One of the items on the November ballot involves a decision on a cigarette tax in Missouri.

Amendment 3 proposes increasing taxes on cigarettes to generate funds for a Early Childhood Health and Education Trust Fund.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, Missouri has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 17 cents per pack.

Linda Rallo with Raise Your Hand For Kids said the proposed tax would generate about $300 million annually for early childhood investments.

“The founders of Raise Your Hands For Kids, myself and a few others, have long tried to figure out where we are going to get new money for childhood education and a lot of us had been working in that field and there’s just never been a source of revenue that’s been devoted for kids birth through five,” Rallo said. “The tobacco tax is so low in Missouri, it’s not even close to our neighboring states and it’s sort of like the last pot of money that’s really available for anything new and we felt that it would be a good place to get these new funds for these needed investments.”

Rallo said the reason she and others involved with Raise Your Hand For Kids are supporting the passing of Amendment 3 is because they believe early childhood should be more of a priority.

“Because those first five years is when 90% of the brain development occurs, it’s where children learn soft skills like how to get along, how to communicate, how to control their behavior. These are the things that are not being developed,” Rallo said. “We came to this because the problem is that the workforce we have is just not where it needs to be and so (we were) trying to peel all the layers back and figure out how can we get a better workforce, it really starts in those first five years.”

 Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association Executive Director Ron Leone said while early childhood development is important, this is the wrong vehicle to support it.

“They are using children as pawns because the ultimate goal of Amendment 3 is to pass a tax that falls most heavily on ‘big tobacco’s’ competition,” Leone said. “So the goal and result of Amendment 3, certainly from ‘big tobacco’s’ perspective is to heavily tax their competition, increase the price of their competition which means more people buy big tobacco products and that means big tobacco cigarette profits increase.”

Leone said he could support a tax increase if it was handled differently.

“The better way to do it is to have a fair and reasonable tax increase, nothing this large, because I think people want to increase the tax on cigarettes but they always come out with such an outrageous and unfair tax increase that even most non-smokers realize it’s unreal and unfair and so they vote no,” Leone said. “They should not have created all of this new bureaucracy and all of these new programs, the money should flow through the appropriations process so our elected officials could be accountable to the voter as to how the money is spent.”

Amendment 3 will be on Missouri’s November 8th ballot and will ask the following:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:

-increase taxes on cigarettes each year through 2020, at which point this additional tax will total 60 cents per pack of 20;

-create a fee paid by cigarette wholesalers of 67 cents per pack of 20 on certain cigarettes, which fee shall increase annually; and

-deposit funds generated by these taxes and fees into a newly established Early Childhood Health and Education Trust Fund?

When cigarette tax increases are fully implemented, estimated additional revenue to state government is $263 million to $374 million annually, with limited estimated implementation costs. The revenue will fund only programs and services allowed by the proposal. The fiscal impact to local governmental entities is unknown.

Fair Ballot Language:

A “yes” vote will amend the Missouri Constitution to increase taxes on cigarettes each year through 2020, at which point this additional tax will total 60 cents per pack of 20. This amendment also creates a fee paid by cigarette wholesalers of 67 cents per pack of 20 on certain cigarettes. This amendment further provides that the funds generated by these taxes and fees shall be deposited into a newly established Early Childhood Health and Education Trust Fund.

A “no” vote will not amend the Missouri Constitution relating to taxes and fees on cigarettes.

If passed, this measure will increase taxes on cigarettes.