Founded as Jamestown Colony in 1607 by members of the Virginia Company, the early years of colonization were extremely difficult. The introduction of tobacco cultivation and export by John Rolfe around 1613, inspired by native cultivation, gave the nascent colony a stable income. Rolfe’s contributions allowed the colony to survive because tobacco was the only cash crop grown in the colony at that time. As the colony grew and the capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699, Jamestown diminished in importance, but tobacco remained an important crop throughout the colonial period and the early history of the United States. However, while in recent years tobacco growing in Virginia has diminished and become of minor importance to the state economy, tobacco growing remains a powerful rhetorical tool of the tobacco industry to fight tobacco control efforts. In the U.S., residents of tobacco-growing states suffer from higher smoking-attributable mortality rates, and other serious health consequences due to higher rates of tobacco use. These consequences are significant; in a tobacco-growing state, 320 deaths per 100,000 are due to smoking-attributable causes, compared to 278 per 100,000 in non-tobacco-growing states.1 Tobacco-growing states also face greater difficulty promoting tobacco control policies.On average, tobacco-growing states have half the per capita funding available for tobacco control, one-third of the tobacco excise tax rates, and only one-tenth the population covered by clean indoor air and youth access laws.1 As a tobacco-growing state with a significant tobacco manufacturing presence and tobacco lobbying effort, health advocates in Virginia has had great difficulty promoting tobacco control policies. However, changing demographics, particularly in suburban Northern Virginia, and consistently strong public support for stronger clean indoor air laws and increased cigarette excise taxes,mobile rack show that Virginia has the opportunity to move beyond its past and protect its citizens from the health dangers of tobacco use and secondhand smoke.
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in Virginia, causing more than 9,200 lives each year.The healthcare costs resulting from tobacco use cost the state $1.92 billion annually in health care bills, including $369 million in Medicaid payments alone.Adult smoking prevalence in Virginia has been similar to, or even a little below, the United States as a whole . From 2002-2005, smoking prevalence declined both nationally and in Virginia at close to the same rate. Starting in 2005, Virginia’s prevalence dropped faster than the national average.5 Youth smoking prevalence data has been compiled by the Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation , an entity created by the General Assembly as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement . The task of the VTSF was to lead the youth tobacco prevention efforts in Virginia, including conducting youth prevalence surveys and compiling youth prevalence information. Between 2001 and 2009, Virginia conducted the Youth Tobacco Survey Virginia has experienced a remarkable influx of new residents to the urban areas between 1980 and 2007 . While rural populations remained stable , urban areas received large numbers of immigrants from both domestic and international points of origin. In addition, Northern Virginia served as a bedroom community and suburb of Washington, DC. This large concentration of Virginia’s population in urban centers and near Washington, DC created a political divide within Virginia. Northern and urban areas were generally supportive of tobacco control efforts and leaned liberal in their political affiliations. Rural areas, especially in southwestern and southern areas of the state, tended to be more conservative, resistant to tobacco-control measures, and supportive of tobacco growers and manufacturers. Virginia’s executive is unique because the governor may not serve consecutive terms; therefore, unless elected for nonconsecutive terms, the governor may only serve one term.Virginia is also one of only 7 states in which the governor has the power to amend a bill after it has passed the General Assembly with a so-called amendatory veto.The amendatory veto allows the governor to “recommend one or more specific and severable amendments to a bill by returning it with his recommendations to the house in which it originated.”At that point, the General Assembly convenes for a special session after the conclusion of the regular session, during which they can approve the governor’s amendments with a simple majority vote of the members present or reject the governor’s amendments by a two-thirds vote of both houses’ present members.
If the Assembly does not agree on any of the amendments or rejects them all, the bill is returned to the governor as it was originally enrolled, without amendments. Whether or not the amendments are accepted or rejected, upon the bill’s return to the governor he or she can sign, veto, or allow it to become law without his or her signature. The governor can only offer one set of amendments per bill. The Virginia governor’s amendatory veto power is important because it gives the governor a role in directly suggesting legislative language, rather than informally recommending it. This gubernatorial power would play a key role in the 2007 session, when Governor Tim Kaine attempted to use his amendatory veto to strengthen the provisions of a weak law restricting smoking in restaurants. Virginia’s localities are given a limited degree of autonomy under a doctrine known as the Dillon’s Rule, named after the Iowa judge who articulated the theory in 1868.It states that all local government powers are derived from the state and are granted to the locality specifically by the state as a locality’s charter. Six states apply Dillon’s Rule: Virginia, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, and Vermont. Virginia uses a strict construction for Dillon’s Rule embodied in the Virginia Constitution article VII, sections 2 and 3, which states that the General Assembly determines what powers local governments may exercise.However, all localities have some inherent police powers, which allow them to act to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of their residents. In a Dillon’s Rule state like Virginia, these inherent powers are narrowly construed and limited to the essential functions of local government, such as establishing a police department. The converse doctrine is “home rule,” in which a locality is reserved all powers not expressly assigned to the state’s government .Essentially, a home rule locality may exercise its inherent powers for any purpose that is not expressly reserved for the state. Virginia had no constitutional provision analogous to the Tenth Amendment, which further limits the extent of a localities’ implied powers. Virginia’s localities consist of counties and cities. Counties have very limited inherent powers, and are effectively subdivisions of state government that mainly provide basic local services for their populations and assist in the local implementation of state laws and programs.Compared to counties,mobile shelves cities in Virginia are granted more autonomy to conduct affairs necessary to their local functioning, but are still constrained by Virginia’s application of Dillon’s Rule.
Cities are independent from counties, such that no city is part of the county in which it physically may reside. However, towns are considered parts of the counties in which they reside and serve merely as the local urban service provider of the county government. The distinctions between towns and cities are not well-defined, but for a city to be established, constitutionally-mandated population levels must be met.These additional powers are usually granted using specific legislation, which targets an individual locality. Rarely, legislation is sought that seeks to expand the powers of some or all cities at the same time. Cities have more autonomy to conduct local affairs through express grants of power from the state contained in their charter and through inherent police powers. In summary, Dillon’s Rule restricts the powers of localities in Virginia when compared with states using “home rule.” With regard to tobacco control, Dillon’s Rule stands for the presumption that localities are not generally able to regulate tobacco sales, advertising, or use without an express grant of the authority to do so from the General Assembly, unless the local tobacco control action can be considered to fall under the locality’s inherent police powers. Campaign contribution data from 1999 through 2007 were compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics from campaign finance disclosure statements filed by candidates and political parties with the relevant state agency. Campaign contributions from tobacco companies, tobacco trade organizations, lobbyists, employees of tobacco companies, tobacco warehouses, tobacco growers and tobacco manufacturers were considered to be tobacco related contributions and were included in the data presented below. Contributions for the 2009 election cycle were not available at the time of publication. Details of tobacco industry campaign contributions for 1999 through 2007 can be found by candidate in Appendix A, by contributor in Appendix B, and by political party in Appendix C. Virginia has no limits on campaign contributions, therefore the total amount of contributions differed greatly from another tobacco growing state, South Carolina, that did have campaign contribution limits.This difference probably led to much more money being contributed to Virginia candidates, which in other ways is similar to South Carolina as a southern, tobacco-growing state. . Note that Virginia conducts elections for the state legislature in odd years, while South Carolina conducts them in even years.In Virginia, the greatest tobacco industry contributions occurred in the 2001 and 2005 election cycles, which correspond with the gubernatorial elections of Mark Warner and Tim Kaine . As shown in Table 6, contributions to gubernatorial candidates comprised a significant amount of the total contributions during the 2001 and 2005 election cycles. The tobacco industry’s contributions to gubernatorial candidates were generally fairly evenly split among the competing candidates.While Virginia’s House was traditionally hostile to tobacco control legislation, the House General Laws committee was particularly so . The HGL committee normally hears any legislation that falls outside the purview of the other standing committees. All bills involving the Alcoholic Beverages Control Board or gaming are heard in the ABC/Gaming subcommittee of the HGL committee.23 Since at least the late 1980s, the HGL committee played a role in the death of many tobacco control bills. Between 2005 and 2008, the HGL committee was the last point of activity for all tobacco control bills heard in the House, with all of them dying. Table 9 shows the members of the HGL committee from 1999-2007, their tobacco policy scores, and their total campaign contributions from the period 1999-2007. While the HGL committee average policy score is 4.48 , which is not strongly pro-tobacco, many HGL committee members received significantly more tobacco industry campaign contributions than a typical Virginia legislator, who received on average less than $5,000. Contributions from major tobacco manufacturers comprised the bulk of total tobacco industry contributions, with individual contributions and contributions from smaller tobacco farms and tobacco warehouse facilities contributing relatively small amounts . Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris was the single largest contributor to candidates in Virginia from 2001 through 2007. Altria is headquartered in Richmond, and is the largest private employer in the region. US Smokeless Tobacco was also a major contributor, despite being headquartered in Connecticut and having no major manufacturing presence in Virginia. This change may lead to an increased lobbying and campaign contribution role for US Smokeless in the future in Virginia. Contributors of smaller amounts and contributions from individual employees of tobacco industry groups represented about a quarter of the $2,980,518 contributed by the tobacco industry from 1999-2007. During the period 1999 to 2007, contributions were made to both Democratic and Republican legislative candidates . When comparing all campaign contributions by party, the tobacco industry contributed significantly more to Republicans than Democrats in all years . 2001 and 2005 correspond to the gubernatorial campaigns that lead to the elections of governors Warner and Kaine, as discussed above, during which campaign contributions for legislative candidates also increased. The largest disparity was in 2005, when contributions to Republican candidates were $293,234 greater than contributions to Democrats. The difference was largely proportionate over all election cycles, which is similar to the proportions encountered in South Carolina.In total, Republican candidates for all offices received about twice the campaign contributions from the tobacco industry than Democrats .