Anti-tobacco bills going up in smoke

7/16/2005, 12:50 p.m. PT

By BRAD CAIN

The Associated Press                                               

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Bills pushed by anti-smoking advocates to ban smoking in bars and taverns, reinstate a 10-cent-a-pack cigarette tax and allow only "fire-safe" cigarettes to be sold in the state have been all but snuffed out by Oregon lawmakers this year.

The measures drew opposition from tobacco and restaurant industry interests who contribute heavily to legislative campaigns as well as from lawmakers who are loathe to approve additional taxes or impose more regulation on business.

With the 2005 session moving into its final weeks, the Tobacco-Free Coalition of Oregon says it appears the Legislature isn't going to deal with "the state's No. 1 public health issue" — tobacco use that causes more than 7,000 premature deaths in Oregon each year and exposes thousands of others to second-hand smoke.

John Valley of the American Heart Association, one of the leading groups involved with the coalition, says anti-smoking and health care advocates might try to take one or more of the issues directly to Oregon voters next year.

"I would be surprised if there wasn't an effort to put a cigarette tax on the 2006 ballot if the Legislature does nothing," he said.

Valley and other advocates aren't giving up on the Legislature just yet, but they are facing some well-heeled opponents.

Tobacco companies, for example, contributed about $130,000 to legislative candidates last year, including $15,000 to Republican House Speaker Karen Minnis, according to figures compiled by the Money in Politics Research Action Project, a campaign finance watchdog group.

Minnis has been instrumental in blocking efforts by health care activists and anti-smoking groups to reinstate a 10-cent-a-pack cigarette tax that was snuffed out when voters rejected the Legislature's $800 million tax hike in February 2004.

The groups say raising the cigarette tax would discourage smoking among young people by making cigarettes more expensive and provide more money to cover thousands of low-income people who are being kicked off the Oregon Health Plan because of the state's money squeeze.

But the move is opposed by Minnis and other House Republicans who say Oregonians have made it clear they don't want higher taxes and by tobacco industry officials who say it's not fair to raise taxes just on smokers to pay for health care for all.

Minnis also opposes a Senate-passed "fire-safe" cigarettes bill requiring that cigarettes be made of paper that will extinguish if the cigarette is not being smoked, which supporters say would cut down on thousands of fires across the country caused by unattended cigarettes.

The Republican House speaker agrees with the tobacco industry's argument that the federal government should set uniform standards for fire-safe cigarettes to prevent 50 different state requirements.

Among the other top recipients of campaign dollars from tobacco companies is Senate Majority Leader Kate Brown, D-Portland, who got $10,500, according to the Money in Politics group.

As part of the Senate leadership team, Brown helped make the decision to not have the Senate vote on a bill to extend the state's workplace tobacco ban to the smokers' last indoor business refuge — bars and taverns.

In 2001, the Legislature passed a measure that outlawed smoking in businesses but exempted bars, taverns, bowling alleys and bingo halls in most places.

Now anti-smoking activists are seeking to extend the smoking ban to those remaining businesses, a move that's opposed by the tobacco industry as well as by the powerful Oregon Resturant Association, which contributed $228,000 to legislative candidates last year.

Brown said the campaign money didn't sway her decision and that she wanted to spare her Senate colleagues from having to vote on the bill when it would face certain defeat in the Republican-controlled House.

Valley, the Heart Association spokesman, said he thinks it's an open question about how much lawmakers were influenced by campaign contributions from groups who opposed the anti-smoking bills.

"I don't think it's mere coincidence" that all three bills are languishing, he said. "My feeling is that there is some connection between campaign contributions and how lawmakers look at issues."