The phrase “preaching to the choir” is made for moments like this: CAN Journal’s endorsement in favor of Cuyahoga County’s cigarette tax for the arts might seem completely unnecessary. Our readers are interested in art and artists, and the organizations that support them, and Collective Arts Network (CAN) has benefitted directly from the tax through general operating support for the last half-dozen years. Our endorsement is no surprise. Nonetheless, the last year’s discussion about Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) gives us a good reason to weigh in.

There is no question that taxing cigarettes has plenty of flaws. For one, smokers represent a small portion of the population, so most voters won’t pay the tax. It would be better if everyone —or at least more of us—had skin in the game, so to speak. Additionally, its regressive nature is a problem: success, meaning a reduction in smoking, means the revenue stream goes down. And when this issue passes, after it significantly increases public revenue for the arts for a year, we’ll once again see revenue begin to decline.

So it is urgent that thought leaders and lobbyists figure out a new way, and sooner than later.

It’s not that they have not tried. Most people asking why they don’t tax something else, like marijuana, have no idea the complexity of getting permission from the state legislature, or the competing interests that make it difficult to put a tax question before local voters.

The legalization of recreational-use marijuana means that could become an option, but for now it is not: the ten percent excise tax approved by voters is already allocated—36 percent to the Cannabis Social Equity and Jobs Fund, 36 percent to the Host Community Cannabis Fund (for cities that allow dispensaries), 25 percent to substance abuse and addiction prevention programs, and 3 percent to the Division of Cannabis Control and Tax Commissioner Fund. None of that includes the arts.

As anyone who got the County’s recent reappraisal of real estate values, or anyone in a community with a school levy on the ballot knows, new real estate taxes are a significant challenge.

So while it is urgent and overdue to build the coalition that can find and pass something different, Cuyahoga County’s option for a tax to support the arts this year—and probably for the next several—is a tax on cigarettes. If you believe there should be public support for the arts, this, for now, is the possibility.

Like hundreds of other organizations, CAN needs this public support to keep doing the good work we do. The smallest organizations need it the most. All the region’s arts infrastructure would take a big hit if the tax does not pass. For CAN, it represents almost 10 percent of our budget.

And that infrastructure is a huge support system for individual artists. They depend on studios, like Zygote Press, Morgan Conservatory, Praxis Fiber Workshop, and others to provide facilities and tools for their work. They are hired to teach at community arts centers like BAYarts, Beck Center, Art House, Valley Art Center, and more. Their exhibits engage community at venues like Waterloo Arts, Karamu House, and Cleveland Print Room. They look to keepers of the region’s cultural heritage, like Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, as artistic family trees. They stay connected to the art world at large through exhibitors such as SPACES, moCa, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. And yes, we’re grateful and proud that they look to CAN Journal for information about all those things. All those organizations support artists by playing their part in an ecosystem that endures beyond the occasional grant. The same network of interdependence applies to theatres, orchestras, dance companies.

To every artist, administrator and patron: CAN Journal wholeheartedly supports the cigarette tax for the arts, which Cuyahoga County voters will find on their ballots in November, and we urge you to vote in favor. Yes, we need to find a different tax. Yes, in some ways the administration of this one could be improved. Yes, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture should give individual artists a bigger slice, and could in fact double its current level of support for them without significant impact on all that organizational infrastructure noted above. But as it is now, the art sector needs it. By all means, vote yes in November. And by all means, keep paying attention.