David Hughes’ story
has been told a million times before. But it’s a story that needs repeating.
Hughes started smoking in
1970 when he was in high school in New Mexico. It was the cool, rebellious thing
to do, and with cigarettes costing about 50 cents a pack, smokes were cheap
and easy to come by. While he quit in 1978, he picked up the habit again in
the ’90s. The craving wouldn’t go away.
Two years ago, Hughes found
a lump in his neck. He was diagnosed with cancer in his tongue and the lymph
nodes in his neck.
Hughes began radiation treatments
twice a day and chemotherapy once a week. He was forced to eat through a tube
in his stomach. He lived in a morphine-induced coma, hardly able to communicate
with his wife and 8-year-old son. He lost 25 percent of his body weight and
looked like a skeleton with skin. Eventually the doctors had to surgically remove
a large section of his neck.
Hughes was lucky. He survived.
Now he’s campaigning for state Amendment 35 to prevent others from suffering
the way he did.
"I got involved because
I am interested in doing anything to reduce people smoking," says Hughes.
"And I don’t mind telling my story because I don’t want other
people to go through that."
Amendment 35 supporters
say the measure will help to prevent stories like Hughes’ and do much more.
The amendment would raise the excise tax on cigarettes in Colorado by 64 cents
and raise the tax on other tobacco products by 20 percent. The $175 million
raised annually by the tax increase would go primarily to expanding public health
insurance and supporting community health clinics, with additional funds going
toward tobacco education and cessation and cancer, lung- and heart-disease research.
"Amendment 35 is all
about saving lives. It will raise the tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products
in Colorado and use the money to fund seriously needed health-care programs,"
says Edie Sonn, communications director for Citizens for a Healthier Colorado,
which is supporting Amendment 35. "But we also really want to keep kids
from smoking. And there’s just a raft of studies that demonstrate that
when you raise the price of cigarettes, kids are much less likely to start smoking.
Every year in Colorado 10,800 kids become regular smokers. And one of every
three people who start smoking as a teen will die from smoking-related disease."
Currently Colorado has the
lowest cigarette tax in the country-and that’s largely because of the cozy
relationship between the tobacco companies and politicians who’ve repeatedly
worked to block tobacco tax increases, says Sonn.
While polls have suggested
voters are supporting Amendment 35, strong opposition is mounting against the
tax increase. This includes the likes of Protect Our Constitution: Vote "No"
on #35 Committee, which has received in-kind contributions from tobacco companies
and the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank based in Golden. The
arguments against Amendment 35 have nothing to do with the dangers of smoking,
says Linda Gorman, Independence Institute Senior Fellow. Gorman says the main
problem with Amendment 35 is that it would further complicate Colorado’s
tax woes by placing an inflexible tax law into the constitution.
"The constitution is
the wrong place to put tax and spending authority. That should repose with the
legislature," says Gorman.
As for putting a new tax
in the constitution, Sonn says that’s the only way to keep the legislature
from using the new tax revenue for other purposes.
"You don’t take
lightly amending the constitution," says Sonn. "But the reason we
are doing it as a constitutional amendment is that is the only way we can guarantee
that the funds will be used as the voters intend."
BW position: Tobacco is
a harmful, addictive drug. Unlike opiates and marijuana, it has no useful medical
application. Tobacco companies make a killing with their product, and taxpayers
end up footing much of the bill through our health clinics and higher insurance
premiums for cancer deaths, heart disease, pulmonary disease and other diseases
related to tobacco use. Currently, Colorado ranks dead last in its taxation
of tobacco products. It makes sense, particularly in a time of budget set-backs,
to confront Big Tobacco with taxes that discourage smoking and that support
health-care programs, smoking-cessation programs and tobacco-education programs
in our state. Right now, taxpayers are helping subsidize the Big Tobacco companies,
which, understandably, have been doing all they can to oppose this amendment.
It’s time we kicked the habit, stood up to the tobacco companies and took
aggressive measures to discourage smoking and save lives.
