Groups urge Amendment 3 passage

Missourians should vote for Amendment 3 because it will help more young children get the educational start they need, spokesmen for three groups told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

If voters approve, Missouri's lowest-in-the-nation tax on each pack of cigarettes would climb from the current 17 cents to 77 cents, through a four-year, 15 cents each year phase-in.

At least three-fourths of the money raised - an estimated $300 million a year after the fourth year - would go to early childhood education, with 5-10 percent directed to smoking cessation programs and the other 10-15 percent earmarked for hospitals or other health care facilities.

Jack Cardetti, a spokesman for the "Yes on 3 for Kids" campaign, said: "We've seen for a couple of generations now that the Missouri Legislature has not gotten serious about early childhood education.

"Therefore, we really need this done through an initiative petition, through the voters."

He said studies show when people invest in early childhood education, "reading and math scores go up, the dropout rates go down," along with crime, incarceration and society's "dependence on Medicaid and other government programs."

Only 4 percent of Missouri's children attend a pre-school, he said, while the surrounding states' pre-kindergarten attendance ranges from a 75 percent high in Oklahoma to a 19 percent low in Tennessee, he said.

"That tells us that we have a problem that we need to address," Ray McCarty, Associated Industries of Missouri (AIM) president, reported. "They say that kids learn so much by the time they're 6 years-old, and in Missouri, we don't even start (school) until they're 6."

Virginia - a major tobacco-producing state - is second-to-last, at 30 cents tax per pack of cigarettes.

North Carolina - another major tobacco state - is fifth from the bottom, at 47 cents a pack.

However, five of the eight states that border Missouri now have taxes more than $1 a pack, ranging from Oklahoma's $1.03 per pack to Illinois' $1.98, while Kentucky is at 60 cents, Tennessee at 62 cents and Nebraska is at 64 cents per pack.

Missouri Retailers Association Director David Overfelt predicted those states likely would raise their taxes when Missouri does.

McCarty noted AIM also supports the Amendment 3 proposal because it starts collecting taxes from cigarette companies who are not contributing to the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) of the 1990s.

"Missouri is the last state to address this issue," he said.

Overfelt said adding that tax would create "the same playing field" for all cigarette makers, since the companies not participating in the MSA are competing and making a profit in other states that have the additional taxes.

McCarty said, "I think everyone understood that the tobacco settlement was to try to help with smoking cessation programs and to help offset the societal health care costs that go along with smoking."

Also, that includes all cigarette producers, not just those who signed the MSA.

Cardetti added, Missouri's not having the extra tax has made the Show-Me State "a dumping ground for cheap cigarettes" and those companies "will stop at nothing to make sure they protect their profits here in Missouri."

Some opponents of Amendment 3 have argued the additional tax on the "cheap cigarettes" was written into the proposed amendment by the country's major tobacco producers to protect themselves from the competition - and they're using children as pawns in the battle over profits.

One slogan of the supporters' ad campaign is, "If you don't smoke, you don't pay."

McCarty acknowledged that may not be the best public policy, but "It sometimes helps to have some kind of a pilot program going to get it started.

"This gives the state a good pool of money to start with, to try it out and see if it works" before adding early childhood education into the regular budget process.

Cardetti added, "If we don't make it a state policy to fund early childhood education, we're going to get left behind in the 21st century economy."