Please welcome sarah milov. [applause] iz miss ms. Milov thank you so much. It is such a privilege to come and speak at the national archives. The other day, i saw a tweet about todays event, and as a historian, its kind of like having yourself name checked by beyonce. This is the mothership. Thank you so much for coming. My book, the cigarette a political history, seeks to understand tobacco in modern america, not through the lens of big tobacco in the machinations of industry, but through the efforts of Everyday Americans to get the government to intervene on their behalf. Big tobacco is still an important part of the story, but by focusing on other actors, farmers, government officials, politicians, activists, workers and labor unions, the story of tobacco in the 20th century begins to look a lot different than if we were to understand it through the actions of tobacco alone. By taking a wide angled approach, my book suggests that far from being the product of corporate deception that was ultimately exposed by science, a product of was government intervention. Ultimately reduced tobaccos grip on American Society was not the discovery that smoking causes cancer and, of course, the Surgeon Generals warning to that effect, but the invention by activists of nonsmokers rights, the idea that people who do not smoke were entitled and able to achieve unpolluted air and shared public spaces. This idea that nonsmokers rights, so natural to us today that we dont even consider it really to rise to the level of a political claim, that this idea had to be invented and then had to be vindicated by decisionmaking bodies. Most frequently, these bodies were businesses and local governments. In the rise of the cigarette, we can see a product made by the federal government acting on behalf of of privileged constituencies, and in its unmaking, we can see a critique not only of cigarette consumption, but in a way of doing government. The smokefilled room, as it were, that gave rise to the cigarette in the first place. Today, im going to talk about one nonsmokers rights activist, a woman who had a big hand in the kind of smokefree world we live in today. Her story, i think, eliminates the surprising mix of social movement activism, legal innovation, and hardnosed business calculation that remade public space. 1975, donnas morning routine looked rather unusual. The 42yearold Customer Service poppedtive talked an antiemetic pill and drove office ofome to the the Bell Telephone company. Depending how things looked inside, she might put on a gas mask, which she would lower when she had to speak by phone or in person with customers. The mine was made by Safety Appliances Company by pittsburgh. It was designed to be used by miners. They were gas masks to protect them selves against toxic airborne pollutants they encounter on the dot on the job, and that is what donna did as well. More than half of her coworkers smoked and there were no prohibitions on smoking by customers who came into the office. The environment was crippling. Tobacco smoke nauseated her. Hence the daily antiemetic. It caused constant headaches and rashes on her face. Eyeuse tearing and irritation that left her with corneal abrasions that would were not healed. And her office like in most american workplaces in the 1970s, there were no rules separating smokers from nonsmokers. The company reasoned that rearranging the layout of the office to separate smokers from nonsmokers would disrupt , thelow, and the Union Communication workers of america, agreed smoking was a workplace right. The gas mask was not the first remedy that donna turned to for relief. Earlier that year, she had seen a Company Doctor who had told her it was a disgrace for any employee to have to work in such a smoky space. On his orders, she was not to return to work until her supervisors could find a way to ensure a smokefree environment. Donna thought she would be home for a few days as supervisors rearranged desks at work. The days turned into weeks, which turned into months. Her sabbatical extended the unwillingness. Got to work. She was no antitobacco activist, but she soon became one. She made contact with the two primary antismoking groups of the era ash, action on smoking and health, and gas, group against smoke inhalation. She wrote to the new Jersey Department of health and labor, the Environmental Protection agency and all the major health voluntary associations. From her research, she learned she was in uncharted territory. In the 1970s, there were no laws governing workplace smoking on behalf of nonsmokers. Despite the fact the epa and osha had authority over air quality and workplace conditions respectively, no Regulatory Agency was authorized to police effected bynditions tobacco smoke. For for other issues, she could expect the support of her union as unions across the country in the 1970s were beginning to venture jan wages and hours to address the health and quality and life concerns of members, but the communication workers of america was adamant that it would not support her and her request in her quest for a smokefree work environment. In fact, her Union Steward asked throughout the meeting she discussed her need for smokefree air. The antipathy at work was palpable or, rather, inhalable. Finding no allies in government or labor, she tried to take her case directly to management. She delivered her proposal for smoke flick smokefree workplace policy to bell. She said bell should ban smoke and workplace offices in the same way it is banned in the Central Office and switchboards, and if bell cannot bring itself to regulate smoking on behalf of nonsmoking employees, at least he could do so on behalf of the bottom line. Citing figures from the Public Health service, she pointed out that nonsmokers spend world 1 3 more time away from work because of disease. Bell did not take her advice. Donna decided the courtroom would be the only venue that could provide her relief, so she decided to sue. But how . How could a Customer Service representative living in rural new jersey find a lawyer with expertise in Employment Law and perhaps even a sympathy for nonsmokers plight . The answer to this question should warm the hearts of booklovers everywhere. Donna schempp called a librarian. [laughter] [applause] reference the librarian at rutgers university, and that librarian happened to know about a law professor teaching a course on employment discrimination. Alford blue rose and had been a lawyer and the johnson administration, and an important one at that. He had been an architect of the thel employment commission, organization charged with banning discrimination at work. Donna, it turned out, had a seriesrld need for the bloom was developing in his law class. He agreed to take on her case pro bono. This was her first stroke of good fortune. The second and third were the and surprisingly so responsys she received from two medical sources to whom she wrote advice on her behalf. The Surgeon General who oversaw the publication of the famous 1964 report on smoking and health agreed to provide an affidavit affirming that tobacco smoke in the workplace could be a hazard to a significant number of workers and an irritation to an even larger number. Dr. Jesse seinfeld was also no ordinary doctor. He had served as nixons Surgeon General before he was canned, in his opinion, for denouncing the Tobacco Industry too forcefully. He also submitted testimony. The judge presiding over the case at the new Jersey Superior Court was moved by this celebrity testimony, but he was also moved by the argument that donna herself had made to bells corporate brass, that if the switchboard equipment was precious enough to merit a smokefree environment, then surely, so, too, were the bodies of employees themselves. A company which has demonstrated such concern for mechanical components should have at least as much concern for human beings, the judge wrote. New jersey bell had a common law duty to provide employees a safe and healthy work environment, which for donna meant an environment free of tobacco smoke. Wresting the right to a smokefree environment from her employee, donna was at the that i read about in my book. Cigarettes were a testament to federal regulation upon behalf of tobacco, specifically on behalf of organized tobacco producers. Than trysts did more to create tolerable conditions to work, congregate, dine, and exist in public. They asserted an alternative way of thinking about the value of citizenship and the obligations of government. The idea of nonsmokers rights, that in individual by virtue of not partaking in a habit can dictate where that habit is expressed, this idea cut against the producercentered politics that undergird smokers supremacy and shared spaces. Donna soon realized she was part of a young but emboldened new social movement, the nonsmokers Rights Movement. These were a very particular kind of tobacco activist. Their goal is not to get people to quit smoking but to get people to quit smoking in public. Their intention was to subvert the paradigm that both the Tobacco Industry and federal government had used to govern tobacco. This paradigm was in your face every time you picked up a pack of cigarettes. It was right there on the warning label that read, caution cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. Having been warned, it was the consumers choice. The majority of americans never did experience cigarettes as smokers. They experienced tobacco smoke as part of shared public space except for when tobacco smoke may have kept them home. Clara was one such exile. In 1971, the housewife, and her words, and mother of two young daughters decided she had had enough of bending her life around tobacco smoke. Her youngest daughter had a tobacco allergy that kept the family from enjoying one of the central pleasures of middleclass life going out to dinner. She and some girlfriends made a pact of sorts. Their First Political action. They would remove ashtrays in their homes, ashtrays that neither they nor their husbands used but were there is a room fixture for the convenience of guests. That this small gesture required premeditation and the kind of confidence that only can be shored up by a group of the likeminded suggests the degree of anxiety clara faced when she considered claiming an exclusively nonsmoking space, even when that space was her own home. Againstted group smoking pollution or gasp from this action. Using 50 of her grocery money, she produced the first batch of buttons that would become a standard symbol in the nonsmokers Rights Movement. Rights,nonsmokers have too. She also published a newsletter called the ventilator, which got off the ground thanks to the Prince Georges County tuberculosis and respiratory disease association, which allowed her to use its mimeograph machine, and it mailed the ventilators to surrounding counties, sharing with hundreds of state and local affiliates across the united states. , gaspacking on this quickly reached a big audience. A year after its founding, it had assembled and mailed over 500 new chapter kits, literature that helps fledgling activists conceive of themselves as possessing both a legitimate grievance and the means to do something about it. Drew energy from contemporary social movements. At times, activist spoke the heavy language of civil rights and emancipation. Drawing comparisons between the nonsmokers Rights Movement and the africanamerican struggle. Of endocytemage saved lincoln who proclaim the nonsmokers heres an image of an ersatz aid lincoln heres an image lincoln who abe proclaimed the emancipation of nonsmokers. The cofounder of the berkeley chapter of gasp put it this way although i would not suggest that nonsmokers rights are trampled on to the same extent as have been the rights of minority groups, i would suggest certain parallels. After all, he wondered, is there any real difference between saying to a person you cannot eat at this lunch counter and saying you cannot eat at this lunch counter if you are concerned about your health or if you want to enjoy your lunch . Consciousness raising was yet another tool for increasing nonsmokers sense of grievance. As powerfully expressed by contemporary feminists, consciousnessraising brought the hidden indignities of private experience out into the open where they could be located in a structural critique of power and patriarchy. For a long time, many nonsmokers had felt individually annoyed by smoking but had suffered in silence, gouin explained in a 1972 profile. People are more likely to speak out when they know that others feel the same way. The fact that nonsmokers comprise the majority of the population made speaking out a lower risk proposition than minority activism, but physical suffering itself ennobled the nonsmokers cause, opening up avenues for analogies to the liberation struggles of other oppressed peoples, and ask for suggested by the very name, the nonsmokers rights inspiration drew energy from the environmental Rights Movement, pointing out that some of the chemical compounds present in ambient tobacco smoke would fall under the epas regulatory ambit had they been emitted from actual smokestacks. Unbeknownst to donna at the time, these nonsmokers rights activists were beginning to achieve their first successes. By the time the new Jersey Superior Court ruled on her case, just over 100 cities had passed some of the first ordinances that restricted where people could smoke mostly in public buildings. Nonsmokers rights activists had, by the mid1970s developed a vocabulary of entitlement and a theory of harm, and they have found venues within the american political system that allowed them to assert what they deemed to be there rights. In inventing the nonsmoker, social activism, not scientific pronouncement, began to clear the air. Substantial epidemiological evidence about their physical harms brought to nonsmokers by other peoples smoke by other peoples smoke would not emerge until the 1980s. They would not run through law and public policy, at least not at first, but through the private sector. After her courtroom victory, not but changed for anybody her. Her ruling applied only to her over the next few years when nonsmoking employees brought suit against their employers, courts repeatedly failed to rule in their favor. Donnas case served as president , donna herself failed as president , donna herself was determined to change the way people work. She began an afterhours career as a workplace consultant. In the 1970s, the field of Management Consulting was not yet perceived as launching pad for the young and i be educated and donna jumped right in. She called her business Environmental Associates incorporated. It was dedicated to improving the indoor work environment, and her firm aimed to create demand for the services that only it could provide. That is, and trying to convince a business to take seriously the issue of workplace smoking and thereby to hire the firm, donna shimp pointed to the legal case. Ities created by her environmental provement associates pointed to the costs arising from potential nonsmoker litigation as a reason for employers to consider voluntarily adopting workplace smoking rules. s case for smokefree workplaces converged on a single argument smoking, and quite often smokers, cost too much. They were bad employees. They destroyed equipment. They took frequent breaks to feed their habit, and they were sidelined with sickness. Had broached this argument in her unsolicited proposal to bell, but she would hone it over the upcoming years. Nonsmoking activist did not so much convince employees employers to eliminate smoking in the name of health as they convince them to eliminate smoking employees and the liability created in the name of the corporate ledger. Is there any, better way to interest management and restricting smoking them through the bottom line . The promise of corporate health, not employee health, encouraged as an assist to adopt smoking restrictions and bands, even when there was no law forcing them to do so. Official government channels adopted this line as well. The introduction to the 1979 Surgeon Generals report argued that steps of action on cigarettes was necessary because an individuals smoking habits and located every taxpayer. Lost productivity, wages, absenteeism caused by smoking related illness put the tally close to 12 billion. Within a decade, the Business Case for nonsmoking had begun to bear fruit. A nationwide Business Survey found that 54 of responding businesses had adopted workplace smoking restrictions and 85 percent had adopted them within the past three years. Such restrictions gathered their own momentum. Workplace smoking restrictions not only decreased nonsmokers exposure to tobacco, they also create more nonsmokers because they help people quit smoking. Rights activism did not simply clear smokefilled rooms. It created new chambers of power where new tobacco rules were made. The new Jersey Superior Court, the Human Resources departments of large companies, state and legislative houses, city councils, and thousands of cities across the united states, all of these places have done more to vindicate the right to smokefree air than the federal government. If donna shimp brought suit today, she would find is still the case that osha and the epa do not regulate indoor smoking. The patchwork system that exists in the country is a vastly uneven one. Smokers are poorer and less educated than nonsmokers, and poor nonsmokers are more likely to suffer from tobaccorelated disease that nonsmokers with more money. Bluecollar workers are more likely to go to work at worksites where smoking is permitted. In 19 states, it is legal to fire or refuse to hire someone because she smokes, a kind of permission for business that reinforces the existence of an underclass of poor smokers. This, too, is the legacy of Business Case for nonsmoking, a legacy of the nonsmokers Rights Movement. Just as the physical consequence to smoking could not be contained in just the body of the smoker, the american body was forced to reckon with the secondary effects of smokefilled rooms. What can we learn from thinking about the rise and all of cigarettes in American Life as a product of social movements . For most of the 20th century, the federal government has been hostile to regulating cigarettes on behalf of consumers. There is, in that rather to showng statement, that action can be taken at the local level, action that can be substantial in its own right and can service pressured on the road. Whats more, one of the primary levers that nonsmokers pulled on to vindicate their demands for rights were not those of government at all but of workplaces and private business. Here, too, we see an opening for activists today. In response to mass shootings, dix ports stopped all gun sales, and walmart haunted the sale of halted the sale of rifles and ammunition. Equally important in a parallel drawn from the nonsmokers Rights Movement are decisions made by businesses to ban the open carry of guns. Big chains like walmart, cvs, and kroger have begun to ask customers to refrain from open carry in their stores, even with open carry is legal. Small Stores Across america have also taken a page out of the antitobacco playbook, posting with the red dash circles. Such displays do not just declare store policy. As nonsmokers rights activists understood decades ago, such displays serve as a consciousnessraising tool, drawing forth a sense of entitlement to comply to control public space. Cigaretteesson of the , nonsmokers rights activists operated within constraints. One of those was a political and Economic System that measured the worth of a citizen by his or her cost to the state or employer. Although nonsmokers rights activists like donna shimp asserted they had a right to comfort and shared space, the the cigarette was irresistible. It is now thought of as a private vice and private failing, unnecessarily stigmatizing overtones when you consider people who smoke tend to be poorer and less educated than those who do not. Activists today continue to find the social cost of disease framing irresistible, especially for the obesity epidemic and the opioid epidemic, two industrially produced diseases that disproportionately affect people with lower incomes. Factlthier society may in be cheaper in the long run, but the Business Case will not produce justice for those who suffer from the diseases of modern life. Finally, it is not possible to talk about tobacco today without talking about vaping. In juul,as 35 stake when we talk about vaping, we are after all talking about the Tobacco Industry. The Tobacco Companies hired their own lobbyists and statehouses to thwart legislation, using what are known as preemptive laws. The Tobacco Industry worked to render local ordinances less effective by passing weaker laws at the state level. Once past, these preemption laws are difficult to repeal, in part because they tamp down on enthusiasm for grassroots organizing. The Public Health vaping industry has shown interest in taking the power to regulate ecigarettes out of the hands of the colonies and putting it back and statehouses, but the history of tobacco shows accessible levers of power can also be the most effective. Vigorous assertion of local control over vaping is good for Public Health and good for democracy. The political history of the cigarette suggests meaningful social change takes a long time. Often decades of work by people and organizations that are overworked, unheralded, maybe even derided in their own time. It also reminds us that activists operate within constraints in a world not entirely of their own making. The case for nonsmokers rights was ultimately democratic and at times elitist, a fitting paradox perhaps for recasting a product that simultaneously relaxes and simulates stimulates. The system invites our empathy and courage to imagine a different future. Thank you. [applause] i would be happy to take questions. Theres microphones on either side. I dont think i need a microphone. [inaudible] i think for the close captioning, its a good thing to do. Hi, good morning. Thank you for being here. Wasnted to ask you, there an earlier analogy that was made in terms of civil rights and the rights of nonsmokers in terms of impressing their agenda. What is your personal perspective on that, and do you feel that it was a legitimate association or analogy . I think that, given the context of the 1970s, nonsmokers rights activists were in search of a vocabulary that in old there because, and the most morally and no bold their cause and the most morally hefty vocabulary of the day was the africanamerican struggle, the civil Rights Movement in search of a vocabulary that ennobled their cause. The extent to which i think it is legitimate i suppose that cuts in a couple of directions. First, nonsmokers did feel themselves to be oppressed. That oppression is clearly not the same thing that experiencedicans an under jim crow but perhaps was born out of a similar feeling that they felt they should be able to exist in public spaces they felt themselves exiled from. In sad irony is that achieving control over a public space, what ends up happening to smokers that is they themselves are exiled from a shared common space that is the movement unfolded meant that people who were exiled a smokers tended to be poor and less educated. I think that they were strategic in their use of that language, and more than just strategic, it resonated with them because they there were unintended classist consequences. Yes, thanks for a wonderful presentation. I was wondering if your book delves into the marketing aspects. I know that with the juuls appealing to children now, there is pushback against the marketing of it, and joe campbell, of course, was thought to be too cute for adults, thought to be aimed at children. How does the political structure deal with the marketing and the appeal . Risk of maybethe you not buying my book, the marketing of cigarettes is not a primary focus of the book, but i have thought of what the history of cigarettes can tell us about what is going on with juul. The Tobacco Industry, like perhaps the ecigarettes and juul today, they realized their product was appealing to young people, and they realized that most of their customers started when they were children, so it was important to attract young people, and there were all sorts of ways that they did so. A sickly prior to the 1990s. Too, abouteresting, the lessons of the tobacco ecigarette regulations now is in the history of the cigarette, you actually see companies exceeding acceding and giving into thatatory demands in a way juul has agreed to give up certain marketing practices. In the late 1960s, antitobacco activists basically secured the right to free airtime on television to run antitobacco ads, and these were really emotionally powerful. They packed a wallet. This is the first time people had really seen Public Health advertising on tv and Public Health advertising on tv that dealt with death in a meaningful way. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these are on television and a 3one ratio. For every three tobacco advertisements that are on television, one antitobacco advertisement is on television, and the Companies Get together out. Asically say, we are we do not want to be dogged by this antitobacco advertising, so we are going to back off of television. We will agree to a broadcast band. And they put that money into other types of advertising. You see Strategic Decisions made on the part of business to give in ones activism against to be successful, and i do wonder what parallels exist in juuls decision to stop marketing. Thank you. Do you talk about in your book the complicity of the medical community . Can you explain that . Johns hopkins ashtrays, as an example. Of milov again, at the risk you not purchasing the book, i will say thats not a primary focus of what i work on, but what i think is fair to say and what has been really well explored by some other scholars, Robert Proctor in particular has titledevocative lee golden holocaust that explores basically the Tobacco Industrys use of what you can think of as scientists for hire. Basically beginning in the 1950s, the Tobacco Industry, the major cigarette manufacturers came together and decided to pursue the strategy of creating doubt, and doubt would be the way they would avoid regulation. One way was to give money to scientists who were researching either topics unrelated to tobacco or methods of research that they felt would exonerate the cigarette, so you do see a large number of not just physicians but other types of receiving tobacco grant money, and the Tobacco Industry saying, well, these weentists agree with us, and sponsor research. Andre genuinely interested finding the answer to the question that was really no longer a question, as to if cigarettes cause disease. Hi, im curious about how individual smokers or groups of smokers may have responded to this activism. Like people get smoke breaks at their jobs now. Can you speak a little bit more to that . Yeah, one thing i did not get to talk about in this presentation, but it is an important part of the donna are the role of unions. Donna shimps union and unions large isost part at pretty opposed to the assertion of nonsmokers rights because ability ofee is the an individual worker to subvert the hardwon bargaining which, which it is is supposed to be governing the rules at work. Unions had bargained for this right to take a break at work. The Business Case is really anathema to what unions represent in a sense. It is not a productive use of time. It is not supposed to make you more productive. It is just a habit you should be able to do because you are a human being or at least the kind of romantic case for smoking on the job. For a very long time, you see to thisce by unions type of individual activism. What is taking place on the ground is considerably more ofplex in these kind highlevel proclamations by the executive committee of unions. The fact now and the fact then was, i think, that most smokers did not desire to be smokers. The notion that nonsmokers rights activism might be countered with smokers rights activism never really materialized, though that was very much the goal of the Tobacco Companies who tried to create these essentially smokers rights groups, astroturf and the of groups, but by 1970s, but really by the 1980s and 1990s, people dont want to be smokers, so while they might not welcome a band, while it might be inconvenient, it does ultimately result in fewer people smoking and a greater number of nonsmokers. Thank you. Would you say and looking at antijuul, with the e, are there Different Actors and front now in front now, like the donna shimp of that era . Ms. Milov that is an interesting question. With juul specifically, there are many of the same actors. Ia, which is philip morris, owns a 35 stake. I think i read this week that juuls ceo stepped down. [inaudible] anti so,he people in Public Health in the 1990s, two thousands on the forefront of antitobacco activism, those institutions continue to be important. Nstitutions in opposing juul in the institution of in the interest of full disclosure, one of, andion i had a post at theacco think tank university of california san francisco, they have been on the forefront. They were actors in the nonsmokers Rights Movement, a legacy in the berkeley gasp chapter. Some of those same actors are now part of this antitobacco think tank that has been very much on the forefront of researching the harms of ecigarette use as well as what the industry itself is doing. Well, if there are not any further questions, i would like to thank you for being a wonderful audience and for letting me share my work with you. [applause] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter, cspanhistory, for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. You can watch archival domes each week archival films each week on our series reel america. Here is a quick look at one of our recent programs. And there are many different kinds of them, can be scattered with each particle of saliva and mucus. When one sneezes or coughs for example. But do not think for a moment that cold and viruses are spread only by sneezing and coughing. If by some magic, the tiny particles of saliva and mucus could be made visible as a black smudge, we quickly would realize and how many other ways we are apt to scatter bacteria and viruses all around us. For instance, jane here has a cold. At that smudge. Look at those germs she leaves on the doorknob. Them up. Is bob picking bob, his hand now covered with germs picked up from that doorknob, transfers them to a book. Sue, having a bad habit of wetting her finger to turn pages, carries the germs from the book and then passes them along with a pencil to anne. Anne carries them home and leaves them on the familys dinner table. Yes, even during an ordinary conversation, saliva and mucus particles escape our mouths and easily reach others who inhale as they breathe. Just remember how breath becomes visible on a cold day. How, then, with so many germs surrounding us, can we avoid having colds all the time . Fortunately, our body has defenses against this enemy. Normally, we breathe through our nose. The nose, as well as the sinuses are lined with a delicate membrane. If under a microscope, you look at the lining of the nose we call it the nasal membrane you can see it is covered with tiny moving threads. These are called cilia. They move back and forth like stalks of grain when a wind blows over a field. The cilia are covered with a warm, moist, sticky substance called mucus. The nose usually secretes about a quart of this liquid every 24 hours. And mucus, by warming moistening the air we breathe in , prepares it for our lungs. The mucus also catches and destroys microorganisms. That is bacteria and viruses. Cold, dont stay in school. Because if you do, you may send cold. Home with your cold, stay home. Stay in bed. This is the prescription which common sense and medical science recommend. Medicine, but only those your doctor prescribes. You can watch archival films on Public Affairs in their entirety on our weekly series america here on American History tv. Bryancontinue our look at and college station, texas, as valley. Re the brazos this museum has been in our community for almost exceed years, and it is an important part of the community because we highlight the local natural history, local cultural history, and even some of the local
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