Valued-based Proposition 29 would be beneficial for state’s tax system

It has been more than half a century since R.J. Reynolds ran a television commercial declaring that “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” Though doctors no longer endorse cigarettes on the small screen, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is alive and kicking, having spent more than $11 million to oppose the cigarette tax proposal on Tuesday’s ballot.

The California Cancer Research Act, or Proposition 29, taxes cigarettes at an additional $1 a pack to fund cancer research. Though most certainly a burden on both tobacco companies and consumers, this model has great potential for California’s tax system.

Novel as it is, the measure raises several legitimate concerns. Regardless, the ethical paradigm that Proposition 29 proposes is well worth the tax’s procedural caveats.

By taxing cigarettes at an additional $1 a pack to fund cancer research, Proposition 29 shifts the big-picture costs of smoking to the people that create them ““ namely, cigarette smokers. In this way, it has the potential to breed a measure of economic responsibility into California’s tax system.

Voters have, in the past, made the type of value judgment inherent in Proposition 29. In a bout of fondness toward the scientific establishment, California voters in 2004 passed Proposition 71, issuing $3 billion in general obligation bonds to fund stem cell research. Proposition 29 departs from such measures in that it generates funding through a tax on a specific good.

That it will have a tangible effect on cancer research justifies the measure as far as many of its advocates are concerned.

Among these advocates is fourth-year anthropology student Leenoy Hendizadeh who currently works with the American Cancer Society, organizing phone banks and distributing campaign material in favor of the measure.

“One dollar doesn’t seem like that much, but once you combine those dollars, it’s going to make a huge impact,” Hendizadeh said.

At the heart of it, however, cancer is not the central issue of this measure. Rather, it is a referendum on the government’s prerogative to impose a value-based tax targeting a specific problem. Should this referendum emerge in the affirmative, other targeted measures such as taxing carbon emissions to conduct alternative energy research or taxing alcohol to cure liver disease seem to be the logical next step.

Certainly, there are evident complications in the current measure, notably a lack of accountability. Proposition 29 essentially insulates tax revenue from public scrutiny, placing oversight into the hands of a group of nine appointed members and locking in the tax for a period of 15 years.

“(The oversight) committee is not accountable to anyone,” said Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for the No on 29 campaign. “Government and legislature have no authority to intervene. If anything is awry, they answer to no one. They have sole access to tax dollars, and they are an unelected group.”

However, the committee responsible for overseeing revenue distribution would be stacked with public figures who have a direct stake in moving forward cancer research. Among them are three directors of cancer centers in California and several University of California chancellors (who may appoint proxies) and a practicing physician.

Given the efficacy of its distribution, Proposition 29 is a boon to California’s tax system in that it works to correct an inequity created by tobacco consumption.

The text of the proposition holds that “tobacco use costs Californians billions of dollars a year in medical expenses and lost productivity.” However, these costs are not necessarily paid by the people that create them.

When smokers get sick, they burden not only their own financial health but also that of California’s healthcare system as a whole. That smokers are disproportionately represented among low-income groups only exacerbates this problem, as these groups are less likely than others to be able to pay their own healthcare costs.

This calculation must be placed into the context of an ongoing conversation about the viability of a tax that unduly effects the lowest rungs on the socioeconomic spectrum.
Yet such a concern is self-defeating in its myopia ““ in the long run, it is more than likely that savings in health care costs that result from reduced consumption of cigarettes will outweigh income loss caused by the tax.

A victory for Proposition 29 would justify the voting public’s ability to impose the burden of research on smoking-related diseases on those who necessitate it. In so doing, it would validate an equitable taxation model that can help tackle some of California’s most pressing scientific and economic woes.

California voters are being asked to make an ethical choice, and each voter is responsible for making his or her own educated decision about the matter.

However, the paradigm of taxing a good to attack the economic problem that it creates holds a great deal of promise for California’s future.

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