Tobacco companies to fight tobacco tax increase measure
On Aug 18, 5:17 pm, wrote:
On Aug 18, 4:34 pm, MEG wrote:
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On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:
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News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007
Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.
Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.
Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.
"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."
Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.
Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.
"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.
"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."
Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."
Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.
Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.
(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.
Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.
Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.
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Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.
Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.
As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret...
Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.
A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
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According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
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