March 04--For the fourth consecutive legislative session, a Democratic state senator from San Antonio is trying to raise the legal age for buying or possessing cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Despite falling short in his previous attempts to boost the legal age from 18 to 19, Sen. Carlos Uresti is upping the ante this time with a bill outlawing tobacco products for Texans under 21 years old.
It would be the highest legal smoking age in America, where 46 states place the tobacco limit at 18 and the rest -- Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah -- opted for 19.
Uresti hopes to light a fire under his colleagues by stressing the lives and money his bill would save.
"Smoking-related illnesses cause more deaths than alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, suicides, homicides, driving while intoxicated and fire -- combined," he told members of a Senate committee last month. "The annual health care cost in Texas directly caused by smoking is $5.83 billion, and $1.6 billion of that is covered by Medicaid."
Uresti's bill, however, faces an uphill climb -- as does separate legislation to ban smoking in most public places across Texas.
Partisan ideals about the proper role of government, combined with a deep Texas tradition of respect for personal choices, often trump the promise of lives and money saved.
For example, in the 2011 legislative session, efforts to ban Texans from buying junk food with food stamps drew opposition from Democrats who said government should not tell low-income people how to feed their families. A separate attempt to limit consumption of sugary sodas by adding a penny-per-ounce tax was quashed by Republicans who oppose taxes and generally distrust government intrusion into household choices.
Both efforts would have saved lives and large amounts of tax money by improving the health of Texans on Medicaid, supporters argued. But even in a session hobbled by a budget crisis, neither effort went far in 2011.
This session, Uresti said he hopes a series of eye-opening numbers will keep his tobacco-age bill from getting snuffed out again. In Texas, according to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids:
--17.4 percent of youths smoke, with 29,100 new young smokers added every year.
--503,000 children alive today will die of smoking-related causes.
--About $850 million of the state's annual budget is spent on smoking-related health costs.
"By raising the age for the purchase and possession of tobacco products, we can help keep cigarettes out of high schools and help prevent these children from creating a lifelong addiction that will cut short their lives," Uresti said.
Opposition in the past has come from lawmakers, particularly Republicans, who believe that 18-year-olds are adults capable of taking personal responsibility for their actions, Uresti said.
But Texas routinely places higher age restrictions on its citizens, he said, noting that Texans under 21 cannot purchase alcohol, practice medicine, become a police officer, acquire a concealed handgun license under most conditions or qualify for a license to pilot a party boat or become a pyrotechnics operator.
Groups as diverse as the Texas Medical Association and the Texas PTA have signed up to support Uresti's Senate Bill 313, but it was recently sidetracked by financial considerations.
Citing a state comptroller estimate that the higher age limit would cut smoking and tobacco use by 33 percent among 18- to 20-year-olds, the Legislative Budget Board determined that Uresti's bill would subtract almost $40 million in tobacco taxes from the 2014-15 budget.
Knowing it is far more difficult to gain support for a bill that cuts revenue, Uresti has asked the board to reconsider its estimate, arguing that the long-term savings in health costs would more than pay for the lost taxes. In the meantime, the bill remains pending in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
Supporters of a statewide smoking ban also will try again this session.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has introduced a bill to outlaw smoking in the workplace and in most public places, though restaurants and bars may allow smoking in outdoor areas. A business owner or operator who violates the law can be fined $50, with fines escalating no higher than $500 for subsequent violations.
In the 2011 session, a similar bill was approved by committees in both chambers but never received a floor vote. The House author, state Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, managed to add the ban as a floor amendment to a school finance bill, but it was stripped out in conference committee.
Crownover plans to introduce a reworked version of the bill sometime this week.
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