To stanch the state’s financial
bleeding, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens wants to get a quick hit of $800
million owed by Big Tobacco instead of stretching out annual
payments for a total of $2.1 billion. Meanwhile, money for
anti-smoking programs remains in limbo.
This is, at the
least, a curious moral dilemma. Colorado is getting this payout
from cigarette manufacturers because cigarettes have been proven to
cause cancer, emphysema and other diseases. If not legally, at
least ethically, it would seem Colorado should be using a chunk of
this money to help curb the addictions of current smokers and
prevent new addicts. Yet Owens and other lawmakers act as though
the obligation were optional. Or maybe they realize the obligation
but are desperate for the money.
I know a little something
about desperation: I used to smoke. Sometimes, when the money was
tight, I’d raid ashtrays, even wastebaskets, just to get a
few puffs of nicotine. With the nicotine came the really bad stuff:
carbon monoxide, arsenic and all the rest.
Often I vowed
to quit. Sometimes I succeeded for a week, several times for a few
years. All told, I smoked 23 pack-years, as respiratory doctors
calculate smoking.
A decade ago, out on a hiking trial,
you might never have guessed my habit. I climbed one 14,000-foot
mountain in three hours. I was both a mule and a racehorse on
backcountry trails. No more. Now, I’m a statistic, having
been diagnosed with emphysema. This year I barely went above
timberline, and then only with a struggle.
Quitting is a
complex process. The physical addiction, sometimes said to be
greater than that of heroin, can be the easier part. For me,
quitting was sometimes as easy as walking away. I’d smoke the
last cigarette, crumple the pack and then set out on a backpacking
trip. But staying quit was the more difficult challenge.
To those who put up with my reformist spiel, I explain that
it’s like investing money in the bank. You have to invest
time in living as a nonsmoker, one day at a time, so that when a
crisis hits — and we all have our crises — we can get through
without going back to our old crutch — cigarettes.
As for
putting money in the bank, Colorado state government is in tough
shape in large part because of bad decisions. Back in 1999,
everything seemed golden in Colorado. “I think we can easily
justify an additional $100 million in permanent tax relief without
jeopardizing our base budget,” said Gov. Owens. All told, taxpayers
got back $1 billion.
Now, the state is poor while wearing
several financial straightjackets; in particular, one called the
Taxpayer Bill of Rights that was constitutionally mandated by
voters. But must we deplete Colorado’s tobacco-settlement
money?
Even as lawmakers slashed anti-smoking programs
last year, they found a few million dollars to subsidize
businesses, including $9 million to promote tourism. Of the $100
million received from Big Tobacco last year, Colorado spent only
$3.8 million to help people quit their smoking addiction.
In many places in Colorado, including those where I spent most of
my smoking years, programs to help people stop smoking or never
start are nonexistent; the Quitline number nowhere to be seen. Now,
the governor seems to waffle from day to day about the future of
those programs. We need a steady commitment.
Multiple
ironies abound. First, there is Colorado’s addiction to drug
money. Some may take issue with that description, but how else can
dipping into anti-smoking money for other uses be characterized?
Second, money meant to curb the addiction of tobacco is being used,
in part, to put people in jail because of their addiction to
cocaine and other drugs.
In all of this, I am reminded of
church services when I was young. The donation tray would be passed
once, twice, three times a service, and the notion of filching
money from the tray was a running joke. Of course, nobody would
ever do it. Yet now, watching state officials, that’s what I
see happening with our tobacco funds.
Allen Best
is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He was a journalist in small towns of Colorado for
about 20 years and currently lives in metropolitan Denver.
He’s been off tobacco for six
years.
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