Factions Fire Up Battle Over Tax Hike for Tobacco

Doctors and other supporters of a November ballot measure that would hike California’s tobacco tax blitzed the state with a series of press conferences Wednesday, assailing as deceptive a tobacco industry-financed campaign to defeat the measure.

In the end, sponsors of Proposition 99 declared, the deciding factor will be which side the voters trust more: the tobacco industry, as organized under “Californians Against Unfair Tax Increases,” or the “Coalition for a Healthy California,” a group that includes the American Heart Assn., the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Assn.

“Tobacco companies are bringing big money into California to keep our children blindfolded and uninformed about the dangers of tobacco,” said Dr. Spencer Koerner, director of the pulmonary division at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and immediate past president of the American Lung Assn. of Los Angeles County.

Koerner slammed advertisements, paid for by the tobacco industry, that portray the tax hike as a burden for the poor and a boon for the medical Establishment.

‘Doing This to Save Lives’

“The truth of the matter is that (the tobacco industry) will lose money, not that we’ll make money,” Koerner said. “We’re doing this to save lives, not make money.”

Tobacco industry representatives, meanwhile, acknowledge that more than $10 million may be spent to defeat the 25-cents-per-pack tax hike. Tobacco interests need to spend plenty, one of their spokesmen said, “because it’s a tough sell.”

Koerner and other supporters chose a Los Angeles preschool for their press conference, hoping to illustrate how the measure will be used to educate youngsters about the harms of smoking. Supporters held similar press conferences in Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Ana and Palm Springs.

Sponsors gathered 1,125,000 signatures to qualify the tobacco measure for the ballot. If passed, the measure is expected to raise about $650 million in revenue annually. Under the measure, the state tobacco tax would increase from 10 cents to 35 cents. Twenty percent of the revenue would go into health education and 5% to medical research. Another 45% would go into health care, with 5% for parks, and most of the remainder to be allocated by the Legislature.

Dr. Pamela Kushner, a volunteer with the American Cancer Society, said the extra 25-cent tax would put the price of cigarettes beyond the economic reach of many children and teen-agers. Studies show that 60% of all smokers begin by the age of 14, and another 30% start by age 19, Kushner said.

In an interview, Jeff Raimundo, a spokesman for Californians Against Unfair Tax Increases, predicted that pending campaign disclosure statements will show that “the medical industry” is behind Proposition 99 and is its prime beneficiary.

Voters should “set aside the emotion and rhetoric. . . . This is a 250% excise tax increase,” Raimundo said. The 10-cent-per-pack tax has not been raised in more than 20 years, primarily because “it’s been widely regarded as a very regressive tax that hits harder at lower-income folks,” he said.

Jack Nicholl, director of the Yes on Proposition 99 effort, said “various sources” have indicated that the tobacco industry will spend more than $15 million to defeat the measure.

“We don’t have a large budget. We may raise $1 million if we’re lucky,” Nicholl said. “But we’ll have the biggest volunteer speakers bureau in the history of California politics.” Most of the speakers will be drawn from the cancer, heart and lung associations.

Raimundo, however, suggested that $15 million is an inflated estimate. The industry spent about $10 million defeating another anti-smoking initiative in 1982, Raimundo said.

“The rhetoric is so emotional and so intense against tobacco, and trying to make the case against that kind of emotion is difficult,” Raimundo said.

Just as anti-smoking forces accused the tobacco industry of deceptive tactics, Raimundo returned the charge. One proponent of the measure, he said, had wrongly claimed that the poor would receive some of the money.

“Poor people aren’t going to receive one dollar,” Raimundo declared. “Yes, they may receive some health care, but the dollar is going to go in that doctor’s pocket.”