The Democrat-controlled Oregon House failed in its attempts earlier this year to raise the state tobacco tax by 84.5 cents per pack to subsidize children’s health care. But it did succeed in taking the issue to the public for a vote, where its odds of winning could be much better – Democrats hold a 51 percent majority in the House, while only 20 percent of Oregonians are smokers.
If Measure 50 passes this November, the state tax on a pack of cigarettes will jump from $1.18 to $2.02, the same as Washington state’s tobacco tax. Seventy percent of the added revenue would fund Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s Healthy Kids Plan.
Under the Governor’s plan, the more than 117,000 children who are currently uninsured in Oregon will be eligible for state-supported health insurance coverage. The remaining money will go toward providing health care for 10,000 low-income adults, funding rural health care and safety net clinics, and expanding the funding of anti-tobacco programs.
“Every day we put off solving this problem, thousands of kids across Oregon are more likely to struggle in school, and miss out on opportunities to play, learn and thrive,” Gov. Kulongoski said in a press release. “These are opportunities all children should have.”
The issue has been billed by some as a battle between the “big tobacco bad guys” and the under-funded health care “good guys,” and Measure 50 is proving to be a gloves-off brawl.
Opponents claim the measure is way to get the minority of residents to pay for the majority’s needs, and smokers are being picked on unfairly.
“It’s a way to fund a program the other guy pays for. You’re taxing people who are addicted to a product, and that’s just morally wrong,” said J.L. Wilson, spokesman for the Oregonians Against the Blank Check, an organization running the campaign to defeat Measure 50.

Supporters for the measure claim the tobacco companies are using under-handed campaign tricks to push their agenda, which they say is really to keep the influx of new, young smokers coming in.
“Unfortunately, tobacco lobbyists have too much power in the state legislature, so fortunately we get to turn to Oregon voters ,” said Cathy Kaufmann, communications director for the pro-Measure 50 group Healthy Kids Oregon.
The potential increase of tobacco tax is seen as a way to reduce the amount of smokers and curb any increase of new smokers – both of which will cut future hospital bills associated with tobacco smoke.
“Absolutely one of the goals is to get people to quit smoking, but most importantly the best way to get the youth to not start smoking is rising prices. That is exactly why big tobacco is here, to protect their future smokers, their lifeline of money,” Kaufmann said. “This is the group big tobacco really cares about, the new smokers.”
During the past year, tobacco-related diseases resulted in $287 million of state costs to the publicly funded Medicaid, and a total of $1.11 billion in both public and private medical bills statewide, Kaufmann said.
If smokers are deterred by the rising pricbes, some have questioned if the government will actually be able to keep the revenue at a sustainable level
“It will affect business immensely,” said Don Scarpelli, manager at an Alder Street 7-Eleven. “Basically, the state of Oregon is shooting itself in the foot because people just won’t pay the price and sales will decline to where eventually they won’t get the volume they need,”
As of 2006, the Oregon government has received $532,570,710 from big tobacco Master Settlement Agreement payments. These payments stem from the 1998 court case in which tobacco companies were directed to pay 48 states and other U.S. territories $246 billion over a 25-year period to fund anti-smoking campaigns, educational programs to prevent tobacco-related illness and a number of other state programs – a few of the same programs the new tax is intended to provide additional revenue for.
“What the legislature should have done is allocated general fund dollars to the government-subsidized health care,” Wilson said. “You’re telling me the government couldn’t carve out an extra 4 percent of their new money for this program. It kind of pisses you off to think about it.”
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