
Cigarette makers issue a blank check to their hired guns in a big-bucks effort to defeat Oregon’s Healthy Kids Plan
Hold your noses, Oregonians.
Big Tobacco’s campaign against uninsured children in Oregon is turning from merely smelly to downright malodorous.
Two weeks ago the industry launched a $4.5 million TV and radio blitz trying to confuse voters about Measure 50, the cigarette tax increase that would help provide health care to more than 100,000 Oregon children. But the highly misleading ad campaign may be only the beginning of a much bigger onslaught, on the heels of a welcome court ruling.
Tobacco makers, using every weapon at their disposal, had bankrolled a lawsuit seeking to throw Measure 50 off the ballot. However, Marion County Judge Paul Lipscomb sensibly rejected every argument in the suit. More…