Coalition for a Smoke-Free City

The New York Coalition for a Smoke-Free City—an initiative conceived by Geto & de Milly and anti-smoking pioneer Joseph Cherner and comprised of the American Cancer Society, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and dozens of other health institutions and advocates—relied exclusively on Geto & de Milly for public and government relations counsel in its successful fight to ban smoking in public places.

We implemented a hard-hitting PR campaign, placing favorable op-ed pieces and garnering supportive editorials, planning and managing highly creative media events, and sponsoring an anti-smoking poster design contest for elementary school students that sparked extensive media coverage (winning poster appears on the right). After making many inroads in the 1990s against public smoking and easy access to cigarettes by children, when Mayor Bloomberg first took office in 2002 he retained Geto & de Milly to create the messaging for his Administration’s initiative to expand the reach of smoking bans to all workplaces and other places of public accommodation such as restaurants and bars. We are extremely proud to have contributed to this pioneering public health initiative.