wfn.org | Close Up: Campaign wants smokers to take a hike - in taxes

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March 25, 2002  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.  10-21-71BP{128}

NOTE: Welcome to Close Up, a new series that takes an in-depth look at
issues of the day and how United Methodists are addressing them.
Photographs, a chart and a sidebar, UMNS story #129, are available with this
report.  This Close Up series also is available at
www.umc.org/closeup/tobacco

A UMNS Report
By Neill Caldwell*

The United Methodist Church's longstanding opposition to tobacco use is
moving into a new phase, as the denomination's social action agency puts its
support behind a proposal aimed at reducing teen smoking nationwide.

If successful, the campaign will force smokers to cough up more money for
cigarettes in the form of higher state taxes. 

Officials with the United Methodist Board of Church and Society don't have
to look far for evidence that such a strategy can work. In Maryland, a few
miles beyond the board's Washington offices, a 1999 tax hike has been
followed by a dramatic reduction in teen smoking. It's the kind of result
that board officials would like to see repeated around the country. 

Top staff executive Jim Winkler signaled the agency's support on Jan. 28 by
signing a resolution joining the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco Free
Kids in its drive to raise tobacco taxes. 

"We feel this stand is in line with our Book of Resolutions and see this as
a way to affirm and support our church's longstanding policy against tobacco
use," says Lois Clinton, the board's program director for drug and alcohol
concerns. "For a very long time, the church has been working with other
religious and secular groups in efforts to better regulate the tobacco
industry and reduce youth smoking. In the past, we've worked to support
comprehensive legislation, including the effort to regulate tobacco as a
drug by the FDA."

The United Methodist Church's 2000 Book of Discipline recommends "total
abstinence from the use of tobacco. We urge that our educational and
communications resources be utilized to support such abstinence."

Clinton says the Board of Church and Society was approached by the Campaign
for Tobacco Free Kids following the church's support in Maryland, where
Bishop Felton Edwin May and the Baltimore-Washington Annual (regional)
Conference helped get a 30-cent tax increase per pack of cigarettes passed
by the state legislature in 1999.

That effort has become a real success story, Clinton says. The Maryland
Department of Education has released a study documenting a 30 percent
decrease in smoking by the state's 10th-graders (and a 16 percent decrease
among adults) since the 1999 state tax increase. Maryland lawmakers are
seeking an additional 70-cent tax increase per pack of cigarettes.

"We're very optimistic because of the Maryland study," Clinton says. "There
may be other factors that could also be responsible, but it seems safe to
say that there is a strong correlation there. Teen-agers don't have much
money, and if a pack of cigarettes costs $5, maybe they'd rather spend that
money on a new CD."

Bishop May sees cigarette smoking as a spiritual issue as well. "I am in
favor of raising tobacco taxes as part of a holistic strategy to minister to
those of us, including some good and faithful United Methodists, who are
addicted to tobacco and other substances," May says. "Tobacco addiction is
first of all a spiritual and a pastoral matter, just as all self-destructive
behavior is, including everything from heroin use to overeating to lack of a
disciplined prayer life. 

"All of us are addicts who are in the process of being delivered from our
addictions," he says.

"The church's primary task must be to proclaim and demonstrate the
liberating love of Jesus Christ. As part of our holistic efforts to do that,
we should work to increase tobacco taxes, especially as a way of deterring
tobacco use by youth. Then the revenue from increased taxes should be used
for programs to prevent and treat substance abuse and chemical dependency,
as is being done here in Maryland.

"The language of the Discipline is specific," May adds. "It says that
because of the overwhelming evidence that the use of tobacco is hazardous to
our health, 'we recommend total abstinence from the use of tobacco,' just as
we support abstinence from alcohol and gambling."

United Methodists' work in Maryland has made a difference that can be
duplicated in other states, says Vincent DeMarco, executive director of the
Maryland Citizens Health Initiative.

"We're thrilled that the United Methodist Church is making increasing the
tobacco tax a top priority, and pleased that the church will make an effort
to lead this campaign nationally," he says.

The church's support in Maryland helped DeMarco's coalition reach out to
other faith communities. "I can say categorically that the tax increase
would not have passed without United Methodist support."

'Tax profiling'

Not surprisingly, tobacco companies oppose any move to increase taxes on
their products.

"The United Methodist Church has the right to take any position it chooses
on tobacco use," says John Singleton, director of public affairs for R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Co., based in Winston-Salem, N.C. "One of the many things
that makes the United States the world's greatest nation is the freedom it
affords groups and individuals to choose a point of view on public policy
issues and to freely express that position. 

"However, we believe the tax profiling of adult smokers by burdening them
with additional excessive taxes is unfair."

Between 1999 and 2001, state and federal governments collected more than $88
billion from the major tobacco companies in taxes and payments, Singleton
says.

"That amounts to a government per-pack profit of $1.54, approximately 15
times more than R.J. Reynolds makes per pack," he says. "In addition,
relatively little of the money governments collect annually from smokers is
being spent on the tobacco-control programs the states said they needed.
Instead, settlement funds are being spent on bridges, roads, deficit
reduction and more bureaucracy."

Increasing taxes has not been shown to be an effective way to decrease teen
smoking, Singleton says.

"The best way to reduce under-age smoking is through the enforcement of laws
that make purchases of cigarettes by anyone under the age of 18 illegal," he
says, "as well as through programs that educate kids about the health risks
associated with smoking."

Concern for farmers

The tax proposal also raises concerns about the potential impact on tobacco
farmers.
DeMarco says that the growers have not been forgotten.

"Maryland is a tobacco state," he says. "There's a tobacco leaf in our state
flag. But tobacco farmers are as much victims as anyone else. We want to
help the farmers by making sure some of that tax revenue goes to the
farmers. But we can't keep up a process where hundreds of thousands die from
tobacco each year and tens of thousands of teen-agers become addicted to
tobacco each year."

"Maryland used some of the revenue from its increased tobacco taxes to
support farmers who wanted to transition to other crops," May says. "It
turned out that the majority of farmers wanted to grow other crops and took
the state up on its offer."

Branson agrees that any campaign to raise tobacco taxes should include a
provision to benefit tobacco farmers. "The tobacco control community has
always supported the idea that some of the tax money will go back to growers
to help them switch from tobacco to other crops. And the tobacco industry
itself is no friend to the American farmer, because it is continuously
buying cheaper tobacco from outside the U.S." 

Working at state level

As the campaign gets under way, the Board of Church and Society will begin
by working with existing anti-tobacco coalitions at the state level,
providing leadership and technical and financial support, Clinton says.

"These statewide groups consist of a broad range of folks, including the
church community," she adds. "United Methodists are just one piece of it.
Eventually we hope to work our way down South, where there's not a lot being
done."

Dr. Roy Branson, co-chair of the Interreligious Coalition on Smoking or
Health, says the board's latest action continues the United Methodist
Church's major emphasis on health issues.

"I can't applaud the United Methodist Church enough for its continued
leadership in this area," Branson says. "Methodists know that the church has
been very concerned with health and its connection to healthy spirituality,
going back to John Wesley himself. That tradition provides a motivation to
do something in this area."

Raising the tax is the single most effective way to reduce smoking for young
people, which is important because the majority of new smokers are under age
18, he says.

"When the price is increased, they're taken aback and start to seriously
consider stopping," he says. "When the price of a pack of cigarettes goes
up, it affects them more than it would a Wall Street attorney. And the more
young people we can get to stop, the more people are kept out of the health
care system, out of the health care statistical bin."

Branson cites two examples of the effectiveness of this strategy in reducing
smoking.
"In California, when cigarette taxes were raised, usage went down," he says.
"That also happened in Canada, and when tobacco taxes were lowered, usage
started to creep back up again."

The Rev. Stephen Mott, chairman of the New England Annual Conference's board
of church and society, has set up a meeting in April with representatives
from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.

"This is an important issue, and I am glad for the opportunity to learn more
about it," Mott says. "This is an issue that United Methodists can support.
We're a small portion of the population in my area, but I've found that
people who have a deep conviction to what they're doing can always have an
impact." 

# # #

*Caldwell is a journalist residing in Lincolnton, N.C.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
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