SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist and cancer survivor, plans to lead a $20 million campaign to persuade voters to finance medical research by doubling California's cigarette tax, said a Bloomberg report. Armstrong's goal of adding $1 a pack to the current tax of 87 cents would yield about $850 million a year and raise the average retail cost to $5.40.
Armstrong may be joined on the June ballot by Governor Jerry Brown, who is pressing for a statewide vote to extend $9.3 billion in taxes and fees to help close a budget deficit. In 2006, tobacco [image-nocss] companies defeated a proposed $2.60-a-pack additional levy at a cost of $66.6 million. The last tax increase was in 1999.
"Jerry's not going to have a lot of opposition other than the Tea Party and the tobacco companies," said Don Perata, the former state Senate president co-chairing the campaign with Armstrong. He said advocates plan to spend $20 million to counter the anti-tax messages. "If they're using a shotgun, they're going to hit everybody," he said.
Altria Group Inc., the Richmond, Va.-based parent of Philip Morris USA, has established a political committee to oppose the increase. The largest U.S. tobacco company contributed more than $128,000 to launch Taxpayers Against Out-of-Control Spending in early February, state records show, according to the news agency.
Altria's effort has the support of six anti-tax groups including the California Taxpayers Association, a spokesperson, Beth Miller, said in a press statement. She declined to estimate how much opponents may spend to try to defeat the measure.
"We all believe cancer research is important, but this measure is flawed and poorly written," Teresa Casazza, president of the taxpayers association, said in a statement released through Miller. "At a time when California is faced with a crippling budget deficit of more than $25 billion, we can't afford to start a new program spending nearly $1 billion a year."
Medical research would get $468 million a year from the increase to study cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, with $156 million for smoking prevention programs and $23 million for law-enforcement initiatives against tobacco smuggling and sales to minors, according to the report, citing the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office.
Cigarette consumption per person in California plunged to 28.5 packs annually in the year ending in June 2009, from 47.3 packs a decade earlier, according to the state Board of Equalization. In the same period, revenue declined to $913 million from $1.1 billion.
Ten cents of the tax on each pack now goes to the state's general fund, while most of the rest is earmarked for health and smoking-prevention programs.
The campaign committee backing the tax increase, Hope 2010 Cure Cancer, reported $40,000 in contributions, all from a trio of Bay Area residents who listed their occupations as investors and retired. Knepprath said he expects supporters to raise enough money for TV advertising in major markets.
The measure originally was scheduled to be on the February 2012 ballot, which is the next regularly scheduled statewide election in California. It would be moved up to June if two-thirds of lawmakers back Brown's proposal for a ballot measure on the tax extensions.
Brown, a Democrat, has not announced a position on the tobacco tax, Bloomberg said.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, joined Armstrong at a press conference yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles to endorse the higher cigarette tax. "The California Cancer Research Act will spur job creation at the state's leading cancer research centers and will bring us a step closer to curing a disease that has hit too close to home for each and every one of us," the mayor said in a statement.
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