
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 22, 1993                   TAG: 9309220082
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

HIGHER TOBACCO TAXES CALLED THREAT TO JOBS

A hefty cigarette tax increase to help finance health care reform would unfairly single out one industry and one region, tobacco workers and farmers said.

They were joined by North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, who said he has urged President Clinton "to be reasonable and fair."

Clinton is considering increasing "sin taxes" by about $105 billion to help finance his $700 billion health care plan but has not decided how much of that should come from tobacco.

Tobacco industry representatives said a 75-cent tax increase would cost nearly 82,000 jobs, almost half of them in the South.

"These are some of the very best jobs we have, and we have a lot at stake," said Hunt.

North Carolina would be hit hardest by a tax increase. A study conducted by Price Waterhouse for the tobacco industry said a cigarette excise tax increase of 75 cents per pack would cost North Carolina about 12,000 jobs.

Jerry Sprouse, a Philip Morris plant worker in Richmond and president of the Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers International Union local, said the impact of such a tax increase "would be devastating."

"In Virginia alone, we stand to lose over 7,500 tobacco-sector jobs, and that number does not even include the thousands of jobs that would be lost when we stop spending money in our communities," Sprouse said. - Associated Press

by CNB