AARC Supports Legislation To Raise Tax On Cigarettes, USA
Main Category: Smoking / Quit SmokingArticle Date: 14 Jul 2007 - 1:00 PDT
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The AARC is on board with legislation forming in the U.S. Senate to raise the cigarette tax by 61 cents per pack.
The move is intended to help fund the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but the AARC and its partners in the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids believe it could make a significant dent in the number of children and adults who smoke as well.
According to the Campaign, youth smoking drops by seven percent with every ten percent rise in the tax, and overall cigarette consumption declines by about four percent. The proposed 61 cent increase would effectively prevent nearly 1.9 million kids from picking up the habit and help around 1.2 million adults kick it for good.
More than 900,000 smoking-related deaths would be prevented in the process, and long-term health care savings would amount to $43.9 billion.
The Campaign reports strong support for such a tax increase as well. Their recent survey found 67 percent of voters would approve of a 75 cent per pack increase to help insure children. The support reached across all demographic and political lines.
"A higher cigarette tax is a win-win-win solution for the country -- a health win that will reduce tobacco use and save lives, a financial win that will raise revenue to help fund the SCHIP program, and a political win that is popular with voters," notes Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Executive Director William V. Corr.
The tax increase is being developed by Senate Finance Committee. Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) is expected to formally introduce a bill next week.
Stay tuned to the AARC web site for more on the legislation as it develops.
http://www.aarc.org
Visit our smoking / quit smoking section for the latest news on this subject.
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13 Feb. 2012. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/76816.php>
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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/76816.php.
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The Tyranny Of The Masses
posted by Rose1635 on 14 Jul 2007 at 1:18 pm“Their recent survey found 67 percent of voters would approve of a 75 cent per pack increase to help insure children”...
25% of the population smokes; that leaves a scant 8% of those polled who do not believe in the tyranny of the masses over an unpopular minority class.
“According to the Campaign, youth smoking drops by seven percent with every ten percent rise in the tax, and overall cigarette consumption declines by about four percent.”...
The things bureaucracies will say to stay in business. Since 1990 this country has been engaged in a massive campaign to stop smoking yet the number of people smoking remains the same. The best smokers can hope for is a 10% success rate when they seriously try to quit smoking. This is because of the extremely addictive nature of nicotine. For every person who has successfully quit smoking in the last 17 years another has started. That would suggest the price of cigarettes does not deter children from picking up the habit or, conversely people who have quit, from starting again.
Being a smoker I can tell you, whether I smoke or not at this point, is really not a matter of choice. The non-smokers in this country have made smokers’ lives so miserable it is ridiculous for them to continue to assume smokers are at choice in this matter. Every smoker I know would quit tomorrow if it really were that simple. We are expected to have sympathy for the obese and to understand, “they really can not help being over weight”, yet those who have never experienced nicotine addiction just assume smokers are evil and must be punished. They assuage their consciousnesses with the rationalization that if smokers don’t want to pay the tax they can just quit. When you decide to raise the tax on cigarettes, to pay for “poor children’s” health care you are literally taking the food off of my table. After this latest tax increase my family will pay $2880.00 more in taxes than a non-smoking family. Why does your organization and our government feel my money would be better spent on someone else’s family than my own.
The Tax foundation’s analysis done in 1999 which factored in health care, lost time from work, etc. showed a net transfer from smokers to non-smokers of approx. $50 billion dollars per year. At that time we paid just $996.00 per year in tax; apparently this was not enough. Seven more years of demonization have more than doubled that number. Thank God smokers are so badly addicted they cannot quit, or federal, state and local governments would all experience budget short falls.
And lastly if you want to help “poor families” buy health insurance this is not the way.
From the Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact series:
“Because the Senate is currently planning to raise $35 billion more in tax revenue, Prante compares that tax source to six other federal taxes. All the others are much easier on the poor. ‘The burden of the proposed cigarette tax hike on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier than it would be if the government raised the money with the federal income tax,”
It is just so easy to tax a despised minority group, that our congress simply can’t resist the temptation. My question for the reader is can you?
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