Thoughts on the Co-op Going Smoke-Free by 2010

There is currently only one member of the National Cooperative Grocers Association that sells cigarettes – and, as of January 1, 2009, there will be none. At its August meeting, the Board of your cooperative voted to end the sale of tobacco products and, perhaps more significantly, to make the facilities of the Co-op entirely smoke-free by 2010.

Writing about these changes presents a particular challenge for me as president. I personally favor making the Co-op smoke-free, but the Board overall was quite divided on the subject. Five board members voted "yes," three voted "no," and one abstained. If non-unanimous decisionmaking is a sign of thriving democracy, then the Co-op's governance is certainly vibrant at present.

Having participated in the Board's discussions, I can report that two aspects of this subject were especially challenging for our organization's elected leaders.

The first was the Co-op's longstanding tradition of educating customers about products rather than limiting their availability. Arguments about boycotts have contributed to the demise of other food co-ops; ours has a policy of not going there. I personally see boycotts as unrelated to the products themselves but, rather, as an effort to influence or express disapproval of their producers. A famous example is the grape boycotts led by labor activist Cesar Chavez in the 1970s to improve the lot of farmworkers. Unlike grapes, tobacco accounts for one in ten deaths worldwide and, unlike wine or fatty foods, cannot be enjoyed harmlessly in moderation.

The second issue with which the Board wrestled was even more difficult. The "smoke-free" initiative is modeled after a similar program recently adopted by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), which does not permit smoking anywhere on its property and is committed to offering its employees meaningful assistance with smoking cessation. Our policy makes that commitment both to employees and members generally.

But, as the Valley News pointed out in its editorial urging us not to go smoke-free, DHMC is a healthcare provider and thus discouraging the use of tobacco is central to its mission. The connection to the Co-op's purposes, while real, is somewhat more attenuated. We know that a significant minority of the Co-op's employees use tobacco and, in a state famous for libertarian inclinations, the freedom-of-choice argument loomed large. At the most practical level, our employees are the key to our success and so we don't want any of them to decide they must either quit smoking or quit the Co-op.

As medical ethicist Allan Brandt of Harvard Medical School notes in his 2007 book The Cigarette Century, which traces the history of the product, when even the tobacco companies could no longer plausibly claim that the deadly effects of their product were in dispute, they shifted their strategy to fomenting public controversy about freedom of choice. The irony, as Brandt points out, is that cigarettes were specifically designed to addict their users and thus prevent them from choosing not to smoke.

I believe I can speak for the entire Board in saying that our intention is not to limit anyone's choices. We want to educate members and employees about the health effects of tobacco, we want to help them choose to stop smoking if they would like, and we want to use the next 13 months to make the difficult transition from an organization that facilitates smoking to one that does not.

As is appropriate for a policymaking body, we consign to the Co-op’s competent and principled management team the challenging task of implementing the new tobacco policy. Like the Board, they, too, are divided on the merits of the change. But, at every level of our organization, when we move forward on a controversial question in a publicly accountable way, while treating each other tenderly, we show the world what the “cooperative difference” truly is. May that be the touchstone as the longstanding connection between the Co-op and tobacco draws to a close.