Congress last month passed a bill to authorize the sale of a new first-class stamp that would generate funds for breast-cancer research. The measure, which President Clinton is expected to sign, marks the first time that the U.S. Postal Service has been told by legislators to help raise money for a specific cause. Congressional supporters said they believed that the stamp would raise at least $60-million a year.

"Stamp by stamp and penny by penny, we're hoping we can find a cure for breast cancer," says Elizabeth Mullen, founder of the Women's Information Network Against Breast Cancer in Los Angeles, which pushed for the bill. "We're also hoping that we are establishing a mechanism that ultimately could be used for fund raising for other cancers and other diseases."

Supplementing Federal Aid

The special stamp is expected to cost anywhere from 33 cents to 40 cents, depending on how much the Postal Service decides would b needed to cover printing, sale, and distribution costs.

People could buy the breast-cancer stamps at their local post offices for use on their first-class mail. Seventy per cent of the money remaining after the Post Office covers its costs would go to the National Institutes of Health and 30 per cent to the Department of Defense, which would channel the money to a major breast-cancer research effort being conducted by the Army.

The legislation says the federal government must use the new funds to supplement current research spending - and cannot reduce appropriations to those agencies just because the fund-raising stamp exists.

The Postal Service would have one year to design and market the stamp. The General Accounting Office would then be asked to judge the stamp's effectiveness in raising money for research and assess how well it works for the Postal Service to be involved in such a fund-raising effort.

If the stamp proves to be popular, many charities are expected to lobby for stamps for their own causes. But if it does not sell well, then Congress probably will end the experiment and reject all similar proposals.

Current stats of the Breast Cancer Research Stamp: As of July 29, 1998 - June 15, 2001, over 305 Million stamps have been sold, raising approximately $21 million for research.

305 million stamps = at least 915 million* times someone has thought about breast cancer! (*The sellers and buyers of the stamps and the recipients of mail sent using the semipostal.)