[media-credit name=’RAY PFEIFFER/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]The governor's mansion was a celebratory smoke-free zone Thursday night, as the American Cancer Society held its 30th annual Great American Smokeout at Gov. Jim Doyle's house.

But the governor played more than host as he was presented with the Lynn R. Smith Award for his achievements in controlling tobacco use.

"As governor, [Doyle] has been a strong leader and great friend to the American Cancer Society and the tobacco-control community," said Carleen Wild, director of development for the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center. "In February 2005, he signed the order making all state office buildings smoke-free, and his support has never slowed down."

Doyle, who was re-elected last week to his second term as governor, tried a case against Big Tobacco during his tenure as Wisconsin's attorney general. Doyle said the ACS was there "without question" to talk about the lawsuit and support him in the prosecution of the case.

"I would love to be a governor that signs a real ban in the state of Wisconsin," he said. "But I've also said I'm not going to sign a ban unless the American Cancer Society is standing right next to me saying this is something that really is going to improve the health of the people in this state."

Doyle added that people will look back at this period in time as "one of history's great social changes."

Lynn Smith, who died last year, was a newspaper editor in Minnesota who founded Don't Smoke Day in 1974. The event caught on Nov. 18, 1976, in California when the California Division of the American Cancer Society succeeded in persuading nearly 1 million smokers to quit for the day — becoming the first Great American Smokeout.

In all, 30 Wisconsinites were honored Thursday in a list that included: former Wisconsin First Lady Sue Ann Thompson, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Chris Haywood, who helped organize a smoke-free movement on university campuses.

Haywood was the marketing specialist of an anti-smoking campaign called "You Know You Want To," which started in 2002 on the UW-Oshkosh campus. A majority of UW System campuses now have completely smoke-free buildings, with UW-Baraboo being smoke-free inside and out and with UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison setting 30- and 25-foot smoke-free perimeters, respectively, around university buildings.

"We used a social norms campaign and didn't do any negative talking to the students," Haywood said. "Social norms means you show most people choose positive behavior, turning everything into a positive."

Haywood added the campaign, which has expanded nationally, shows how many students smoked and how many wanted to quit, and that 97 percent said they wanted to quit before they graduated.

And with last week's addition of Arizona, Nevada and Ohio, there are now 23 smoke-free states.

"The bad news is as we sit and stand here today, more than 44 million Americans are still smoking, putting themselves at risk not only for lung cancer but all cancers, as well as … heart disease, stroke and a lot of other ailments," Wild said.

Wild added that lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths and that 7,300 Wisconsinites will die from tobacco-related ailments this year.

But Doyle said getting people to stop smoking provides fiscal advantages along with health advantages.

"But this isn't about the dollars and cents of it … it's about quality of life, and it's about people being able to live good strong healthy lives," Doyle said.

In line with his re-election, Doyle named a transition team Thursday to look for personnel vacancies and recruit people to fill them.

Michael Morgan, secretary of the state Department of Revenue, will head the transition team. Other transition team members include Jason Helgerson, executive assistant at the state Department of Health and Family Services; Aaron Olver, senior advisor for the Office of the Governor; and Jennifer Donnelly, division administrator at the state Department of Administration.