The Diffusion of Local Antismoking Policies

This paper examines the decisions of the 675 largest U.S. cities about when and whether to adopt three types of antismoking policies between 1975 and 2000. Placed in the context of horizontal and vertical policy diffusion, cities were more likely to adopt government building and youth access restrictions if their nearest neighbors and other cities in the state had already adopted such measures. City governments were likely to adopt restaurant restrictions, however, only if their nearest larger neighbor had adopted such a restriction first, without regard to more distant localities. For all types of policies, state laws reduced the likelihood of local adoptions, dramatically so when the state law included a preemption clause. All of these diffusion results were strongest for smaller cities, with major cities acting fairly independently of other cities or of the state government. Finally, we find strong evidence of venue shopping, with cities adopting laws when state legislature is unlikely to do so – when, at the state level, tobacco lobbyists are strong, health organizations are weak, and the government leans in a conservative direction. * Prepared for presentation at the 2005 Midwest Political Science Association conference, Chicago, IL, April 7-10. The authors would like to thank Jacob Nelson, Tracy Finlayson, and Chad Diefenderfer for valuable research assistance, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for financial support, and Jamie Chriqui for providing us with the updated version of the National Cancer Institute’s State Cancer Legislative Database. In addition, local tobacco control ordinance data was provided by the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation Local Tobacco Control Ordinance Database.