tobacco industry – Sandy Rosenberg

“The states are the laboratories of democracy.”

I didn’t think of that.

Justice Louis Brandeis did.

For example, a minimum wage law was first enacted by Massachusetts in 1912. FDR made it part of the New Deal in 1933

Maryland became one of the first states to set aside a separate fund for the settlement we received from the tobacco industry in 2000.

I sponsored the bill, along with Delegate Peter Rawlings.

The veto override of House Bill 732 was before the House yesterday.

The bill included an increase in the tobacco tax Every year, at least $18.25 million of this new revenue would be used to prevent people from starting to smoke and to get others to stop smoking. Those are the two principal goals of the fund we created 30 years ago.

The bill would also impose a tax on digital advertising.

One of the arguments made by the Republican opponents of the bill was that Maryland would be the first state to impose such a tax.

I rose to speak, “Justice Brandeis said that ‘The states are the laboratories of democracy.’”

The House voted to override the Governor’s veto, 88-48.

Pete Rawlings and I co-wrote the law creating the Cigarette Restitution Fund in 1999.

The State of Maryland was about to receive more than $500 million in annual payments from the tobacco companies under the settlement of our lawsuit against the industry.

We targeted the use of this money, instead of having it go into the state’s General Fund, where it could be used for any purpose.

Educating youngsters and teenagers on the negative health effects of tobacco is crucial to ending the tobacco epidemic in our state and nation. That’s one of the targeted uses in our law.

I testified today on House Bill 703, which would require that $21 million be spent annually for this purpose.

This would be an $11 million increase, requiring a reduction elsewhere in how the money in the Fund is spent.

That makes passage of our bill far from certain.

Later in the day, I learned about House Bill 747, a Hogan administration bill that would modify the Cigarette Restitution fund.

This “could be the vehicle for amendments that make changes to the program w/ a huge fiscal note,” I write the advocates for my legislation. “We need to think of things that can be done without money.”

My Key Issues:

Tag: tobacco industry

Working in the Laboratories of Democracy

Targeting tobacco money

My Key Issues: