The first “funnel week” of this legislative session has just ended. As I mentioned in my last article, the “funnel” is the deadline for policy bills to come out of committee if they are to stay alive for the session. The exceptions are the appropriation proposals and tax bills, which are exempt from this first of several funnels. For any bill to move forward in its journey toward becoming a law, it must first be approved by a sub-committee of three members (two from the majority party and one from the minority). When at least two of these three sub-committee members vote for the bill, it then moves on to be considered by the full committee of 21 members. If it receives a majority in the full committee, a bill is then eligible for debate by all 100 members in the Iowa House of Representatives.

Funnel week allowed a lot of good bills to die, including a bill (HF261) that would have allowed local communities to adopt stronger or more stringent restrictions on smoking. I co-sponsored the bill, along with Rep. Bill Schickel, R-Mason City, after conferring with leaders of several cities and towns.

Since Iowa is a state that believes in local control, and smoking in public places is an important quality of life and health issue, local governments should have a say in the matter. California, which has a ban on smoking in public places, has seen a 19.5% reduction in lung cancer, and smoking rates have dropped by 27%. Although several communities in Iowa passed smoking bans in public facilities over the past few years, they were overturned by Iowa courts, because the bans were in conflict with state law. Our bi-partisan bill, which met its demise this week, would not ban smoking in public places. It would simply allow local governments, cities or counties, to establish smoking ordinances as they and their constituents would like. Unfortunately, for now, that is not to be.

One of my bills that is still alive raises the tobacco excise tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. This is the third year that I sponsored this legislation, and it was much easier to obtain co-sponsors this year than it was three years ago. More people are coming to the realization that raising the price of tobacco products, together with restricting smoking in public areas, would lead to reduced use of this very addictive legal drug. Tobacco related illness and death is the most preventable disease in America.

The primary goal of increasing the price of tobacco products is to improve the health of Iowans by decreasing the number of tobacco users and the incidence of tobacco related death and disease. An increase in the tobacco excise tax will create some additional revenue to support health care programs and services. However, this additional revenue can only be viewed as a short term boost since we certainly do not want to depend on a source of state revenue that we hope will reduce dramatically in the coming years. No one is suggesting that raising this excise tax will solve the state’s budget problem.

When I was a teenager, cigarettes were referred to as “coffin nails” and “cancer sticks”. I don’t know how much research about the effects of tobacco was being conducted, but even back in the ‘50s, we knew the danger of tobacco. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me or many others from becoming addicted. Today, we know that 4,600 Iowans die each year from tobacco related illnesses. Every day, 12 Iowa families are planning a funeral for a loved one because of a tobacco related illness. In my own family, we experienced the grief of losing my older brother in this way.

Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to consider that this is the equivalent of one jumbo jet crashing and killing 383 people every month in Iowa. I remember how alarming it was for the citizens of our state when a passenger airplane crashed in Sioux City in 1989, killing 112 people. If a jumbo jet crashed every month in Iowa, killing all its passengers, we would certainly do everything we could to stop it from happening. We know that increasing the cost of tobacco products and restricting smoking in public places reduces the use of cigarettes. That in turn reduces health care costs that all of us pay for through our private health insurance plans and through the tax supported Medicaid program. Reducing the use of tobacco saves money and, most importantly, saves lives.

If you cannot visit me at the Capitol, you can write me at the State Capitol, Des Moines, IA 50319; call 515/281-3221 or e-mail me at ro.foege@legis.state.ia.us.

Ro

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