How often are voters given the chance to cast a vote that will save lives? On June 5, the people of California will have an opportunity to do just that -- and to save the financially struggling state billions of dollars in long-term health care costs.
The California Cancer Research Act -- known as Proposition 29 -- would raise the state tobacco tax by $1 to fund more than $500 million each year in lifesaving research on cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, help keep cigarettes out of the hands of children and save the state more than $5 billion in long-term health care costs related to tobacco use.
These are proven public health and economic benefits, backed by extensive research from our organizations and others. We know that when you raise tobacco taxes, people stop smoking. Prop 29 would save more than 100,000 lives annually in California and prevent 228,000 kids in the state from becoming addicted smokers.
Who would oppose a measure that will save lives and money? The tobacco industry -- whose business model depends on profiting from the deaths of its customers. Big Tobacco earns $6,000 in profits for every tobacco-related death in the United States and around the world, according to The Tobacco Atlas, published by the American Cancer Society and the World Lung Foundation. As a result, the six leading tobacco companies made a collective profit of $35.1 billion in 2010, the equivalent of the earnings of Coca Cola, McDonald's and Microsoft combined.
The industry doesn't publicize that its products are responsible for the deaths of 443,000 people in America each year -- nearly one person for every minute of every day. In fact, tobacco companies engage in extensive efforts to portray themselves as responsible corporate citizens. The nation's largest tobacco manufacturer, Altria Group, Inc., recently ran a full-page ad in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill publication aimed at members of Congress, claiming that it markets its products "responsibly" and that "we take our responsibilities seriously."
What the ad didn't say is that tobacco use costs the U.S. economy $193 billion per year in health care, lost productivity and related costs. Every day, 3,800 kids pick up their first cigarette, 1,000 kids become addicted smokers and 1,200 people die from tobacco-related disease.
While tobacco companies work to publicly rehabilitate their image, they discreetly oppose proven tobacco control policies nationwide. The latest example is the industry's funding of groups with innocuous names, such as Californians Against Unaccountable Taxes and California Taxpayers Association, that are working to confuse and deceive the public about Prop. 29.
In addition to saving lives and reducing future health care costs, Prop. 29 would create 12,000 new jobs at research facilities and health centers in California, a state facing the most severe financial crisis in the country. But the tobacco industry is waging an intense campaign to defeat the initiative because it knows that increasing tobacco taxes will shrink its customer base. When your business model involves selling products that kill people, it becomes particularly important to addict a steady stream of new customers.
The hazards of smoking have been known for decades. Unfortunately, that awareness has given rise to a dangerous complacency in response to the tobacco industry's ongoing campaign of addiction and death. The industry is waging its campaign with increasing intensity in unsuspecting countries around the world. By the year 2030, eight million people worldwide will die from tobacco use each year.
It's not enough to say that we already know tobacco use is dangerous, or to conclude that everyone should be able to say "no" to tobacco. Ask the families of the nearly half a million people in the United States who die from tobacco-related causes each year how easy it would have been for their loved ones to quit. Ask the parents of children who are bombarded with positive images of smoking at convenience stores and popular hangouts how simple it must be to keep youth from smoking.
Tobacco use is the single biggest public health threat facing our country today. And it is hiding in plain sight. Tobacco companies manufacture 1 million cigarettes every 5 seconds. They are not backing down, and by supporting Prop. 29 and other proven tobacco control measures nationwide, neither are we.
John R. Seffrin, PhD
CEO, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the American Cancer Society
Lance Armstrong
Cancer survivor and Founder and Chairman, the Lance Armstrong Foundation
Michael Bloomberg
Bloomberg Philanthropies and Mayor of New York City
Follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@lancearmstrong
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Probably about as much as the first Federal Tobacco settlement funds did when CA got that money.
R/ PRONESE
$6B vehicle reg fee...taken away by the GOP
$6B oil extract fees...eliminated by the GOP
$3.5B commercial property tax breaks
$2.5B luxury tax break.
That's MORE than the $16B deficit. So, in reality...the State's deficit is a REPUBLICAN mess.
So the intelligent people of California, followed suit as the country did, elected a DEM to clean it up :)
I am a non-smoker. I know smokers are people, too, with familes, mortgages, and bills to pay. That's where this annual $500 million would have come from. And Big Cancer tried to take that away from them by fooling the rest of us.
I wish the lefty tax hounds would pull back the covers and take a careful look at where they're going to sleep instead of just jumping in because it looks good on the surface. I don't care if a Lance Armstrong says it's okay. There could be a snake in that bed.
Big Cancer needs to get back in the line with the rest of the many worthy charities (God bless them all) and fight for our donations with the rest of them. I pray that all worthy charities will get the doantions they need to keep us from the ravages of the enemies they fight on our behalf.
Let us all make regular generous donations.
2. "Prop 29 would save more than 100,000 lives annually in California..." According to the AMA, there are something like 36,000 annual California deaths "attributable to smoking". Are you telling us that people are dying from smoking three or four times each but a $1 per pack tax would save them all?
3. All of the above is OK because you are the good guys and "big tobacco" are the bad guys. The smokers who would actually pay the tax don't count.
4. I'm not going to bring up the equal protection clause, or fairness, or honesty; we're well past principles and into low-down and dirty politics. I'm pretty sure AOL will let me get away with "A pox on both your houses" - even though that doesn't begin to express my feelings for you selfless public servants. (If sarcasm could kill...)
Should help keep drunk drivers off the road.
Would also help keeping that first beer out of juniors hands.
Think I'll vote a big yes on that it if it ever comes up.
And since I don't drink it won't matter one iota to me.
The people who paid for it.?
The government ?
Nope.
Pharma that's who.
Then they will kill you with the bill they send you.
Cancer research has eaten up a huge amount of resources over the past 50 years. What are the results? Not much.
This is just another attempt to exploit people that are addicted to a product. Nicotine causes real addiction. People have a need to consume more tobacco products. This increases price elasticity of demand. In the short term cigarettes are an inelastic good. People will continue to consume even with price increases. There are no substitutes for nicotine.
Also, I would think that obesity is a bigger issue than smoking. Americans do not smoke. Go to another country and tell people that you are an American. They will assume that you are not a smoker. Americans are really fat though. go to another country and you will be assumed to be American if you are fat.
Who gets the other half billion, Solyndra?
Thank you Lance Armstong Foundation, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, and American Heart Association for standing up against Big Tobacco! Vote YES on Prop 29!