Two pieces of good news in Oregon and Indiana, both suggesting that people are rejecting tobacco control and its speical-interest agendas.
Tuesday voters in Oregon strongly rejected a scheme to fund children’s heatlh care by hiking the tax on cigarettes. The voting margin of 3-to-2 against the measure is one of greatest losses of a cigarette tax measure. This defeat follows last year’s defeat of tobacco control in California where voters there soundly voted against a plan to raise cigarette taxes to fund children’s health care programs and to fund anti-tobacco education campaigns.
That voters in California, supposedly the most anti-tobacco state in the union, turned their thumbs down on a tobacco hike measure while Oregon residents so strongly rejected the same is an encouraging trend. For too long tobacco control has set the agenda and dictated narrative on tobacco issues. Their influence, although strong, is obviously waning. For a detailed examination of the tax defeat in California, see Norman Kjono’s California’s Proposition 86: A Review of voting Patterns and Broader Issues
Of somewhat lesser importance, but still delicious, an anti-tobacco councilman in Fort Wayne Indiana was thrown out of office by the voters. He expressed surprise that demonizing a substantial segment of the city’s population wasn’t overlooked by voters who have had it with anti-smoking fanatics. His defeat, along with the defeat of Oregon’s cigarette tax measure brings smiles to normal people everywhere.
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