By the Editorial Board – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A duplicitous effort is underway to mislead voters into thinking the Raise Your Hands for Kids campaign to boost the state sales tax on tobacco products would allow public funding for abortions.

Linda Rallo is executive director of the group that is promoting a tax increase on a pack of cigarettes from 17 cents — lowest in the nation — to 77 cents. She says money from the tax will be used solely for early childhood education and programs to help smokers kick the habit.

The Missouri Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, a lobbying arm for gas station and convenience store owners, has successfully fought tobacco tax increases in three past elections. The group is so opposed to this tax idea, it seems wiling to employ red-herring tactics to defeat it.

Ron Leone, the association’s executive director, has conflated language in the proposal to suggest that tobacco-tax money would wind up funding abortions. He cites language in the proposal that no funds from the tax may be used for any abortion-related activity “unless such services are limited to medical emergencies.”

It’s a clear reference to dire medical circumstances in which the mother’s life is in danger. The proposal’s wording has satisfied the state’s largest anti-abortion group, Missouri Right to Life, which supports it. The Missouri Catholic Conference also has said it appears to have all the protections needed.

Edward Greim, a Kansas City attorney representing Raise Your Hands for Kids, insisted the proposal’s wording means what it says. “It’s like a belt and suspenders,” he said, double protection making it “crystal clear” that the measure would not permit funding for abortion-related services.

Rallo said tax opponents are “not just misleading, they’re lying.”

This proposal is likely to be on the November election ballot. Voters need to understand that a smear campaign is afoot designed to whip up hysteria and defeat a tax that certain businesses oppose for reasons unrelated to abortion.

For the first time in more than a decade, a sound proposal to raise tobacco taxes has relatively clear sailing. An early effort by Missouri’s higher education leaders to target the money for college scholarships was abandoned in December.

Leone’s association is trying another end-run by collecting signatures to put a 23-cents-a-pack increase on the November ballot, with the revenue devoted to transportation.

It’s yet another a diversionary tactic. The funds should be focused on adult health and children’s education. Life support, in other words.

Read the original content here: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/editorial-tobacco-tax-hike-idea-designates-money-for-kids-not/article_c7dcfcaf-ce79-5cf0-b386-dd0b379ab49b.html