Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
JENNINE PERKINSON
Advertising Director
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Independent voters
can become a force
Earlier this week, the Independent someone to run for the position.
Party of Oregon became the state’s
The Democratic Party has had
third major party — or the fourth, if
a stranglehold on Oregon politics
you count the Pendleton Round-Up. for more than a decade, and looks
Everyone around here knows that is
well-positioned to hold onto power
Oregon’s original major party.
for awhile. But if you look at
But in the eyes of the state, the
other states where one-party rule
Independent joins just the other
has reigned for generations —
two — Democratic and Republican
Democrats in Illinois for example,
or Republicans in
— and will now be
Oklahoma — you
able to participate
More than
realize that is not
in the taxpayer-
a good place to
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5 percent
be. Competitive
primary election.
of Oregon
elections are key
There are nearly
110,000 Oregon
voters are now WR¿HOGLQJJRRG
candidates, and
voters registered
registered as
there have to be
Independent,
consequences —
although it is
Independent.
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unknown how
out of a job
many of those knew
consequences — if you do that job
they were actually joining a party
poorly.
when they did so. If you don’t want
It’s possible the Independent
to be a member of any party, you
Party of Oregon can be of assistance
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to that end. They won’t win seats in
Independent (note the capital I).
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Still, the numbers are what they
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are. And they may be something
force Democrats and Republicans
more than just a mistake. More
to consider their positions, if not
than 5 percent of Oregon voters are
downright pivot off them.
now registered as Independent — a
So who is this new player? The
large enough percentage that the big
Independent Party of Oregon doesn’t
two parties have taken note. They
have a clear platform, doesn’t get
wanted to rewrite the rules to keep
many votes in statewide elections
the Independent party from ballots
wherever possible and even issued a DQGUDUHO\¿HOGVFDQGLGDWHVLQ
press release together to plead their
smaller ones. It has been in existence
case. Finally, bipartisanship!
for less than a decade. Party leaders
Oregon has long been a
told the Associated Press that in the
progressive political state, and it just past they have pushed consumer
may be that the next step is turning
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away from our two party system.
reform and increased transparency in
There is even talk from Salem
government.
that the highly-respected Betsy
For Oregon to be a well-governed
Johnson might run for governor on
state, it is key that power, if not fully
the Independent ticket. If she did,
changing hands, there is at least the
Johnson would almost certainly offer possibility of it. Republicans have
the toughest competition for sitting
failed to mount much of a challenge
Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat.
recently. Maybe the Independent
Republicans are still searching for
Party can.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
Banks need the ability to
serve marijuana businesses
The Daily Astorian/ EO Media Group
Key federal legislators from Oregon
are making a renewed push to normalize
banking services for the legal marijuana
industry. This is a much-needed and
overdue reform.
Oregon is in the process of joining
other states including neighboring
Washington in outright legalization of
marijuana, with sales set to start Oct. 1.
Medicinal marijuana has been legal here
since 1998 and the Legislature legalized
medical marijuana dispensaries during
its 2013 session. Nationwide, many
legitimate marijuana businesses continue
to struggle with a lack of access to the
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transactions.
Currently, marijuana businesses oper-
ating under state laws that have legalized
medicinal or adult-use marijuana are
mostly denied access to the banking
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provide them services can be prosecuted
under federal law, according to Oregon
U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden
and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, all
Democrats. In Washington state, U.S.
Sen. Patty Murray is also a supporter of
reform.
Without the ability to access bank
accounts, accept credit cards, or write
checks, businesses must operate using
large amounts of cash.
“There’s a reason most of us don’t
walk around with thousands of dollars
of cash stuffed in our backpacks. It’s an
invitation to crime and malfeasance,”
Merkley said. “But that’s what we are
forcing legal Oregon businesses to
GREHFDXVH¿QDQFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQVDUH
prohibited from providing services. That
must change.”
Marijuana businesses are heavily
regulated and monitored at the state
level. This keeps drug cartels out of the
legal industry, insures compliance with
rules designed to keep marijuana away
from underage residents, and helps avoid
federal intervention in legalization.
But by denying these enterprises the
ability to handle money in a modern
and transparent way, federal law places
them at greater risk of robbery, while
essentially maintaining undesirable
traits associated with the outlaw past.
Legalization is a fact of life and is certain
to spread to additional states. It’s time to
dispense with the remaining vestiges of
the unlamented past that saw millions of
lives disrupted or destroyed in a failed
effort at prohibition.
The new law proposed by Oregon’s
federal lawmakers would prevent federal
banking regulators from:
— Prohibiting, penalizing or discour-
DJLQJDEDQNIURPSURYLGLQJ¿QDQFLDO
services to a legitimate state-sanctioned
and regulated marijuana business;
— Terminating or limiting a bank’s
federal deposit insurance solely because
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services to a state-sanctioned marijuana
business;
— Recommending or incentivizing a
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providing any kind of banking services to
these businesses; or
— Taking any action on a loan to an
owner or operator of a marijuana-related
business.
The bill also creates a safe harbor from
criminal prosecution and liability and
DVVHWIRUIHLWXUHIRU¿QDQFLDOLQVWLWXWLRQV
DQGWKHLURI¿FHUVDQGHPSOR\HHVZKR
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state-sanctioned marijuana businesses,
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right to choose not to offer those services.
These moves all make sense and
should be enacted as soon as possible.
LETTERS POLICY
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public
issues and public policies for publication. The newspaper reserves the right to
withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products
or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must
be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone
number. The phone number will not be published. Send letters to 211 S.E.
Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
OTHER VIEWS
A tax to save lives
A smokeless tobacco product called
WROHDUQWKDW,WKLQNWKLVLVDWHUUL¿F
snus, which a user puts between his
idea. Because it contains tobacco,
gums and his upper lip, has a long
snus has traces of nitrosamines, a
history in Sweden. At the start of the
cancer-causing agent found in tobacco.
last century, it was the most common
Electronic cigarettes, by contrast,
way Swedes ingested nicotine. By the
contain no tobacco at all. Instead,
early 1950s, however, sales of snus
they vaporize nicotine, which gets to
had been overtaken by cigarettes, a
the user’s brain far quicker than, say,
trend that continued for two decades.
a nicotine patch, thus more closely
Joe
But in time, snus made a comeback,
the nicotine hit delivered by
Nocera replicating
while cigarette use steadily declined.
a
cigarette.
Comment
As of 2012, only 13 percent of adult
As Warner pointed out to me,
Swedes smoked, less than half the
nobody can say for sure how much
European Union rate. Meanwhile, 19 to 21
safer e-cigarettes are because the products
percent of Swedish males use snus, which is
haven’t been around long enough for long-
now more prevalent than cigarettes. (Swedish
term studies. But it is plain as day that they are
women, for some reason, stuck with smokes.)
far less risky than cigarettes. Countries use tax
The result? Even though tobacco use in
policy all the time to affect behavior. Using
Sweden is comparable to its use in the rest
tax policy to move people from cigarettes to
of Europe, Sweden’s preference for snus
e-cigarettes would, to be blunt, save lives. The
means that it “has Europe’s
e-cigarette has the potential
lowest tobacco-attributable
to be the greatest tobacco
mortality among men,”
cessation device ever
according to a paper in
invented.
the latest issue of The
Yet, as the authors
New England Journal of
note, because most of the
Medicine. Indeed, a 2012
tobacco-control community
study by the World Health
believes that “all tobacco
Organization found that
products are seriously
tobacco caused 152 deaths
deleterious to health,
per 100,000 men in Sweden,
conventional wisdom … has
versus 467 deaths per
long been that all products
100,000 men in Europe.
should be taxed similarly.”
It’s hard to know exactly
Indeed, the World Health
what caused snus to regain its popularity.
Organization has described “comparable”
There was no explicit government policy
taxation on all tobacco products as a “best
promoting it. David Sweanor, one of the
practice for tobacco taxation.”
authors of the paper, told me that Sweden’s
As irrational as this is, it is easy to
predominant tobacco company took it upon
understand where it stems from. Health
itself to market snus once the dangers of
claims about e-cigarettes remind anti-tobacco
cigarettes had become irrefutable. (That
activists of the days when Big Tobacco
company, Swedish Match, sells mainly snus
marketed low-tar cigarettes as a “healthier”
today.) But another likely reason was a huge
smoking choice. E-cigarettes come in many
price differential between cigarettes and snus;
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at one point a pack of the former was taxed so marketing aims to make e-cigarettes look cool
heavily that it cost twice as much as a can of
— just like Big Tobacco once did. Despite a
snus.
complete lack of proof, the tobacco-control
Sweanor, a tobacco policy expert at the
community fears that young people who
University of Ottawa, and his co-authors,
use e-cigarettes will eventually gravitate to
Kenneth Warner, a University of Michigan
combustible cigarettes.
economist specializing in public health, and
Which is all the more reason the authors’
Frank J. Chaloupka, an economist focused
tax idea deserves consideration: It puts the
on public health at the University of Illinois
emphasis on moving smokers to e-cigarettes,
at Chicago, would label snus a “harm
which is where it should be. “Studies have
reduction” product. Although it contains
… shown that changes in the relative price of
WREDFFRDQGDOORZVXVHUVWRJHWWKHLU¿[RI
tobacco products lead some tobacco users to
addictive nicotine, snus poses far less risk than switch to less expensive products,” the authors
cigarettes, as the statistics amply show.
write. A big tax differential is a way to take
All three men are big believers in the virtue advantage of the lower risk of e-cigarettes
of harm reduction policies to reduce the illness without ever having to acknowledge it.
and death caused by cigarettes. Thus the point
Not that I expect rationality to take hold
of their paper: The tax policies that worked
any time soon. After all, you know how the
in Sweden — raise taxes on the killer product
European Union reacted to the Swedish snus
while lowering them on the harm reduction
experience, don’t you?
product — should be applied today to
It banned snus.
electronic cigarettes and other noncombustible
Ŷ
nicotine delivery systems.
Joe Nocera is an Op-Ed columnist for The
Regular readers will not be surprised
New York Times.
Using tax policy
to move people
from cigarettes
to e-cigarettes
would, to be
blunt, save lives.
YOUR VIEWS
School-based health clinic
exacerbates root problems
Recently I heard that a school-based health
clinic is being planned for Hermiston High
School. In discussions with friends, I could see
a real live example of the “chicken and egg”
TXHVWLRQ:KLFKFRPHV¿UVWSDUHQWDOQHJOHFW
and indifference or the societal rush to feed,
clothe and drug the child? Why has parental
neglect seemed to increase?
Some teachers saw children come to school
without having had breakfast. So a breakfast
feeding program was installed and the
problem was solved? Not really. The parental
neglect continues.
The school-based health clinic is another
example of a “solution” that may contribute
to parental irresponsibility for their own
child’s health. Parents should be the primary
educators and providers for their children.
Surely, families will need society’s assistance
at times. However, why are the numbers of
loser parents increasing?
Are we working too much for the “egg”
and should start working for the ‘chicken’
the parents? Parent the parents! Where is the
program for that?
I am for stopping the cycle of alleviating
every family situation with free handouts.
Let’s get in the parents’ face and boldly ask,
“What is going on, and why are you unable
to care for your child?” What happened? Ask
some good questions.
It seems to me that parental accountability
and responsibility is at an all-time low. Our
do-gooding rush to solve problems without
going to the source of the problem is not
working.
The doing-good plans that we dream up,
such as school-based health clinics, smack
somewhat of those plans across the ocean
100 years ago: government will raise your
children; parents need only to work in the
factories.
Marge Rolen
Hermiston
House Republicans allowed
Obama to wreck the country
On D-Day General Dwight Eisenhower
did not tell his troops that we were going to
defeat the National Socialists so that we could
cooperate with them. The order Eisenhower
gave was to rid the earth of Hitler, his band
of murderous thugs, and everything that they
stood for.
In the November elections America gave
the Republicans a mandate to stop President
Obama and the Democrats from wrecking this
country, and we expect that this carnage be
stopped and reversed.
Republicans now say that they want to
cooperate with Obama so that he will move to
the middle. Americans don’t want to hear this
nonsense because Obama is a leftist who hates
our Constitution and deliberately circumvents
it.
Much to our chagrin, GOP House Speaker
Boehner and all but 67 House Republicans
joined Obama and the Democrats to repeal
Section 716 in the Omnibus spending
bill. Section 716 was included to prevent
government bailout of Wall Street trading
losses in speculative credit swap derivatives.
Obama knew the contempt voters have for
Wall Street bailouts when he told bankers that
he was the only thing between them and the
pitchforks.
Robert A. Dahlquist
Orange, Calif.