The bill would more than double the current tax on tobacco products. As it stands one regular cigarette is taxed 3.475 cents while a thicker tobacco product (say a cigar) is taxed 4.075 cents. In other words a standard 20 pack has a tax of 69.5 cents. The bill would raise the tax of a regular cigarette to 8.475 cents and of a thinker product to 9.938 – more than doubling the tax. A 20 pack would now have a tax of $1.70.

Now, you may ask yourself, what is the big deal? Indeed a dollar increase is not entirely unreasonable for something that is certainly not a necessity. Well there are actually two big deals: 1 – this does nothing to prevent people from smoking (rather it is quite punitive), and 2) it is unwise to rely on sin taxes to pay for government programs.

First argument, this law is punitive. Now there are many people who want to punish smokers, but is this really the proper way to go? Smokers will still smoke, they will just complain about it more; nonsmokers will continue to not smoke and continue to complain about the complainers; people on the fringe probably wont be affected by additional buck or two when they first start smoking. Now one thing that is also mentioned in this bill is that $250,000 of the revenue gained from the tobacco tax will go into prevention campaigns (the rest going into the general fund); it should be noted that this figure has not changed since 1998. Now if you want to use the tax to increase the prevention campaign, we can talk – after all it is in the states interest to have fewer smokers. But, alas, no extra funds gained from this increase in taxes will go towards the fund.

Second, it is poor policy to depend on sin taxes to fund government programs. Let us assume that this tax increase works and people stop smoking in three years – what happens to the tax rates that you dropped during that short glut of extra dollars? That’s right, you have to RASE TAXES (not necessarily the best campaign slogan). Well this is exactly what lawmakers a proposing: an increase in the tobacco tax in exchange for a reduction, if not elimination, of the food tax. Sin taxes are too variable to be depended upon because they are a luxury tax and, subsequently, change dramatically from year to year depending on various factors (as opposed to the property tax, which, for the most part, is stable).

So there you have it, we are punishing smokers for smoking, doing nothing to help smokers quit or not start, and hope to God they keep their habit going so that we can fund all sorts of crazy things. This is not good policy and is quite punitive.