{"id":90773,"date":"2020-01-13T21:50:37","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T21:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/could-a-nicotine-tax-pay-for-preschool-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2020-01-13T21:50:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T21:50:37","slug":"could-a-nicotine-tax-pay-for-preschool-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/could-a-nicotine-tax-pay-for-preschool-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Could a nicotine tax pay for preschool in Colorado?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado voters could decide this November whether to fund free preschool for 4-year-olds statewide by taxing tobacco and vaping products. <\/p>\n

On Friday, two citizens took the first step toward putting the question on November\u2019s ballot, filing more than a dozen possible versions with the state\u2019s Office of Legislative Council, which reviews potential initiatives before sending them to the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

New taxes on a pack of cigarettes or vaping products would range from $1.20 to $2.60, depending on which version of the ballot proposal is selected. Currently, taxes are 84 cents a pack, among the lowest in the country.<\/p>\n

The money from a new vaping and tobacco tax, which is sure to be vehemently opposed by the tobacco industry, would go a long way toward helping Gov. Jared Polis make good on his promise to offer free preschool to all 4-year-olds by the end of his first term.<\/p>\n

One version of the ballot question would put $300 million more a year toward state-funded preschool. That\u2019s far above the $27 million that Polis requested in this year\u2019s budget and that, so far, lawmakers of both parties have been reluctant to endorse.<\/p>\n

Anna Jo Haynes, a longtime early childhood education advocate, and Jim Garcia, CEO of Denver\u2019s Cl\u00ednica Tepeyac and a board member of the advocacy group Healthier Colorado, filed the ballot initiatives. Filing so many versions \u2014 all with slightly different taxing levels and methods \u2014 is a common practice before the options are winnowed down to a single question.<\/p>\n

The idea of taxing nicotine to fund preschool is not new.<\/p>\n

Last year, state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Thornton Democrat and pediatrician, sponsored a bill to ask voters to do just that. Despite Polis\u2019 support, the Colorado Senate rejected the idea amid a robust campaign from vaping and tobacco interests and concerns about using a regressive tax to pay for an essential service. That meant it never went to the ballot.<\/p>\n

Now, proponents are taking matters into their own hands. State lawmakers in recent days said it was likely that a nicotine tax increase would originate outside the Capitol in 2020.<\/p>\n

Read more at chalkbeat.org.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on cigarettes and vaping products is proposed for November ballot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":90774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,3495],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-90773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-tobacco"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90773"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=90773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}