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TERRY’S TIDBITS

By Terry Gray

IS ERNIE EARNEST?

Kentucky Senator Ernie Harris has a bill in committee that would remove master tobacco settlement money from Kentucky communities that ban tobacco.  Dern tootin’, he’s earnest.  What I like about his plan is that I don’t think it will fly.  But I think it will strengthen Senator Dan Seum’s preemption bill.

Senator Seum wants to remove control of tobacco from local governments and place it in the hands of the state.  This is a good thing as long as tobacco is making money for Kentucky.  And yes, tobacco makes money for Kentucky -- over $240 million in 2003 in taxes and tobacco settlement money alone.

Seven years ago, tobacco provided 75,689 jobs totaling $81 million in personal income taxes on workers’ wages.

If a pack of cigarettes in Kentucky costs $3.76 (that figure seems high to me – I buy them buy the carton and they average $2.00 a pack), government makes $1.74 and the tobacco company makes 11 cents.  The government would be foolish indeed to cut the bottom out of that manna from Heaven.

KHIK ME PLEASE

Join me now in the world of seedy tobacco.  A KHIK sponsored commercial on television shows a clean-cut kid on a bike trying to buy cigarettes from a hood.  The hood is nothing but a kid himself.  This transaction is taking place near a train track in an obvious bad part of town.  The buyer doesn’t have enough money for the smokes because KHIK has engineered the pricing on the legal market.  The dealer of course has to pass along the price hike.

What planet does KHIK call home? 

KHIK wants to raise the price of cigarettes to 75 cents a pack so kids can’t afford them.  Does KHIK really believe that 75 cents a pack is going to make a difference?  Cigarettes in New York are $7.00 a pack and kids are puffing away.  They either steal the smokes or buy them on the black market from someone that did steal them.  Or they steal the money to buy the smokes.  In all events, they aren’t buying them legally.  Will KHIK go undercover with special KHIK KOPS and bust all the bad guys?  No, they will just price cigarettes so that kids that are going to smoke are going to be exposed to the criminal element of the black market.

KHIK swears that raising the price of cigarettes will reduce the number of kids smoking.  I would like for them to show me hard data to support that argument.  If the data are from other studies, I would like those data too.  There is no supporting evidence of their claim!

A spokesperson for KHIK made a statement on the news yesterday.  She said that this increase would help Kentucky’s deficit and reduce the lung cancer in Kentucky.  Where were the kids in this statement?

Here is a survey question from the KHIK website.

"Would you favor or oppose a 75-cent per pack increase in the state cigarette tax, with part of the revenue dedicated to
a program to reduce tobacco use, particularly among kids,..."

Notice the term, “part of the revenue.”  People, these groups cite reducing smoking among kids as THE reason to raise the price.  Where do you think the rest of the money is going?  Why isn’t all of it going for this oh so important cause?  Follow the money.

In Michael McFadden’s book, Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains, please turn to page 60 and read all about survey language.  “Four out of five dentists recommended Dentyne for dental health.”  The sample is limited only to dentists who actually recommended any brand of chewing gun.  Hoodwinked.

See the hood selling the cigarettes?  That is the person that your kid is going to be dealing with.  That is the person that is most likely going to influence your kid.  That is the person that you put in business by raising the price of cigarettes.  Your kid is now a criminal dealing in the black market. 

“Well let’s just crack down.  We’ll have the cops chase down all the black market cigarette dealers and put them in jail.”  Do you believe the tobacco dealers will be sharing cells with drug dealers?  I think the tobacco dealers will be lonely in there, as most drug dealers are out on the streets taking care of business.

KHIK, just remember my warning to you.  Every time you push for a price increase you are creating criminals and those criminals are likely to be your own kids.

TOBACCO SETTLEMENT MONEY

Tobacco settlement money was originally intended for tobacco farmers to help them move away from growing tobacco and get involved in raising other crops.  Farmers got half of Kentucky’s share of tobacco settlement money.  The other half went to early childhood development, high-risk health insurance, lung cancer research, and smoking cessation.  Smoke Free Louisville ended up with $88,000 and used it to mount and fund their smoking ban campaign, to include lobbying local government.  That was their extent of a smoking cessation program.  The Louisville Board of Health, called on the carpet, stopped openly giving money to Smoke Free Louisville.  An audit of the Board of Health’s books revealed that the BOH books were in such disarray that nothing could be revealed.

Since 1998, Kentucky has received $410,689,921 in Master Tobacco Settlement Money.  Where has it gone?

Fayette County snatched up $15 million for their Purchase of Development Rights program.  PDR is buying valuable land in the Lexington area.  They also get millions of dollars from the federal government for farm preservation.  Just who is PDR and what will they do with the land?  The PDR pays farmers to preserve their lands and protect them from development.  What this means is that the PDR can then dictate to the farmer what he grows.  They are also buying easements.  My guess is that, if farmer Jones won’t change crops, they’ll stop him from tending his land by denying him access to his property because they own the easement.

 “Now that four years have passed since the MSA was signed, where has the money gone so far? When the MSA was signed, the states held press conferences proclaiming that they would spend the money on smoking education, cessation and research. They talked about protecting youth and improving public health. However, it seems to have become a classic "bait and switch" operation. The states have squandered billions of dollars on pet projects such as golf courses and horse-breeding farms, pork-barrel projects such as roads and bridges and state-budget deficit reductions - items completely unrelated to the stated purpose of the settlement funds.”
http://www.rjrt.com/TI/TI_MSAPayments.asp

Here is where a lot of the tobacco settlement money went -- remember that it was supposed to go to farmers and tobacco cessation programs.

• Dump trucks, golf carts, a golf course irrigation system and a new county jail in New York
• Broadband cable networks in Virginia
• Psychiatric care for prisoners in New Jersey
• Boot camps for juvenile delinquents, alternative schools, and metal detectors and surveillance cameras for schools in Alabama
• Upgrading public television stations with DVD technology in Nevada
• Harbor renovation and museum expansion in Alaska
• Water and sewer improvements in South Carolina
• Pasture and weather monitoring for a thoroughbred association in Kentucky
• College scholarships in Michigan
• New schools in Ohio
• City parks and the purchase of undeveloped land in California
• A senior citizen prescription drug program and property tax rebates in Illinois
• Medicaid dental services in Maine
• Water Resources Trust Fund and flood-control projects in North Dakota
• Operating expenses for the Carolina Horse Park, truck-driver training, pine-straw farming research and equipment upgrades at a knitting plant in North Carolina
• A People's Trust Fund in South Dakota will generate interest income that can be spent on whatever the legislature wishes
• Four years of MSA money was used to help balance the budget in Tennessee
• Rural economic development in Georgia
• Tax rebates in several states
• Municipal bonds, backed by future MSA payments, were sold in Wisconsin and half of the money was spent to offset a revenue shortfall

Government running amok, folks.

HAIL INDIANA

It looks like Kentucky will kiss KHIK all over and raise the price of tobacco tax to 75 cents a pack on cigarettes.  Why would the legislature do otherwise?  It’s a boon for Kentucky and will give government a big hunk of cash to squander on stuff.  KHIK must be ecstatic; they should realize a few bucks for their own coffers which they will immediately put to use lobbying for more tobacco restrictions. 

The amazing part of this whole process is that KHIK and other anti-smoking groups hate us smokers.  They detest our way of life and believe us to be killers.  Yet they get in there like a bunch of piranhas and fight for the blood money ripped out of our pockets.  Smokers pay people like KHIK and Smoke Free Louisville to try to stop us from smoking.  Seems upside down to me.

Anyway, if this legislation goes through, I would like to put together a weekly “Butt Trip.”  We’ll get as many of us as we can muster and convoy to Indiana where the tax on cigarettes is 55.5 cents a pack.  We’ll save 19.5 cents a pack, but, more importantly, we’ll let Kentucky know that raising the price doesn’t help if fewer people are paying the price.  If each person buys 2 cartons, Kentucky will lose $3.90 and smokers will save them selves the same.  That is just here in Louisville.

We will be surrounded by states with lower cigarette taxes, and we can show our legislators that this tobacco state is fighting back against a stupid tax.  The per pack tax in Ohio is 55 cents, West Virginia is 55 cents, Virginia is 2.5 cents, Tennessee is 20 cents, and Missouri is 17 cents.  We can make a hefty dent in KHIK’s budget.  And while you are in Tennessee buying cigarettes, pick up some fireworks and lottery tickets.

Kentucky also needs to consider something else when it comes to this tax hike.  How many people from the 5 states mentioned above come to Kentucky to buy cigarettes because of the low tax?  Not only will we be losing their trade, but we’ll be taking our dollars to them.

VENDING JUNK FOOD

KHIK wants to raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by 75 cents.  Some other left-wing cry-baby group wants healthy food in school vending machines.  Why not raise the price of junk food in school vending machines by 75 cents so kids can’t afford to buy it?  Be consistent!  And, by the way, cigarettes are not legal for kids; junk food is.  Is there any logic to raising the price of something that is illegal for kids in order to keep kids from buying it when a legal Twinkie is bad, legal, and affordable?

Terry Gray
 

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