Even some supporters of Amendment 35 describe it as "a bad idea whose time
has come."
We join them in urging an
emphatic "Yes" vote on the Nov. 2 ballot to raise the state's tobacco
tax and use the proceeds to fund vital state health programs.
Colorado's existing cigarette
tax of 20 cents per pack is the lowest in the nation - considering that Colorado,
amazingly, exempts tobacco products from the sales tax levied on far more vital
products ranging from baby diapers to school supplies.
The proposed increase of
64 cents per pack would raise Colorado's cigarette tax to 84 cents, still below
the national average of 98 cents. (The tax on other tobacco products such as
cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff and chewing tobacco would increase from 20 percent
of manufacturers' list price to 40 percent - again, within national averages.)
If it passes, Amendment
35 is expected to raise about $175 million a year, with 46 percent ($80.5 million)
earmarked to the Child Health Plan Plus program (CHP+) and the state Medicaid
fund. This is an extraordinarily smart use of the money because Washington matches
Medicaid appropriations dollar for dollar and provides $2 for each state dollar
in the CHP+ program. Thus, federal matching would more than double the revenue
raised for these programs locally.
The ballot initiative would
allocate 19 percent to community health centers across the state, and 16 percent,
or $28 million, for prevention and treatment of smoking-related illnesses like
cancer and heart and lung diseases. Another 16 percent would go to tobacco education
and anti-smoking programs.
All these programs make
sense, so what's the "bad idea" we talked about? Well, we wish it
weren't necessary to forge a constitutional amendment in order to fund such
basic services. However, the 1992 TABOR amendment, which has already cut state
health services, has an idiotic "downward ratchet" that virtually
forced Amendment 35's sponsors to give their plan equal constitutional status
with TABOR. Otherwise, authorization to spend the new revenue would have been
wiped in the next economic downturn.
Wisely, Amendment 35's sponsors
specified that the legislature could trim the specified funding levels in a
future fiscal crisis such as struck Colorado in 2002 and 2003.
The tobacco industry has
been mounting a low-key campaign against Amendment 35, though nothing so far
to match the $5 million assault it spent to defeat a similar initiative in 1994.
The industry counter-attack includes the claim that raising the tobacco tax
would reduce cigarette sales so much that revenues to local governments would
drop by more than the 3 percent share of the new tax that Amendment 35 specifically
earmarks to local governments to compensate them for just such losses.
Frankly, we'd welcome a
modest revenue loss if it meant less smoking-related illness.
A "Yes" vote for
Amendment 35 will provide money for badly needed health programs while discouraging
teenagers from ever taking up the deadly tobacco addiction.
