JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The Missouri Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association (MPCA) strongly opposes the outrageous 470% cigarette and 200% tobacco tax increase slated to be on the November ballot, the group said.
MPCA's opposition campaign will include a rigorous and highly visible convenience store-based voter education program, it added.
The tax increase is a constitutional amendment that will generate up to $499 million per year in new welfare programs. According to Ronald J. Leone, executive director of MPCA, [image-nocss] there are numerous reasons why the constitutional amendment is a very bad idea, any one of which is sufficient to convince the majority of the voters to reject it.
The proponents will attempt to convince voters that this issue is about the dangers of tobacco, he said. Fortunately, the facts will expose this classic bait-and-switch strategy; 82.5% of the outrageous 470% tax increase is not required to be spent on tobacco related diseases or illnesses. Instead, the 470% tax increase creates up to a half-billion dollars in new welfare programs, the vast majority of which directly profits the same greedy corporations that are bankrolling the massive & oppressive tax increasehospitals, doctors, HMOs and drug companies.
Using an inexpensive but highly effective convenience store based voter education campaign, MPCA was instrumental in defeating Proposition A, the 324% cigarette and 200% tobacco tax increase on the November 2002 ballot. MPCA's success was even more spectacular given the fact that only 26% of the population at the time used tobacco products, the Prop A proponents spent in excess of $5.5 million and MPCA spent only $41,000, said Leone. What lesson did the greedy hospitals, doctors, HMOs and drug companies, which funded and supported Prop A, learn from this stinging defeat? To ignore the will of the people and to ask for an even more outrageous 470% tax increase! What part of no' don't the proponents understand?
And MPCA was also instrumental in the passage of Amendment 3, the road and bridges funding program on the November 2004 ballot. Amendment 3 received an unprecedented 79% of the vote, Leone said. Again, MPCA used an inexpensive but highly effective store-based voter education campaign, he said.
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