I 185 keeps money in Montana

The top executives of seven tobacco companies testified at a Congressional hearing in 1994 under oath that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive. None of them ever went to jail for lying.

The major opponents to I-185 are RJ Reynolds, owned by a foreign company, British American Tobacco, and Altria. The tobacco industry can legally addict people, make them pay for their addiction and they make a profit from their customers’ addictions.

Tobacco is the only consumer product that eventually kills half of its regular users, if they follow its manufacturers’ recommendations.

In Montana each year 1,600 people die from tobacco use, or the entire population of Choteau gone this year, Clancy the next year, Big Timber the following year and so on.

Nicotine is the key to addiction and profit for the Tobacco Industry.

In the legal opinion in US vs. Philip Morris USA ET. al., Judge Gladys Kessler wrote that tobacco companies “can and do control the level of nicotine delivered in order to create and sustain addiction” and further, that the “goal to ensure that their products deliver sufficient nicotine to create and sustain addiction, influences their selection and combination of design parameters.”

Over decades, internal tobacco industry documents have repeatedly shown full awareness of tax increases and how they affect their addicts and future addicts. Tobacco company Philip Morris of Australia in 1983 stated: “… The most certain way to reduce consumption is through price.”

In 1985: “… Of all the concerns, there is one – taxation – which alarms us the most. While marketing restrictions and public and passive smoking do depress volume, in our experience taxation depresses it much more severely. Our concern for taxation is, therefore, central to our thinking about smoking and health. It has historically been the area to which we have devoted most resources and for the foreseeable future, I think things will stay that way almost everywhere.”

And 1993: “… A high cigarette price, more than any other cigarette attribute, has the most dramatic impact on the share of the quitting population.”

In 2010, the combined profits of the six leading tobacco companies was $35.1 billion.

Most tobacco companies raise their prices on their addicts almost every year to keep their profits growing.

For 2017: the top 11 executives of Phillip Morris and Altria, maker of Marlboro, combined total compensation was $68 million. Health benefits provided by these companies to their thousands of employees are paid for by their addicts.

Their profit is no different than a tax on your health.

I-185 money will stay in Montana, unlike the majority of profits from tobacco sales that will leave the state.

We all know the moral dilemma we have with tobacco use. We have legalized it by default. We know it addicts people. We know it harms people. The issue is how do we pay for the costs it brings to us all and to those who are addicted.

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Republican John Cobb of Augusta Cobb served in the Montana House from 1985-2001 and Senate from 2003-2007.