NEWS

Oregon voters may be asked to boost price of cigarettes

By BRAD CAIN
The Associated Press
November 23, 2005

SALEM, Ore. — Thwarted by Republican opposition to new taxes in the 2005 Legislature, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to ask Oregon voters to approve a hefty cigarette-tax increase to extend health coverage to thousands of uninsured Oregonians.

The lawmakers' proposed initiative for the 2006 ballot would boost the state cigarette tax by 60 cents a pack.

Sponsors say the increase would help provide health insurance for nearly 200,000 low-income Oregonians who have no coverage.

The proposal likely will encounter strong resistance from the tobacco industry and others who say it's not fair to saddle smokers alone with costs of expanding state-subsidized health-care programs.

A similar proposal introduced late in the 2005 legislative session died after House Republican leaders refused to take it up.

"The advantage of the initiative is that it goes directly to the people. Our job is to make the best possible case as to why this is necessary," said Rep. Billy Dalto, R-Salem, who is sponsoring the plan with Sens. Ben Westlund, R-Bend, and Alan Bates, D-Ashland, plus Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland.

The plan would raise the state's cigarette tax from $1.18 to $1.78 a pack and jump Oregon's rate from the nation's 14th-highest to sixth-highest.

A tobacco-industry spokesman Tuesday called the legislators' proposal an "excessive" tax increase that unfairly targets one group: smokers.

"Smokers already pay more than their fair share of taxes," said Bill Phelps of Philip Morris USA, a Richmond, Va.-based tobacco company.

"Nearly 60 percent of the cost of an average pack of cigarettes already goes to the government" in state and federal taxes.

Phelps said it's too soon to say what role, if any, the tobacco industry will play in the coming campaign over the proposed tax increase.

Oregon voters have shown a willingness to support cigarette-tax increases, and Westlund said he thinks the state's voters will strongly favor another increase.

"Most Oregonians recognize the fairness of taxing a product that makes people ill and has the greatest impact on health-care costs of any product sold in the state," Westlund said.

Plus, he said, providing health coverage to more people will bring down overall medical costs by reducing the use of expensive hospital emergency-room care by uninsured people who do not seek treatment until they have become so ill that they have nowhere else to turn.

Once the state certifies a ballot title for the proposed initiative, backers will have until July to gather 75,630 valid signatures to place the measure on the November 2006 general-election ballot.