Prop. 99 Gets Credit as Smokers Cut Back

Californians are smoking less since the passage of Proposition 99, the voter-approved initiative that mandated a 25-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax, according to new statistics complied by the Board of Equalization.

Board Chairman Paul Carpenter said cigarette tax stamp purchases for April, May and June show a 10.3% drop compared to the same period in 1988.

“Normally, there is about a 2% decline in consumption so we can assume the remainder is attributed to Proposition 99,” he said. “It’s hard to know who it is that isn’t buying, but the best of all possible worlds would be if the higher cost is chilling the introduction of smoking to teen-agers.”

Carpenter said there was an even greater decline in consumption--19.5%--during the first quarter of the year, but officials discounted those figures, assuming that many smokers had stockpiled cigarettes in December before the tax hike went into effect. By the second quarter, stockpiles would have been depleted, he said, and the figures would more accurately reflect the effect of the tax increase on smoking habits.

‘Absolutely Delighted’

“We predicted this would happen. We are absolutely delighted,” said Dr. Lowell Irwin, president of the California division of the American Cancer Society.

Irwin said that while the statistics do not indicate which smoking groups would have been affected the most by a hefty tax increase, it is “most likely” that the tax would discourage young people from buying cigarettes.

“That is the most price-conscious group. They just can’t afford the increase, whereas the older working person doesn’t give up the habit that easily,” he said.

He said it is that young group that the Cancer Society and other nonprofit groups sponsoring Proposition 99 hope to target in their anti-smoking campaigns because 90% of all smokers begin the habit by age 19.

Irwin and Julia Carroll, associate director of the San Francisco-based Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, predicted that the decline in consumption will continue. But Carpenter said there is no precedent to measure it against, since California has never before had a cigarette tax hike of this magnitude.

“The tobacco industry did not spend $23 million to defeat us for nothing,” Carroll said. “The very fact that they spent $23 million shows they knew it (the tax increase) would reduce consumption. That drop in consumption represents people who managed to give up a severe addiction, and hopefully a percentage of them were children. “

She said the 10% drop in California compares with a national decline in consumption of 4% for the first five months of 1989.

According to the Board of Equalization figures, 11.6 billion cigarette tax stamps were purchased in the second quarter of 1989, compared to 13 billion in 1988. The biggest drop came in May, when 3.8 billion stamps were purchased, representing an 18.2% decline from the 4.6 billion purchases in May, 1988. The tax stamps show payment of the state’s 35-cent-a-pack cigarette tax.

The board has not compiled complete revenue figures yet, but it has been estimated that the new tax should yield $600 million this year.

Calling the decline in cigarette sales “impressive,” Carpenter, a nonsmoker, said supporters of the tax initiative should consider an ever greater hike.

“I would like to see a user tax that would reflect what smoking costs the taxpayers because as it is now the taxpayer is subsidizing those people whose health is degraded by the smoking habit,” he said.