “we don’t tell people what to do,”244 but did agree to give the bill a hearing. However when committee assignments came out, he had assigned the bill to four committees – Commerce, Health, Federal Mandates and Property Rights, and Rules – which effectively killed the bill.In Arizona, bills must be heard in committees in the order the committees were assigned. Because Rep. Phil Hansen, the chair of the Commerce Committee refused to hear the bill, Lopez could not move on to subsequent committees. Lopez went back to Speaker Flake requesting that he make good on his promise for a hearing,who claimed that he could not force committee chairs to hold hearings. Lopez then arranged for an informational hearing in the friendlier Health Committee on March 4, 2004, but because there was no vote, no action was taken on HB 2629. Meanwhile, the public was supporting HB 2629 with letters to the editor and emails to legislators, and media articles proliferated during each step of the process. According to a poll conducted by Fairbank, Maulin, Mauslin, and Associates in November 2003, 75% of Arizonans favored a statewide smoke free law totally covering workplaces, restaurants, and bars.This strong polling helped focus Arizona’s tobacco control advocates’ attention toward the goal of a statewide law, cannabis growing tables despite their prior misgivings. Rep. Lopez considered attaching the substance of HB 2629 onto some preexisting Senate bill that was being heard in the Assembly to get a hearing, but had trouble finding an appropriate Senate bill.
Part of the reason for her reticence in working the bill from the Senate side was that Rep. Lopez had made a commitment to her stakeholders that she would maintain the integrity of the bill and kill it immediately if someone amended it with preemption. Attaching it to an existing Senate bill would have entailed relinquishing control over the possible amendments the bill would face, and there existed the real possibility that bars would be exempted in this process. Lopez instead decided that the best course of action was to let the bill die. After the failure of HB 2629 in the Legislature in Spring 2004, AHA, ALA, and ACS joined with Lopez and other stakeholders like ACAS and other local advocates in supporting the idea that the best route to a statewide smoke free law would be a ballot initiative based on HB 2629.In the November 2006 election, Arizona had more ballot measures on its statewide ballot than any other state in the country. Out of those 19 measures, 3 dealt with tobacco. Proposition 201, the Smoke-Free Arizona initiative which emerged from HB 2629 and Arizona’s local smoke free ordinances, sought to make Arizona smoke free indoors with very few exceptions. It was created and backed by the ALA, AHA, ACS, AzHHA, and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids with support from Arizona’s tobacco control advocacy groups and a grassroots network of over two-thousand volunteers.Proposition 206, the Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act, was a competing weak “indoor air” initiative placed on the ballot by RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company to counter Proposition 201 and to preempt local tobacco control ordinances. A third and completely unrelated initiative, Proposition 203, proposed to increase the state tobacco excise tax by 80 cents to create and fund a state-wide program of early childhood care including preschool, medical care, and daycare. The tobacco industry, specifically RJ Reynolds, concentrated on stopping the statewide smoke free policy rather than fighting the tax proposal , even though the proposed 80 cent tax increase would be the largest in Arizona’s history. Proposition 203’s 80 cent tobacco tax increase promised significant effects in terms of decreased tobacco consumption.The committee running Proposition 203 did not consult with Arizona’s tobacco control advocates who were sponsoring Proposition 201 on the allocation of the tobacco tax revenue. Because Proposition 203’s committee used the tobacco tax instrumentally with all funds going to early childhood care, they neglected to even provide backfill payments to the programs using existing cigarette tax revenues to compensate for the lowered revenues resulting from the lower consumption caused by the price increase.
The statewide smoke free initiative Proposition 201 that the health voluntaries mounted in 2006 was grounded in the successes in achieving local tobacco control policy. From Mesa in 1996 to Tucson in 1999 to Tempe in 2002, Prescott in 2003, and Flagstaff in 2005, the local ordinances paved the way for changing smoking norms. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Arizona Clearing the Air grant administered by ACS from 2001-2004 fueled the local clean indoor air ordinances by providing technical support to communities interested in clean indoor air. Proposition 303 passed by two-thirds of Arizonans, secured TEPP for the future and doubled Arizona’s tobacco excise tax, strengthening tobacco control in Arizona and bringing the public health issue of smoking again into the public eye. In late 2003, when Rep. Lopez broke the ice for Arizonans to seriously discuss a genuine statewide clean indoor air act, the health voluntaries began shifting their focus away from passing local initiatives to lay the groundwork for the statewide initiative. The advocate-driven local smoke free efforts in Arizona, as in most states, formed the bulwark of the tobacco control policy movement up until the statewide clean air initiative began gaining media attention in mid-2006, when local efforts were put on hold until the state initiative was decided. The news of the 201 and 206 statewide anti-smoking propositions both encouraged some communities, like the towns of Sedona and Marana, to pass their own smoke free ordinances, and discouraged others, such as Gilbert, from taking additional measures to reduce secondhand smoke. Gilbert delayed instituting smoke free public parks in 2006 because the local government wanted to wait and observe the result of the statewide smoke free propositions rather than waste time creating an ordinance if state law would later preempt it.A December 2002 poll by the Arizona Republic showed 36% of those polled wanted a statewide clean indoor air law, 7% preferred a county-level ordinance, and 22% opted for a city-level smoke free ordinance covering all indoor air locations.In total, 65% wanted a clean indoor air act at some level of government.The poll commissioned by the AzHHA and conducted by the national opinion research firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates in November 2003 showed 75% of Arizona voters supported a proposed state law that would prohibit smoking in all enclosed indoor workplaces in Arizona.
While the committee’s original clean indoor air act plan in 2005 was to craft a law that restricted smoking in all public places and workplaces , they ended up granting a few exemptions that other states allowed, such as a limited number of hotel rooms, retail tobacco shops,commercial grow table private residences unless used for child care, adult care or health care facility, and theatrical performances . The question of whether or not to include clean indoor air for private fraternal clubs was largely politically determined. Veterans and fraternal clubs were exempted from smoke free requirements because the Smoke-Free Arizona campaign was not willing to risk opposition from this politically powerful constituency.One innovation Smoke-Free Arizona included in the initiative language was including a 2 cent tobacco excise tax increase to fund implementation and enforcement of the law. Under Smoke-Free Arizona’s scheme, the 2 cent tax provided ADHS funding for their enforcement responsibilities. This money could then be used to provide funding for local enforcement, as ADHS delegated inspection and enforcement to County Health Departments. The origin of the tax came from a stakeholders’ meeting early on in the campaign with the ADHS regarding the statewide clean indoor air act. “Everybody from the Department of Health down to the counties all said that ‘if we’re going to be the ones doing the enforcement for the initiative, we’re going to need money,’” according to Sharlene Bozack, Steering Committee member and ACS’s Government RelationsVP.No one wanted the police to handle smoke free enforcement, as happened in Tempe, because the ordinance had not specified who would be responsible for enforcement. Tempe’s ordinance received criticism in local newspapers that forcing the police to enforce smoking violations prevented police from addressing more serious crimes. Tempe also had weak enforcement for the first five months of its clean indoor air ordinance because police were only responding to called-in complaints rather than performing inspections.Learning from Tempe’s experience, while avoiding potential barriers to enforcement like having to ask the Legislature for funding for enforcement, Smoke-Free Arizona’s language used ADHS to enforce the law and created available revenue to fund inspections with the tax provision.
The Proposition 201 campaign encountered opposition from the Chandler, Mesa, and Prescott Chambers of Commerce, but won the support of Tempe’s Chamber of Commerce, the Southwest Valley Chamber of Commerce in Maricopa County, and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce . In the initial 2002 City of Tempe initiative, the Tempe Chamber of Commerce opposed the smoke free ordinance initiative. For Arizona’s tobacco control advocates, this shift signaled that the Tempe smoke free model indeed had been a success. With the exception of Prescott, the chambers of commerce supporting Proposition 206 already had weak smoking ordinances in place similar to the restrictions on workplaces and restaurants Proposition 206 offered . The Tucson Chamber of Commerce which supported Proposition 206, had received yearly Tobacco Institute contributions in the 1990’s. The Arizona State Chamber of Commerce took no position on either of the smoking-related measures. Governor Janet Napolitano also endorsed Proposition 201, but waited until late October, right before the election, to do so. The Governor was a member of the Board of the American Legacy Foundation, a national foundation for tobacco control efforts. Despite the political caution Napolitano displayed as she was running for reelection in November 2006, the Proposition 201 campaign staff expected Gov. Napolitano to announce her support earlier than she did, as her polling numbers were high. In the press release announcing her support for Proposition 201, Gov. Napolitano also urged a “no” vote on Proposition 206, a key message in the Proposition 201 campaign, saying “As Attorney General, I witnessed firsthand the tactics of the tobacco industry…. Arizonans need to understand that Proposition 206 is funded by RJ Reynolds and is an attempt to protect its tobacco profits.”The Proposition 201 campaign gained the last-minute public support of the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association . While the media coverage accompanying this shift in the ARHA’s tobacco control policy stance did not do justice to its full significance, the endorsement of Proposition 201 was printed in the ARHA’s trade newsletter on October 3, 2006, and the Arizona Republic did write a short article mentioning the endorsement.The Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association , previous recipient of Tobacco Institute contributions,opposed Rep. Lopez’s HB 2629 in 2004. ARHA President and CEO Steve Chucri testified against the bill at the Health Committee hearing.Nevertheless, Pfeifer reported that a “cultivated” “personal relationship” between Smoke-Free Arizona and the ARHA was subsequently developed resulting from Chucri’s former employment by Kevin DeMenna , enabling Michelle Pabis and Chucri to develop rapport around smoke free issues.Smoke-Free Arizona engaged in dialogue with ARHA and listened to their concerns while drafting the language for the Smoke-Free Arizona Act. According to a 2006 interview with Pfeifer, “Early on when we were directing the language they [the ARHA] said, ‘is there anyway you can pass the law in November but maybe delay implementation in restaurants or bars, give them two years to get ready?’ And we didn’t. But what we did agree was to give them three more months as we were initially to write the law to go into effect on February 1. So we changed it to May 1.”While Pfeifer did not mention Chucri’s involvement in Smoke-Free Arizona’s decision to exempt outdoor patios in their smoke free law, Chucri has said he supports permitting smoking on patios.