Study - Prop A would curb teen smoking; critics dismiss results

ST. LOUIS -- Advocates for a ballot measure that would more than quadruple Missouri's cigarette tax said Monday that a professor's study shows that children's lives would be saved if Proposition A passes next Tuesday.

The proposal -- known as Proposition A -- would increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes to 72 cents from the current 17 cents and add 20 percent to the tax on other tobacco products.

Findings by University of Illinois-Chicago economics professor Frank Chaloupka suggest that that increase would price out of the market many would-be young smokers with relatively little expendable income, preventing 49,300 Missouri children from taking up the habit. The result, he said: 15,800 fewer premature deaths in that age group.

"Today, we can show that supporting Proposition A means life or death," Beth Griffin, executive director of Citizens for Missouri's Children, said during a news conference by Proposition A's backers, led by Citizens for a Healthy Missouri.

Brad Ketcher, that group's spokesman, said Chaloupka -- a researcher of cigarette use -- was not paid by Proposition A's backers in compiling his findings.

But an opponent of Proposition A dismissed Chaloupka's findings as predictable and unreliable.

'A number of crazy things'

"My reaction is that Proposition A proponents have enough money to hire any hired gun to say any of a number of crazy things," said Ron Leone, executive director of the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. "Somebody paid for this thing, and clearly it was someone who wanted a hired gun to come to a conclusion" backing their arguments.

Chaloupka, who did not attend Monday's news conference at a local daycare center, said in a statement "the science is clear -- raising the excise tax on cigarettes will decrease the number of kids who will start smoking."

"This group is more price-sensitive than any other age group," said Chaloupka, who also heads the International Tobacco Evidence Network. "And given that 90 percent of smokers start before they are 18, an excise tax increase is one of the most effective measures in keeping young people from taking up smoking in the first place."

Under the tax proposal, 43 percent of the new money would go to health care treatment, including prescription drugs for seniors and initiatives for the poor, women, minorities and children. Twenty-nine percent would go to hospital trauma care; 14 percent to life sciences research; 7 percent to smoking prevention efforts; and 7 percent to early childhood programs.

In rejecting Chaloupka's findings, Leone pressed the common theme of Proposition A's opponents: that only a small percentage of the tax proceeds are required to be spent to fight smoking and tobacco use.

"They would have taken away my biggest argument if they had devoted all the money to anti-tobacco" programs, Leone said. "It's important to note that while they're sitting doing this press junket focusing on children, only 7 percent of the tax increase actually will be spent on anti-smoking, anti-tobacco efforts.

Chaloupka's findings also have been cited in a similar ballot measure in Illinois, where a law that took effect July 1 pushed the state's cigarette tax to 98 cents a pack. Officials there said the tax boost would raise $230 million toward plugging that state's budget deficit.

Chaloupka has said that every 10 percent increase in cigarette prices reduces by nearly 7 percent the prevalence of youth smoking.