Cigarette tax proponents

By Paul Queary

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — On the surface, the campaign over an initiative to increase Washington’s tobacco tax looks like a reversal of fortune. The measure’s supporters have far more money than the tobacco-backed opposition. But the tobacco industry may yet provide big money for a last-minute advertising surge.

Initiative 773 would raise Washington’s cigarette tax by 60 cents a pack, to the highest level in America, $1.42. The extra revenue — about $100 million a year — would pay for anti-smoking campaigns and add more people to the state’s subsidized health care program.

The No on 773 Coalition has raised about $150,000, mostly from tobacco interests including Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and the Smokeless Tobacco Council, according to reports filed with the state Public Disclosure Commission. Compare that to the roughly $29 million the tobacco industry spent in a losing fight against a similar initiative in California in 1998.

"It’s ironic that we’re being played as the big money in this," Mike Burgess, campaign manager for the No on 773 Coalition, said Friday. "We don’t have a lot of funding, frankly, to reach a statewide audience."

Meanwhile, the yes campaign, dubbed Healthcare for Washington’s Working Families, has raised more than $1.1 million in cash and in-kind contributions, with a long list of donors including the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Association and HMOs that stand to benefit from the expanded health care program.

The campaign had a healthy $213,917 in cash on hand, according to its Oct. 16 report to the disclosure commission. In a mid-September survey by independent pollster Stuart Elway, 66 percent of 400 Washington voters polled said they supported I-773.

The measure’s proponents are still looking over their shoulders.

"They’re pretty savvy and ruthless when it comes to protecting their profits," said Dan Newman, campaign manager for Healthcare for Washington’s Working Families. Newman wouldn’t detail the campaign’s endgame strategy, but said it could hinge on what the tobacco companies do.

"It’s just a question of when and if the tobacco industry’s going to arrive with a tsunami of negative advertising," Newman said.

The main campaigns for and against the measure can’t accept contributions of more than $5,000 from a single source between Oct. 16 and the election. But Washington law does allow independent expenditures — including television commercials — by third parties. That means Philip Morris or another tobacco company could flood the airwaves with advertising in the final days of the campaign.

A company spokesman wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

"I really can’t speculate on what we may or may not do in the future," said Tom Ryan, a spokesman for Philip Morris in New York. "We don’t think that this is a good tax. It puts an unfair burden on adults who have made the decision to smoke."

Independent expenditures must be kept separate from the main campaign, so Burgess could offer no preview of what might be coming.

"It would be illegal for me to know about that," Burgess said.

At least one tobacco company has already spent money independently. UST, the parent company of U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., manufacturers of Copenhagen and Skoal, spent $27,000 on a direct-mail campaign in September, according to a report filed with the PDC.

A company spokesman referred telephone inquiries to Burgess.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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