Tobacco Tax Revenue Drop May Be Trend : Health: Fewer people are smoking, officials say. But the decline in funds squeezes medical and education programs.

A decline in revenues from the 3-year-old state tax hike on cigarettes indicates that more and more Ventura County residents may be kicking the habit, county health officials say.

Proposition 99--which funds a variety of county health care and tobacco education programs--raised the cigarette tax from 10 cents to 35 cents a pack in 1988. It also imposed levies on wholesalers and distributors of other tobacco products.

Now, officials say, tobacco usage throughout the county is declining--primarily because smokers are refusing to cough up the extra 25 cents a pack for cigarettes.

They note, however, that other factors, including the stalled economy, a growing list of no-smoking ordinances and the governor’s reassignment of some funds to statewide preventive health care programs are also responsible for the decline in Proposition 99 funds received by the county.

It’s hard to measure the trend in human terms, officials said. But Ventura County’s share of Proposition 99 funds dropped from $5.6 million in 1989-90 to just $3.5 million this year: a hefty 37.5% decrease.

“Countywide, there is a continuing decrease in the usage of tobacco,” said Phillipp K. Wessels, director of the Ventura County Health Care Agency.

That’s the good news, Wessels said. The bad news is that the county’s allocation for health care and tobacco education programs is also declining.

Funds raised from Proposition 99 are not distributed to counties on the basis of how much was actually collected locally in cigarette taxes. The amounts are calculated instead according to a complex formula based partly on the size of each county’s indigent population.

Funding for the California Health Care for Indigents Program this year, for example, was down 20% from last year, noted Wessels.

As a result, Ventura County Medical Center’s share of tobacco tax revenues fell by about 40%, from a high of $2.5 million last year to $1.6 million this year, according to Administrator Pierre Durand.

Pointing out that the state indigent health care program also receives funding from sales and automobile taxes, Durand said monies from these sources will be dramatically lower this year.

This, in addition to the reduced tobacco tax allocation, “will create pressure on health care,” he said. “The county, however, is still committed to health care access,” said Durand. “It will be a big challenge trying to meet the bottom line.”

Durand said the center will try to make up the shortfall in funding through increased efficiency. In addition, he said, the county will try to find other revenues through Medicaid and Medicare to offset the losses.

Despite the dramatic decline in revenues, Durand called Proposition 99 a good tax. “People who smoke use health care services the most,” he said.

The vast majority also happen to be blue-collar workers and ethnic minorities, said Jeanne Scott, coordinator of the state’s Tobacco Education and Control Program. Acting as a resource for the public, the program administers various educational activities including counseling for people who want to quit smoking, training of health professionals and referrals to stop-smoking programs.

“We would love to get more money,” Scott said. However, she added, “it was understood from the beginning that we would be getting less.”

But Scott was quick to point out that the reduction in funds won’t mean a reduction in tobacco education services. She said the agency is targeting the population most at risk: women of childbearing age and the hard-core who are long-term smokers and need to be reached.

In this respect, the agency--which coordinates programs with the American Lung Assn.--also has work-site programs to help employers who want to institute a no-smoking policy, Scott said. Conferences are being planned for the new year to help employers look at the issues, she said.

Meanwhile, Barbara Weinberg, associate director of the Ventura branch of the American Lung Assn., said the agency has had much success in reaching out into the low-income community.

One program, which targeted the La Colonia housing project in Oxnard, separated the residents into groups of men, women and children and educated them according to each group’s needs, she said.

“Men tend to smoke more in the Latino community,” Weinberg said, “so we focused on a cessation program for them and educated the women about the dangers of second-hand smoke.”

Scott said her agency’s goal is to have 75% of the population not smoking by the year 2000. “We’re heading in that direction although it’s too early to see the long-term results,” she said. “It’s ironic that we’re working to put ourselves out of business.”