ARTNews recently noted that Cleveland (OH) arts organizations have benefited from a share of a tax on cigarettes implemented for that purpose in 2007.
In fact, the funding distributed from that tax is almost six times as much as the entire state of OH has received from the National Endowment for the Arts in the same period.
…Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the levy has supported the arts to the tune of $270 million since it was put into effect in 2007. The organization has given out some 4,000 grants to 485 nonprofit organizations, while, in the same time period, the entire state of Ohio has gotten just $48 million from the National Endowment for the Arts,…
You may feel a little uneasy at the prospect of being in a position to even subconsciously hope people smoke more in order to ensure your arts organization’s financial health. You probably aren’t alone.
In fact, when Arts Midwest introduced their Creating Connection program to Build Public Will For Arts And Culture, one of the parallels they drew was the gradually growing effort to eliminate smoking in public places. Their goal was the opposite — cultivating a social environment in which people gradually expressed a desire for arts and cultural experiences.
Smoking rates in Cleveland, which were apparently far above the national average have dropped from 37% to 19% in the last decade. (Recall the tax has been in effect for nearly two decades.) While the revenue has fallen by half, voters supported doubling the tax on cigarettes last year.
