Iowa Smokers Rights Coalition

I’d like to take a moment to forward this message FORCES Iowa received from Richard Maynard, Iowa coordinator of the Smoker’s Club, Inc. It’s time to get writing! See full message below the cut.

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We at FORCES Iowa received this email from the Iowa Restaurant Association, and would like to pass it along to all concerned. See the full message below the cut.

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ISRC is pleased to announce our contact phone number:

1-773-305-1651

In response to the February 8 2007 FORCES Iowa press release, we’re pleased to see we’ve gotten some attention. This screed comes to us from the staff of a small community newspaper in central Iowa.

— Begin quoted message —

— End quoted message —

First off, please spare me the “If it could only just save one life” and “deadly addiction” tripe. If you’re that much against cigarettes, then be honest and say you advocate their prohibition.

We’re not talking about lost wages and productivity. Governor Culver is not proposing to raise income or corporate taxes to pay for his proposed expansion of indigent health care; he’s talking about more or less quadrupling the tax on cigarettes. Let’s say for a minute that Governor Culver had proposed to finance his expansion of indigent health care by quadrupling the tax on, say, alcoholic beverages instead of cigarettes. You’d think it was ridiculous and unfair, but that’s exactly what he’s doing to smokers! Punitive taxation on an unpopular minority in order to expand government services that benefit the entire population of the state is nothing more than a politically expedient money grab.

Since you seem more interested in repeating anti-smoking propaganda than in actually checking your facts, you should be pleased to learn the Master Settlement Agreement has imposed very broad and stringent restrictions on tobacco advertising in order to limit exposure of youth to tobacco advertising, so quite frankly we’re not buying your mechanistically repeated catch phrase about “marketing to children”.

It seems pretty obvious to me that since you’ve apparently already made up your mind, and also appear to uncritically accept anti-smoking propaganda, that the readers of one small town newspaper in central Iowa won’t be getting both sides of this story. Shame on you.

We here at FORCES Iowa have continued the Iowa bar patron survey project, in an effort to actually obtain the opinions of people who actually go to bars in Iowa. Two more bars in Southeast Iowa were surveyed, and the results continue to show a trend that the majority of bar patrons smoke, and are opposed to a law that would ban smoking in bars.

Please click here to see how things are looking so far.

We’ve changed the results to a .PDF document, and updated the format to include both total and average figures for the survey results.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: FORCES Iowa
webmaster@forcesiowa.org
www.forcesiowa.org

FACTS SMOKE HATERS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW
(NUMBER 1 IN A SERIES)

IOWA SMOKERS ALREADY PAY 26% OF IOWA’S ENTIRE MEDICAID COST

BURLINGTON, IOWA — 7 FEBRUARY 2006.

According to the Iowa Department of Health’s Division
of Tobacco Control web site,”annual health care
expenditures in Iowa directly related to tobacco use
total $617 million.”

We’re supposed to be concerned about this very large
number because it is implied that this is a cost that
is borne by Iowa taxpayers, and that smokers are
somehow not paying their fair share.

While IDPH Tobacco Control does not cite a source for their
figure, we’re pretty sure it’s an estimate based on overall
medical expenditures by all sources including private bank
accounts and insurance companies, as opposed to expenditures
from Iowa taxpayer dollars.

You see, the only major direct medical expenses paid for
by Iowa taxpayers are Iowa’s contributions to the
Medicaid program, which primarily benefits indigent
residents of the State of Iowa.

According to documents from the Iowa Legislature,
while the State of Iowa estimates that it will spend
nearly $3 billion on Medicaid in FY 2007, and the
State of Iowa’s contribution to that $3 billion
expenditure is only about $700 million, and the
balance is paid from Federal and other funds (Fiscal
Facts 2006, p.93).

Now, in fiscal year 2007, Iowa smokers are expected to pay
$99.2 million in tobacco taxes, and another $87.3
million in funds from the 1998 Tobacco Master
Settlement Agreement, totaling $186.5 million (Fiscal
Facts 2006, p. 58), or about 26% of Iowa’s entire
Medicaid program contribution.

Current figures from the Centers for Disease Control
estimate that only about 20% of Iowa’s population
smokes, but this 20% pays enough money to cover 26% of
the state’s Medicaid program. That apparently is not
enough for some Iowa policymakers who find it politically
expedient to expand a program that benefits the entire
population of the State of Iowa on the backs of an
unpopular minority.

ABOUT FORCES IOWA

FORCES Iowa is an educational organization dedicated
to protecting the dignity, rights, and interests of
adults who choose to smoke. FORCES Iowa does not accept
funds from the tobacco industry.

WORKS CITED

Iowa Department of Public Heath website, “IDPH –
Tobacco Use Prevention and Control home page” retried
7 February 2007 from http://www.idph.state.ia.us/tobacco/

State of Iowa, Legislative Services Agency, Fiscal
Services Division. “Fiscal Facts 2006” (May 2006).
Retrieved 7 February 2007 from
http://staffweb.legis.state.ia.us/lfb/docs/fiscal_facts/Fiscal_Facts_2006.pdf

Centers for Disease Control, MMWR Weekly.
“State-Specific Prevalence of Current Cigarette
Smoking Among Adults and Secondhand Smoke Rules and
Policies in Homes and Workplaces — United States,
2005” (October 27, 2006) retrieved 7 February 2006
from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5542a2.htm

- END -

Patrons in two bars in Southeast Iowa were surveyed on the 2nd and 3rd of February, 2007 in order to determine the prevalence of smoking among bar patrons in the State of Iowa, as well as attitudes regarding proposed legislation that would ban smoking in bars in the State of Iowa.

Initial survey results support the following hypotheses:

a) Prevalence of smoking among bar patrons is far greater than that of the general population.

b) A substantial majority of bar patrons are not in favor of legislation that would ban smoking in bars in Iowa.

Please click here to see survey results. We will continue to survey more establishments in Iowa in the weeks to come. If you would like to suggest a venue to be surveyed, please contact webmaster@forcesiowa.org

(post edited on 11 Feb 2007 to change survey results link due to new pdf format)

The folks at the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division should be commended, as they have a very nice system for accessing alcohol license information.

So, it’s easy for us to show that on 1 February 2007, there are 1627 licensed bars and taverns in the State of Iowa. We did this by counting the number of class “C” licensees that are categorized as “bars and taverns”, as opposed to say “bowling alleys” or “convenience stores”. But we have those figures too, should we need them.

We’ll keep track of this on a monthly basis, and see how this number is affected should a ban be implemented in Iowa this summer.

The Iowa legislature might want to consider the impact smoking had in the great state of Minnesota, our border to the north, before they ban it here in Iowa.

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Well, the 2007 session of the Iowa legislature is looking bleak for smokers. Smoke hating legislators are lining up to propose all sorts of antismoking legislation - no indignity is too low, no harassment is too severe. As was the case last year, Senator Matt McCoy from Des Moines has the first anti-smoking bill on the senate floor, SF36, and boy, it’s a doosy. Keep reading →