Daily Doc: PM, Oct 1987: Minnesota Legislative Action Plan
Daily Doc: Minnesota Legislative Action Plan
Title: Minnesota Legislative Action Plan
PM, Oct 1987
Bates #: 2021266701/6723
June 4, 2000
The effectiveness of anti-tobacco activism in state of Minnesota has long presented a problem to the tobacco industry, which by the late 1980s had been losing legislative battles in Minnesota that it was routinely able to win in other states. They needed to figure out why.
This report discusses the reasons why things weren't going the tobacco industry's way in Minnesota, and what they planned about it. It is a road map for how to control Minnesota's state legislature and the media.
CITATION
Title: Minnesota Legislative Action Plan
Type of Document: Report
Author: State Activities Division (presumably of the Tobacco Institute) Recipient: N/A
Date: 19871000
Company/Site: Philip Morris document site http://www.pmdocs.com/
Bates No. 2021266701/6723
Page Count: 23
URL: http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2021266701/6723
Legislative use: MN selected
QUOTES
The purpose of this report is...to implement a plan which will help ensure future industry success in Minnesota....
Programs outlined in the following pages are ambition and "people-intensive." They cannot be put in place overnight. As noted in the report, emphasis will be placed on tobacco industry personal/political relationships with key lawmakers, in conjunction with continuing legislative grassroots program.
Background
Minnesota, the first state to enact a Clean Indoor Air Act (1975), has been dogged in its legislative assaults on the tobacco industry. What makes the state so anti-tobacco?
...It would be easy to over-generalize and say merely because it is Minnesota that there is nothing we can do about our legislative plight. We do not believe this is the case and will make recommendations on how to deal with the situation in that state...
The Anti-Tobacco Climate
...
The Anti's Play Their Trump
...Under the guise of health issues, Sister Mary Madonna was able to utilize the services of a U.S. Surgeon General for a series of health conferences that extolled the virtues of a smokeless workplace, using thousands of state employees as guinea pigs in their "noble experiment."...
Industry Response...
Here is a summary of our grassroots activities during the 1987 legislative session:
From April 6, 1987, to adjournment, a continuous, six-day-per-week phone bank was targeted specifically to Tax Committee members in the House and Senate. This...coordinated stream of calls was directed to retailers, wholesalers, all retail tobacco licensees and local activists. An initial 6,700 post cards were mailed to selected retail contacts supplied by R.J. Reynolds. An extensive letter-writing program was generated by Philip Morris... A second wave of Philip Morris targeted letter-writing was a mailing of 10,000 packets to previous volunteers urging hand-written letters to legislators in both houses... The third wave of Philip Morris targeted letter-writing was a re-contact program...Each person was urged to contact his or her legislator by utilizing the state legislative "hot line." The final phase of Philip Morris activity was a request to each sales force employee to contact his or her state legislator urging a defeat of a tax increase. An extensive and comprehensive phone bank program was conducted with several thousand contacts in 18 legislative districts...This effort was activated and executed within a 36-hour period, producing a response equaling or exceeding 25 strong commitments for legislative contact, per district. To emphasize the bootlegging issue, a phone bank effort was directed at convenience stores located along Minnesota's borders with Wisconsin, IOwa, North Dakota and South Dakota. An additional 20,000 post cards were printed and distributed by wholesale, retail and member company personnel. The post card's theme: "Enough is enough!"
...Even though we blanketed the state with industry-generated, professionally prepared, targeted and timed grassroots activity, the missing factor was the human component....
...The tobacco industry has not developed any local political identity...We remain an alien corporate entity, not a voter. This will change. A legislator must identify the tobacco industry as a local interest group: a tobacco wholesaler, a tobacco retailer, a vendor...Unless a legislator can identify with our industry in the form of an individual, it is very easy for that legislator to vote against the industry without any fear of local accountability.
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