There was a time not too many years ago that major cigarette companies actively battled many of the anti-smoking legislative initiatives throughout the country. Intense government scrutiny of the industry and its marketing practices, combined with efforts of anti-smoking groups to "unmask" tobacco companies' involvement (i.e. financial support) behind smoker's rights organizations proved to be a politically volatile mix. How dare a tobacco company create a pro-smoker's rights organization! As a result, bad science took over the second-hand smoke debate - with conflicting or inconclusive evidence about the dangers of side-stream and second-hand smoke drowned out by a well-organized and extremely vocal "anti-tobacco industry." So much for efforts to promote compromise agendas, accommodating both smokers and non-smokers. These days, even tobacco shops and cigar clubs must fight for their customers' ability to smoke on premise: is there really a need to place a non-smoker's desires ahead of a smoker's inside of a tobacco shop? Or a cigar bar?

In the absence of a nationwide pro-smoker's rights organization, the role of trade associations like the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO) and the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America (RTDA) has evolved from strictly retailing issue to broader smoking rights issues. There is also power in numbers. Rallying dozens of retailers in a state to speak up about legislation that would severely curtail their businesses takes on a whole new dimension when thousands of customers of those same stores are enlisted to defend their rights as citizens, their voice as voters, their status as an unfairly taxed minority.

In the last issue of Smokeshop (April 2005), we reported on the RTDA's expanded efforts on the legislative front, and introduced the industry to the association's new legislative director. This month, we present a profile on NATO, and its own well-oiled legislative program which has, in many ways, served as model for other trade groups, including the RTDA. In fact, a number of tobacco trade associations recognize the need to work in tandem to achieve many of the same goals, and it is welcome news to see a willingness among the trade group's leaders to share strategies in the spirit of teamwork.

But none of these organizations can do their jobs without the support of retailers - both as members and as active participants in the legislative process in their own state. Get your store's customers involved as well, and put the "strength in numbers" theory to work.

E. Edward Hoyt III