Bloomberg Gives Millions to Anti-Smoking Efforts
Robert Broughton
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: August 15, 2006
Taking a significant step toward becoming a full-time philanthropist
after leaving office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pledged today to spend
$125 million of his own money to build a global anti-smoking campaign.
The donation, to be funneled to existing organizations over two years,
is the largest single contribution to global tobacco-control efforts,
anti-smoking advocates said. And beyond that, it shows how Mr.
Bloomberg, who made banning smoking in bars and restaurants a focus of
his first term, plans to amplify his work in office as he begins
building his charitable foundation.
"I think we've learned some important things about how we convince
people to stop smoking," Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at NBC
television studios. "It is one of the world's biggest killers and it has
sadly been overlooked by the philanthropic community."
Under the plan, Mr. Bloomberg would spend the money to create and
support programs aimed at helping the world become tobacco free. The
campaign would use several approaches, including developing and
expanding quitting and prevention programs, encouraging the adoption of
New York-style tobacco taxes and smoking bans, and designing a system to
track tobacco use and efforts to stop it worldwide.
The campaign would also work to change the image of tobacco, support
efforts to educate communities about its harms, create a global
clearinghouse for anti-tobacco ads and bring together a legal consortium
to assist in drafting and passing legislation. A spokesman for Mr.
Bloomberg, Robert Lawson, declined to identify the organizations the
campaign would work with, saying that arrangements had yet to be made
final.
Mr. Bloomberg, one of the country's richest people, has long said that
he plans to give away the bulk of his fortune, estimated by Forbes this
year at $5.1 billion, and he has been steadily increasing his
philanthropic giving. In 1997, he gave $26.6 million to charity; last
year, he ranked seventh among the nation's philanthropists in a survey
conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, giving away $144 million.
Over the years, he has often made large gifts to academic or
health-oriented institutions -- the School of Public Health at Johns
Hopkins University, where he was an undergraduate, now bears his name --
and a series of smaller, ostensibly anonymous gifts to arts and social
service groups.
This time, however, Mr. Bloomberg said it made more sense to announce
his plans, both out of a desire to attract people with good ideas to his
efforts and because once it became part of a foundation, people would
find out anyway. Mr. Bloomberg is in the midst of buying a $45 million
mansion on the Upper East Side to house the foundation, which is likely
to focus on his primary areas of interest, including education, the arts
and public health, perhaps as first among equals.
Speaking of the foundation, he said: "I plan to try to focus my
resources where we can make a difference in improving the health and the
quality of life of people in New York City, in the state, in the country
and even around the world."
Public health advocates greeted news of Mr. Bloomberg's plan with praise.
Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of epidemiology at St. Michael's Hospital
at the University of Toronto and an expert on tobacco control, said that
if the money was spent the right way, it could make a tremendous
difference in curtailing tobacco use.
"If Mayor Bloomberg can help governments take tobacco seriously, then it
will have an impact," he said. "Once governments take tobacco seriously,
they can figure out that there are a few really effective
interventions." Those include raising the price of tobacco through
taxes, clean air laws that restrict public smoking, prominent warning
labels and clear information about the consequences of tobacco use.
Dr. Jha said the fact that Mr. Bloomberg was getting up on an
"international soapbox and speaking about tobacco" was a contribution in
itself. But he cautioned that the money should be used to help build
public consensus about tobacco dangers and political support for
tackling them, especially in poor countries with high smoking rates.
"The details matter," he said. If the money is well spent and focused on
countries like India, China, Nigeria and Indonesia rather than on
institutional overhead in the West, he said, "you could have a real bang
for the buck."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/nyregion/15cnd-bloom.html
--
Bob Broughton
http://broughton.ca/
Vancouver, BC, Canada
"It should be legal for a private maternity ward to permit smoking."
- Chuck Wright, May 22, 2006