Business owners oppose Amendment 3
Some say the tax increase would force employers to lay off workers.
Published Nov. 3, 2006
The Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association is worried that a proposed tax increase on tobacco products will snuff out their profits.
Convenience store owners have banded together to campaign against proposed Amendment 3, which would add an 80-cent tax to the price of every pack of cigarettes and a 20 percent increase on other tobacco products.
The tax would fund a Healthy Future Trust Fund, which would fund smoking cessation and prevention programs, general health care for the uninsured, emergency services and Medicaid. The tax would also pay for the fund's administrative costs.
According to the 2005 State of Tobacco Control Report from the American Lung Association, which is in favor of the initiative, the state also received a failing grade in tobacco prevention and control spending along with 38 other states and the District of Columbia. In Missouri, almost $1.8 million was spent on tobacco control from settlements and Centers for Disease Control funds, according to the ALA report.
Ronald Leone, the executive director for the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, said that the plan spells disaster for Missouri's small business owners.
"It will put Missouri's small businesses at a competitive disadvantage with six out of our eight border states," Leone said.
According to the ALA report, Missouri has the second-lowest cigarette tax at 17 cents per pack. South Carolina has the lowest at 7 cents per pack.
Many convenience store owners are putting up posters and distributing flyers in opposition of the amendment. The signs urge voters to vote against the 470 percent tax increase, calling it tax abuse and a government waste.
"We don't have a lot of money," Leone said, "but we are using the one thing we do have — our convenience stores."
He said that his organization has orchestrated similar business-based campaigns in the past. In 2002, the organization protested Proposition A, which proposed a similar tax increase of 324 percent on tobacco products. Unlike 2006's Amendment 3, Proposal A would not have changed the state constitution. In 2004, convenience stores campaigned to support then-Amendment 3, which would increase funding for roads and bridges.
The tax increase would cut into profits and force convenience stores to lay off employees, Leone said.
"My members make little to no profit on the fuel they sell," Leone said. "The main profit comes from in-store sales, a large portion of which is made up of tobacco products."
For Denise Link, a current smoker, the added tax will be an incentive to drop the habit.
"I'm quitting in January, because [the tax] is too much," Link said. "And you can't smoke anywhere but your house and your car, it feels like."
Link said she has been trying to quit smoking for five years to improve her health, but hasn't yet been successful.