Tobacco in retreat.

Byline: The Register-Guard

It's too bad the state Department of Human Services didn't release its latest report on smoking a few weeks earlier, while the Legislature was still meeting in a special session. The report makes it clear that Oregon voters made a good choice when they raised cigarette taxes in 1996 - a finding that might have stiffened legislators' spines when they confronted the same choice this year.

Measure 44, approved by a healthy margin in 1996, added 30 cents per pack to the state tax on cigarettes, initially bringing in about $85 million a year in revenue. Ninety percent of the money is dedicated to support the Oregon Health Plan; the remaining 10 percent is spent on anti-smoking campaigns.

The results have been dramatic. Since 1996, cigarette consumption has fallen 29 percent in Oregon, more than twice the nationwide rate of decline. The percentage of eighth-graders who smoke is down 44 percent - to fewer than one in eight from nearly one in four. The decline among 11th-graders is nearly as steep, to less than 20 percent from the 1996 level of 28 percent. In all, Oregonians smoked 1.5 billion fewer cigarettes in 2001 than they did five years earlier.

These results occurred partly because when cigarettes cost more, people smoke less. High prices are an especially effective deterrent to young people and can keep them from getting hooked in the first place. Since most smokers become addicted before they reach age 18, and therefore buy their first cigarettes illegally, Measure 44 has had the effect of reinforcing Oregon's law against the sale of tobacco to minors.

The anti-smoking campaigns have also had an effect. Measure 44 has paid for anti-tobacco advertisements, statewide anti-smoking coalitions, a hot line for people who want to quit smoking and a variety of educational programs. A new series of ads is scheduled to be broadcast later this month.

If cigarette consumption had remained at 1996 levels, an additional 1,800 people would die each year from tobacco-related causes, and health care costs would be $450 million higher. Some of those costs would be paid by the public, and all of those 1,800 people are Oregonians - constituents, taxpayers, neighbors, relatives.

This year, in both of its budget-balancing special sessions, the Legislature considered a 50-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase. The Legislature not only refused to increase the tax, it refused to refer it to the ballot so that the voters could make the decision. A higher tobacco tax would have generated an estimated $97 million in revenue, money that the Legislature was obliged to cut from state programs or take from trust funds and endowments. More important, a tobacco tax increase, like the one in 1996, would have saved lives and reduced health-care costs.

Many legislators refused to support any kind of tax increase on principle. But others argued that a tobacco tax increase is counterproductive: tax increases drive cigarette sales down, defeating the revenue-raising purpose. It's true that revenue from the 30-cent-per-pack increase of 1996 has been declining: The state's total cigarette tax revenue fell to $164 million in 1999-2000 from $183 million two years earlier.

But that's good news, as the Department of Human Services report makes clear. Another substantial increase in the tobacco tax could have been expected to replicate the effects of Measure 44: A surge in revenue, followed by a steady decline, accompanied by a long-term reduction in deaths and health care costs. The revenue generated by a cigarette tax increase should be regarded as a temporary gain that is incidental to the substantial public health benefits. Under the current circumstances, that revenue gain, though temporary, would have provided more lasting support to state government than will come from several of the one-time raids and borrowings supported by the Legislature.

Measure 44 has had even better effects than its supporters hoped. The Legislature had a chance to follow that success with another. The latest report on smoking in Oregon should persuade lawmakers to reconsider, or at least allow Oregon voters to decide the issue.