Lance Armstrong campaigns for California cigarette tax measure

[Lionel Mandrake]

Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France champion and cancer survivor, gets behind California's Proposition 29, which would raise taxes on cigarettes to fund cancer research and other programs.




Lance Armstrong, seen in a 2011 file photo, plans to campaign for California's Proposition 29. The measure would tax a pack of cigarettes by $1 more to fund cancer research and other programs. Armstrong's Texas-based foundation has donated $1.5 million to the Yes on 29 campaign. (Damian Dovarganes, Associated Press / February 28, 2011)

By Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2012, 8:44 p.m.
Reporting from Sacramento— The proposal is simple: Raise taxes on cigarettes to pay for cancer research.

The push for it is quintessentially Californian, melding celebrity salesmanship and the whims of state voters, who have increasingly been called on to decide key policy questions.

The pitchman for Proposition 29, which will appear on the June ballot, is seven-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, who is asking voters to increase taxes on a pack of cigarettes by $1. On Wednesday, he announced a $1.5 million contribution from his Texas-based foundation to the Yes on 29 campaign.

"We feel that Prop. 29 will save lives, stop kids from smoking and just may lead us to a cure," he told reporters in a conference call.

Hooray for Lance Armstrong!

Down with Philip Murderous and other companies in the teen-addiction business!

Read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lance-armstrong-20120216,0,1930495.story

[xtraxritical]

1. Lance Armstrong is looking for some free publicity

and as you see he's getting it. There are already plenty of taxes on cigarettes that go for this purpose. I'm an ex-smoker, nonsmoker.
The guy should find a real job and stop annoying everyone.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. Plenty of taxes on cigarettes?

Tax Rates per 20 Pack vary from $0.17 in Missouri to $4.35 in New York. California was once a leader, but California's $0.87 per pack is now less than that of the majority of states. Whether this is "plenty" or not will be an issue we vote on in June.

For tax rates in the 50 states, read:
http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/health/2010-state-cigarette-excise-taxes.aspx

[xxqqqzme]

6. I don't know how it raises any significant

amounts. I don't know any smokers. I know many ex-smokers. Seeing/smelling a smoker is an oddity.

[stevenleser]

2. OT, but everything you post is somehow better for your awesome handle

Always brings a smile to my face to see it.

[Lionel Mandrake]

16. I'm glad you like it.

Peter George, Terry Southern, and Stanley Kubrick deserve all the credit, because they wrote the screenplay.

[LeftinOH]

3. At some point, cheaper black-market smokes will become the norm..

because cigarettes are already expensive and heavily taxed. Is that we want?

[progressoid]

10. It already is a big problem.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129934561

[Lionel Mandrake]

11. According to the LA Times story, part of the money raised by Prop. 29

"would go to the state attorney general and local law enforcement agencies to fight black-market cigarette sales and crack down on retailers who sell tobacco to minors."

IMO greater uniformity from state to state would also tend to discourage the black market.

[expatriate2mex]

14. Or give narcos here sometning else to smuggle.

I don't see those taxes happening here.

[Bonhomme Richard]

4. Maybe a special tax on the chemical industry.

That's where most of it comes from anyway.

[stopbush]

7. CA needs to chuck our referendum system and force our legislators to do their elected jobs.

I'm for taxing cigs more, but c'mon people! Is everything in this state subject to a referendum? All those do is reward the side with the deepest pockets, and that's almost never the side that has the well being of the public in mind.

[Lionel Mandrake]

17. Yes, our referendum system sucks.

Complex issues which should be settled by legislators tend to be decided by voters who hardly understand them. Legislators get termed out too soon. It's requires a supermajority for legislators to raise taxes.

But the deep pockets don't always succeed in buying the election. the good guys won in 1998 and again in 2000.

California Proposition 10 (1998) ... put a $.50 tax on cigarettes, ... The tax went into effect January 1, 1999.

There was an intense opposition to the proposition by the tobacco industry but even with the huge opposing campaign the proposition still passed with just over fifty percent of the California vote. In March 2000 California voters were asked to repeal but there was a seventy percent opposition which reflected a strong anti-tobacco bias and support of early childhood education.

To read more, copy the ff. and paste it into your browser:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_10_(1998)

[SOS]

8. OK...

But there is a tipping point in tobacco taxation.
Since politicians no longer accept graft from tobacco companies, tobacco can be taxed at no political cost.
When they go to this well too often, as has happened in NY, you get an explosion of organized crime.
In NYC cigarettes cost $13 a pack.
Estimates are that 50% of cigarettes sold in NYC are now bootleg.
This costs the state $20 a million a month.
Taxes were raised through the roof and tax revenue plummeted.

Certainly tobacco should be taxed.
But CA should be careful not to get into the $10-$15 a pack range as NYC has done.
It will backfire.

[Lionel Mandrake]

13. I agree.

California should not follow the example of New York.

As far as the cigarette tax rate is concerned, California should stay somewhere in the middle of the (ahem) pack.

[truebrit71]

9. Totally on board with this...

I think that the tobacco companies should have to pay it, not the consumer, but if folks just quit, it might have the same effect. Either way, way to go Lance!!

[DJ13]

12. Why do these tax schemes always try and increase the taxes by such a huge amount?

If they would increase it by a small amount it wouldnt have much opposition, but an increase of $1 on a product that sells for $5 is far too much.

[Honeycombe8]

15. And then let's tax abortions to fund depression research on women, and then....

let's tax office building owners a special tax to fund research on respiratory ailments of office workers, and then let's tax city property ownes a special tax to fund treatment of joggers' injuries (since they run on city-owned paved streets), and then let's tax BEEF with a special tax to fund research on cancer (beef has been linked as a cause of cancer), and THEN....

well, heck let's just tax EVERYTHING with a special tax to fund research and/or treatment of something that's related to it in some way, since EVERYTHING has something bad associated with it.

Or we could just call this measure what it is: an effort to make people stop doing something which is legal but which some people don't want others to do. Like abortion, or eat beef, or....(insert just about anything here).