Proposition 99 Cigarette Tax Hike : Both Sides in Cigarette Tax Fight Target Minorities

Lavish campaign spending by tobacco interests has generated remarkably different tactics from the two sides discussing Proposition 99, the tobacco tax initiative, but both share one goal: wooing minority voters.

The importance of minority voters was apparent Tuesday as black and Latino health workers championed Proposition 99 outside San Francisco City Hall in an effort to counter voluminous No on 99 ads that they contend the tobacco industry is targeting on minority communities.

Proposition 99 would raise California’s tobacco tax by 25 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to 35 cents, and use the proceeds to pay for health care for uninsured indigents, anti-smoking education in schools, research into tobacco-related diseases and the improvement of public parks.

At least 20% of the estimated $600 million to be raised annually by the tax must go toward anti-smoking education. The largest share of the money raised, at least 45%, would cover health-care costs for the poor. Such costs now are paid by local governments, which say they cannot afford it.

“We are appalled at the targeting of the black and minority communities by the tobacco industry,” said Irene Reveles-Chase of the American Lung Assn. of San Francisco. “We think this program will go a long way to preventing young people from smoking.”

Confidential No on 99 campaign memos obtained by The Times show a desire by the tobacco industry to focus its campaign at least in part on the measure’s perceived “impacts on minorities and lower-income persons.”

Spokesman Jeff Raimundo stressed that the No on 99 effort is “a statewide campaign aimed at everyone,” but he also acknowledged, “We are aware, as the other side is, of the sensitivity of minorities to excise taxes.”

In the past, tobacco interests have pointed out that tobacco tax hikes hurt poor people most of all because the tax is regressive, and because studies show poor people smoke more than average. They also have argued that Proposition 99 would shift some of the burden of indigent health care to those least able to afford it.

Campaign disclosure reports filed last month show that the tobacco industry is getting those arguments to minority voters. In Los Angeles, for example, No on 99 spent more for radio ads on Spanish-language station KTNQ than any other station. Minority community organizers have been hired to get out the no vote.

Endorsement List

However, the No on 99 committee seems to have erred in some of the minority groups on its No on 99 endorsement list. It said the measure is opposed by the Mexican American Political Assn.; a Latino veterans group called American G.I. Forum and the Black Peace Officers of Santa Clara County. Leaders at all three groups deny opposing the measure; indeed, the Mexican American Political Assn. urges a yes vote on Proposition 99.

That should help Yes on 99 campaigners, who are signing up black and Latino political figures and health workers to endorse the higher tax. They announced plans for further events aimed at countering the tobacco industry’s commercial and charitable programs targeted at minorities as well as its potent political ad budget.

In addition to Tuesday’s event in San Francisco, Yes on 99 strategists plan events in Los Angeles and Sacramento on Thursday and an after-work teach-in at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood next Monday.

Harsh--some say exaggerated--TV commercials against the proposal have cut its early 72% approval rating to about 58%, but supporters believe that margin will hold firm unless the tobacco industry can sway minority and working-class voters with its argument that the tax increase will hurt them most of all.

Californians Against Unfair Tax Increases, the tobacco industry’s committee opposing Proposition 99, expects to spend $10 million on television ads alone. That is more than 10 times the TV ad budget of its opponent, the Coalition for a Healthy California, which is supported by the medical community.

For the most part, the tobacco industry ads against Proposition 99 have not focused on issues directly related to the tobacco tax increase and its alleged value in discouraging smoking. Indeed, the industry’s newest TV commercials do not mention tobacco, cigarettes or smoking at all.

There is a reason for this. Tarrance, Hill, Newport & Ryan, a Washington-based consulting firm, warned in a confidential March, 1987, campaign report for the Tobacco Institute, the industry’s political strategists, that “a campaign for fighting the tax increase will not be received well by voters.”

The consultants concluded: “The single chance the anti-tax campaign has is to move this issue away from smoking.”

Essence of the Fight

Raimundo said this is not an effort to deceive, but merely to focus on what the tobacco industry sees as the essence of the fight.

“There is a massive transfer of wealth from low-income folks to government programs and the medical industry,” he said.

Doctors and others urging a yes vote on Proposition 99 try to counter their opponents’ financial arguments by noting that smoking hurts minorities. Black people, for example, suffer high lung-cancer mortality rates--45% higher in black men than white men. Fully 54% of all blacks who died in 1985 fell to such smoking-related illnesses as cancer and heart disease.