Assault on Deadly Smoking a Model for Fighting Sprawl (Smoking Ban Next Step)

Scranton’s recent decision to ban smoking in almost all public places — coming on the heels of a similar bans in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — represents one of the biggest culture changes of our times. Such a ban would have been unthinkable 50 years ago, when cigarette commercials dominated the airwaves and glamorous movie stars lit up regularly on the silver screen.

In recent years, 17 states and more than 500 local municipalities have enacted smoking bans. Cigarette sales have dropped 20 percent since 1998, when tobacco companies agreed to pay $248 billion to the states to help cover the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. Today, about 20 percent of Americans smoke, half the percentage of 40 years ago.

This not only represents an enormous victory toward eradicating America’s most deadly habit, it demonstrates that concerted public and private efforts can change negative social behavior, no matter how deeply ingrained.

That’s heartening for a number of reform movements, including attempts to protect Pennsylvania’s farms and forests from another bad habit —the low-density, drive-everywhere-for-everything lifestyle that has emasculated our cities and decimated our countryside in the last half-century.

Just as the Surgeon General reported in 1964 that smoking was the leading threat to individual health, the 21st Century Environment Commission appointed by Gov. Tom Ridge in 1997, concluded that sprawling development is the No. 1 threat to Pennsylvania’s environmental health.

Sprawl, the Environment Commission said, consumes enormous quantities of farmland, isolates the poor in our cities and towns, creates massive traffic congestion, worsens air and water pollution, and requires exorbitant amounts of tax dollars to build and maintain.

But efforts to curb sprawl have gone nowhere, mostly for the same reason that efforts to curb smoking floundered in the first two decades after the Surgeon General’s report. Despite all the evidence of societal harm, smoking was considered an individual lifestyle decision that people had a right to make in a free country. Health workers concentrated on prodding smokers to “kick the habit” rather than emphasize the enormous economic costs and substantial health risks that smokers were inflicting on everyone else.

It was only when anti-smoking advocates changed tactics — lobbying for smoking bans and higher taxes on cigarettes, suing tobacco companies to pay for the health care costs of smoking, and campaigning about second-hand smoke —that tobacco use plunged.

Cigarettes began to lose their allure when smokers were forced to stand outside their office buildings to take a drag during work breaks.

Just as it once seemed almost impossible to attack smoking when more than half the men in America were doing it, fighting sprawl is a daunting mission when the American dream still revolves around acre housing lots and three-car garages. But as Anatole France said, if 50 million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

When John and Mary buy a new home that can be reached only by car, they are contributing to America’s dependence on foreign oil and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. They are helping squander Pennsylvania’s open space, and they are raising the cost of government by compelling an inefficient network of roads and utility lines. Unfortunately, no one has brought home to them the negative impacts of their decision. Meanwhile, government has been subsidizing such behavior, not penalizing it.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is a good place to start changing the land-use paradigm.

Last month, a Transportation Commission created by Gov. Ed Rendell reported that an additional $1.7 billion is needed annually to maintain and improve the state’s highways and mass transit systems — about 40 percent more than Pennsylvania currently spends. The Commission recommended raising the extra funding through a combination of higher state fuel and realty-transfer taxes, driver fees, and local taxes.

While improving mass transit fights sprawl, building new highways does the opposite. Instead, PennDOT should expand its Home Towns Streets program that focuses on sidewalks and trails to encourage walking and bicycling as a means of transportation. Additional revenue should be raised by hiking gas taxes to discourage excess driving in the same way that higher cigarette taxes have discouraged smoking.

The Commonwealth Financing Authority, a state agency created two years ago to administer economic development programs, should cut funding for projects on undeveloped land and restrict future loans and grants to projects on recycled land in existing cities, towns and older suburbs.

The state Department of Education should eliminate state funding for sprawling new schools — like the proposed new North Pocono High School — and require school districts to pay the entire $1 billion annual cost of busing students instead of covering half the bill.

And just as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop prominently campaigned for a smoke-free society, Mr. Rendell should use his bully pulpit to promote sustainable communities — ones that conserve resources, rather than waste them.

Pennsylvanians can be persuaded to adopt healthier lifestyles — but it will take a concerted effort to get their attention and make it fashionable as well as practical to walk instead of drive.

THOMAS HYLTON, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is author of “Save Our Land, Save Our Towns” and host of the public television documentary, “Saving Pennsylvania.”

"And flying over those mountains to Sacramento showed how much open space (no people, no buildings) there is in America."

Why do you think there is so much open space with no people and no buildings?

Do you think it's all prime farm land that hasn't been discovered yet? Or forests that nobody owns and are just waiting for the lumbermen?

No, the answer is that what you are seeing is land that can't be used, for one reason or another, or has been used and is no longer productive. It's nice to look at, but it will never replace our productive farmland and forests when they're gone. Those would be great places for the urban sprawl you wish on others.

No, the answer is that what you are seeing is land that can't be used, for one reason or another, or has been used and is no longer productive. It's nice to look at, but it will never replace our productive farmland and forests when they're gone. Those would be great places for the urban sprawl you wish on others.

This changes everything - e v e r y t h i n g. The Law of Accelerating Returns. Especially government becoming a mere shadow of what it is today.

"Exponential growth starts out slowly and virtually unnoticeable, but beyond the knee of the curve it turns explosive and profoundly transformative. My models show that we are doubling the paradigm-shift rate for technology innovation every decade. ...To express this another way, we won't experience 100 years of technology advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of 20,000 years of progress (again, when measured by today's progress rate), or progress on a level of about 1,000 times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century". -- The Singularity and Human Destiny, by Patrick Tucker, assistant editor, THE FUTURIST

"I don't think that at all.

I think you are either an architect, a city planner, or simply someone that has bought into this propaganda.

In the interest of full disclosure, I make a living giving people what they want by paving paradise and putting up parking lots.

I also hunt, fish, and there is a family farm in the picture.

These interests are not mutually-exclusive."

I'm none of those things. But like you, I helped develop Long Island, and like you, I thought I could always enjoy the Long Island I grew up with, but to my dismay, it is gone, and it only took fifty years or so to ruin it.

I fled, and found a place with no zoning regulations. You probably didn't expect that, did you? You see, zoning is the greatest tool of those who want to make money while preventing you from doing the same. With zoning, when the developers move in, your place is an "eyesore", so you have to conform or get out.

Developers have the know how, lawyers, and money to get local government to do their bidding. Let's have laws to stop them.

"It is enough for you and your pals that since I don't like what urban sprawl has been doing to our land that therefore I must be a liberal or worse."

No, it's not about your dislike of urban sprawl, it's your exagerration of sprawl.

I insure that "sprawl" doesn't affect me because I buy property around me; thus, I have no sprawl.

My point is that you can save forests and farmland with buying it. That's what I do. I own forestland that nobody will ever build on as long as I'm alive.

I don't want government passing laws that says you can't use your private property. I prefer that individuals, using the marketplace, stop "sprawl."

Then again, I would never stop an individual property owner from building on his property. Government, through regulation, would. That's wrong.

Your responses have been too moribund for me to take you as a serious defender of private property rights. I could be wrong; maybe you beat up Fish & Wildlife bureaucrats as a hobby on Friday nights.

Naw, I don't think so.

Anyway, my offer stands - when you get your farm let me know - I'll buy your first chicken.

I gave up on the farm idea, because I realized that no farm I could afford would give me real privacy from the neighbors.

I hope you're right about your property but a word of caution:

You must actively try to keep development away. Merely thinking that your own place is big enough won't do. When you are surrounded by housing tracts the developers will want your land and they will get the government to help them. Your taxes will get so high that you'll have to sell, or they will harass you till you give up.

A short while back I give a ride to a hitchhiker, and he told me how the sheriff had beat down his door because his place didn't meet the standards of the town which had gotten snooty.

"I insure that "sprawl" doesn't affect me because I buy property around me; thus, I have no sprawl.

My point is that you can save forests and farmland with buying it. That's what I do. I own forestland that nobody will ever build on as long as I'm alive."

From your comments it appears that you live where the land is still reasonably priced. On Long Island it is impossible to buy forests and farmland to save it unless you are a billionaire, and even then, there is very little left to save.

What do you propose for a solution to the "problem" of sprawl? The problem I'm having here is that many times the solution offered involves increased regulation, restriction, and control of private property. We wouldn't put up with increased government restriction of free speech...why should we allow it in regards to private property rights? They are obviously both guaranteed by the Constitution. I'm not saying you're solution would involve increased government restriction. Its been my experience, however, that talk of controlling sprawl = restriction of private property rights.

"From your comments it appears that you live where the land is still reasonably priced. On Long Island it is impossible to buy forests and farmland to save it unless you are a billionaire, and even then, there is very little left to save."

That's why God made feet.

You can take those feet, point them east, west, south or north, and find a piece of paradise for yourself. Long Island may be impossible, but points elsewhere are possible.

I realize we all live within our own microcosm and draw conclusions based on what we see around us.

My family and I were inner-city dwellers for twenty years. The politics, the taxes, crime and horrible schools made us move away. (Don't ask me about the burkha clad woman who ran her car into the neighbor's house on the corner and did $20,000 damage to the foundation of their home. Her Somali chicken husband fled and left her responsible.)

We now live in a new-build home in a small-city 35 miles from the urban core. It was our choice, and though I miss some features of the city, We are much happier where we live now.

My point is, you seem to be stuck on what your experience has been in NJ. Here in Minnesota, there is land as far as you can see. We are on the edge of the countryside and one can drive 20 miles without seeing a town.

America is a vast and vibrant country. if the liberals of today were around 100 years ago, they would've said the pioneers were creating "sprawl".

Just my .02.

I saw Long Island 20 years ago, from NYC all the way to the eastern end. There were actually a few farms left at that time. It must have been delightful when it was all rural farmland and it is more built up now I am sure.

I have been to Pennsylvania more recently and I have seen the sprawl. It looked like the Amish have sold all their land along the existing roads. For miles and miles the roads were lined with modern houses. This exodus from the cities appeared to have started in the 60's. The Amish farms were hemmed in but you could catch a glimpse of the Amish at work in their fields behind the houses.

Take a look at just how much Pennsylvania smokers are contributing to that state's economy!

Pennsylvania Information

Tobacco Taxes

Pennsylvania's excise tax per pack of cigarettes: $1.350
Pennsylvania's excise tax collection for the
fiscal year ending June 2002: $331,645,000

Sales tax on tobacco products: 6.00%

Federal excise tax per pack of cigarettes: $0.39
Total federal excise tax collections in fiscal year 2002: $7,512,700,000

Comparing Excise Taxes on Cigarettes, Beer

Number of six-packs of beer that must be sold in Pennsylvania to produce the same state excise tax revenue generated by one carton of cigarettes: 222.2

Pennsylvania Smokers' Contributions to the State Economy - 2002

In 2001, Pennsylvania smokers comprise only 24.5%1 of the adult population in the state. Here is what they already pay because they choose to buy a legal product:

Smokers Pay Excise Taxes2
$ 331,645,347

Smokers Pay Sales Taxes2
$ 202,804,803

Smokers Pay Tobacco Settlement Payments3
$ 411,219,801

Total $ 945,669,951

Pennsylvania Smoker Facts 5

Pennsylvania smoker payments in FY2002 were:

Five times larger than FY2001 excise taxes on alcoholic beverages ($187.6 million).

Larger than Pennsylvania's FY2001 motor fuels tax revenues ($785.7 million).

More than two-thirds (68%) as large as FY2001 state net corporate income tax collections ($1.4 billion).

The total amount paid by smokers in Pennsylvania in FY2002 would have supported available FY2002 general fund amounts for:

Special Education ($861.4 million)
OR

Community and Economic Development ($461.7 million) AND Environmental Protection ($245.6 million) AND State Police ($178 million) COMBINED
OR

Health ($256.5 million); and the Higher Education Assistance Agency ($412.8 million) COMBINED.

In 1997, smokers provided 18,943 jobs that paid an additional $28.2 million to the state in personal and corporate income taxes.6

TOTAL SMOKER CIGARETTE PAYMENTS TO PENNSYLVANIA

Per year:
$ 945,669,951

Per day:
$ 2,589,103

Per hour:
$ 107,879

Per minute:
$ 1,798

Per second:
$ 30

CIGARETTES DON'T PAY TAXES -
PENNSYLVANIA SMOKERS DO!!

Unfortunately the burden of providing medical care for such poor choices is increasingly falling on taxpayers. For that reason taxpayers are causing their lawmakers to restrain such activity. And, why shouldn't they?

What most corrupt lawmakers AREN'T telling us is: health care cost is rising due to the fact that we have to pay for so many illegals sucking on our health care facilities.

One illegal went to a Mass hospital. When he was released, he left a bill of over $10,000 dollars! Guess who pays for THAT???

So, in order to cover up the fact that immigrants are bleeding the health care dry, they are blaming the American obese and the American smokers.

Wise up!

I want everyone to know also, that Fox News did a documentary about a year ago, about how the middle east woman are coming to Detroit when they are close to their due date of delivering a baby. They stay in that big Mosque you all have there.

Once the baby is born, they head back to their own country, leaving the Michigan folks to bare the costs of all these babies! Someone ask the Detroit Mayor want can be done about this. He threw his hands in the air and "I have no idea!"

Does the government which collects cigarette taxes also pay the medical costs?

The Tobacco Settlement money that is paying billions into each state coffers, that smokers are paying $100 % was supposed to go to any sick uninsured smoker should there be any..................

But the state lawmakers turned into gluttons over this money, and the smoker's tax dollars are being spent on every under the sun BUT what it should have been spent for!

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