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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 18, 1995                   TAG: 9510180045
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE CAMPAIGNS

AMID THE blitzkrieg of radio and TV ads, fliers and faxes, direct mail and news conferences coming at us from all sides in Virginia's legislative races, one thing we haven't heard, from Democrats or Republicans, is that their opponents have the audacity to oppose sin.

Too bad. It would be refreshing to hear candidates discussing ``sin'' - meaning, in this context, smoking, boozing and gambling. The subject was featured in a news story this week about campaign contributions from the ``sin'' lobby - the tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries.

Instead, amid the din, we hear mostly silence about these sins and the governmental responses to them. The candidates apparently prefer to keep these matters hush-hush.

Consider, for instance, the precious few incumbent state lawmakers who have ever voted in favor of higher cigarette taxes. They surely don't expect to receive generous campaign gifts from King Tobacco. Perhaps they fear inviting trouble (in the form of hefty industry support for their opponents) by reminding people of their vote.

As for challengers who stress opposition to higher tobacco taxes, they run this risk: Try as they may to couch it in terms of protecting tobacco farmers' jobs, they're apt to come across as slavish devotees to a powerful special interest that has fallen into serious disrepute.

Polls suggest that, however much it may oppose higher taxes in general, the public generally recognizes that Virginia's current cigarette tax - 2.5 cents per pack, lowest in the nation - is absurd. This tax hasn't changed since 1967, when it was lowered - lowered! - from 3 cents.

In recent years, many states have significantly boosted excise taxes on tobacco - per-pack levies of from 20 cents to 40 cents are not uncommon - and with good reason. Not just to raise revenue, but to discourage young people from taking up a habit known to be responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans every year. Adolescents, the fastest-growing segment of smokers, are also the most price-sensitive.

Virginia's lawmakers, meanwhile, continue to pay homage to an industry whose product kills more people than AIDS, highway accidents and homicides combined. ``It's the economy, stupid,'' they'll tell you.

But the public isn't so stupid. A lot of people understand that, with health-care costs piling on to taxpayers' burden, preserving the lowest-in-the-nation burden on tobacco is a sin economically, as well as in other respects.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB