Big Tobacco is a master at clouding issues.

Its strategy is simple. Pour enough money into Oregon, throw enough mud on the wall, and hope sooner or later an issue rallies the very voters who are looking for an excuse not to do what’s right. At the very least, confuse voters who are undecided.

It’s true Measure 50 will require a constitutional amendment. It’s true nobody really knows the impact of this. And it’s true our legislators lacked the backbone to do what was right in the first place, thus forcing their constituents - the very people who elected them to make the hard decisions - to decide the measure‘s fate. In doing so, our elected officials let the real concern here, the health of Oregonians, take a back seat to an emotional and twisted argument.  More…

SALEM — Every Oregonian with a TV by now has seen a sneaky-looking chap push a ladder up to the display of the Oregon Constitution and deface it with such phrases as “Massive New Spending” and “HMOs Get Millions.”

In the run-up to the Nov. 6 election, voters also may have seen ads against Measure 50 in which black ink slashes across hand-penned words on parchment, followed by “new taxes …” typed across Oregon’s founding charter.

And who hasn’t caught a glimpse of a couple’s televised kitchen-table conversation that finishes with the presumed husband declaring: “Well, I’m not going to let them start messing with our constitution now. I’m voting no on Measure 50.” More…

Perplexed by the dueling ads on TV, radio and mailers about Measure 50, the tobacco tax increase to pay for the Healthy Kids Program?

Here’s a handy guide to sort out the issues swirling around the campaign.

What is the Healthy Kids Program?

A proposal by Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Democratic lawmakers to raise tobacco taxes and use the cash to offer health care coverage to more than 100,000 uninsured children, teenagers and some young adults. The money also will bolster campaigns to prevent smoking and help people quit and to expand rural health care.

Will it insure 10,000 more low-income adults under the Oregon Health Plan, as backers claim?  More…

Drivers zipping down Southeast 82nd Avenue can’t miss the billboard of a black-and-white cow with a greenback in its mouth: “Smokers are not the state’s cash cow!”

Across town, canvassers armed with fliers of cigar-chomping tobacco makers and fresh-faced children hit Portland homes last weekend to pitch their case for a statewide tobacco tax increase.

It’s all part of Measure 50, on track to be the most expensive state political campaign in Oregon history.  More…