Education and politics probably should never meet. Politics, as someone once said, is the art of the possible. Education is the art of doing the impossible to make the seemingly impossible possible.
I was reminded of these two ideas today after spending a chunk of the morning and afternoon talking with the members of the state legislature in Boston about three proposals the governor has in his proposed state budget. All three deal with creating and maintaining ways to get people to either stop smoking–or never start in the first place.
The first proposal asks for a $1.25 increase in the cigarette tax and the closing of a loophole that allows non-cigarette tobacco products to be taxed at a much lower rate. This would have three positive impacts. First, whenever taxes are raised on cigarettes, a significant number of smokers decide the habit has become too expensive and quit. Studies show that health issues and their associated costs decline within a year of a person giving up smoking.
Second, by making all tobacco products significantly more expensive, it will make it more financially difficult for young people to take up the habit in the first place. While it is true that fewer young people now smoke than used to, in Massachusetts an increasing number are taking up smokeless tobacco products and pipes and cigars instead. This is, in part, due to a sophisticated marketing campaign by tobacco companies for the smokeless products among young people, but also in part because of the lower entry price to tobacco in those forms.
Finally, the tax increase would result in an additional $140 million in revenue for the cash-starved state budget. Given that federal money that has been propping up the state’s education and other budgets the last few years is expiring as Washington deals with its own financial issues, additional money needs to be found.
But I was told again and again that the Speaker of the House has decreed there will be no tax increases in the Commonwealth this year–that businesses and individuals cannot afford to pay out more than they already are.
Of course in the long-term, we will ignore the fact that tobacco is a known cancer causing agent and that not doing all we can to prevent cancer before it starts is far more expensive because of the healthcare costs it inevitably leads to.
The other two proposals were more warmly received–at least in principle. The first would increase funding for smoking cessation programs by $1.7 million. At one time, Massachusetts was spending $48 million a year on that–and smoking rates plunged. But funding for those programs has dropped more than 90 percent since then. Last year the Commonwealth scraped together $4.1 million for that. Given the problems in the state budget, I am not shocked by that amount, but I am dismayed. Again, we lower long-term healthcare costs every time we get someone weaned off tobacco–whether smoked or smokeless.
The second would create coverage for smoking cessation programs in health insurance policies for state workers and for those on Commonwealth Care–a health insurance policy the state is offering to cities and towns buy into to save money.
None of these programs should have been a hard sell. They will reduce healthcare costs in the long-term while the first has the added short-term effect of creating some new revenues to help with the current state budget crisis.
But in some cases, you would have thought I was asking for a Profiles in Courage level stand on principle.
I understand that there are political realities. I understand that sometimes compromises have to be made in order to reach a legislative goal. I understand that arguing with the Speaker of the House is not a good way to advance ones station in a legislative body.
But I also know beating cancer is not a job for the timid or the shy. I know that taking on the tobacco interests in this country is not a job for the timid or the shy. No war is won by being timid or being shy.
We need legislators who are neither timid nor shy.
