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Wrong Way On Smoke Tax

Contrary to national trends, Louisiana might become the only state in the nation to take a pro-cancer stand: cutting the price of a pack of cigarettes.

Gov. Bobby Jindal opposes attempts by the Legislature to renew a 4-cent-per-pack portion of the existing tax on cigarettes.

Embellishing his anti-tax stand, Jindal said renewal of the tax, originally passed in 2000, would constitute a tax increase.

“If it requires legislative action, we believe that’s an increase,” Jindal said. And he said revenue from the 4-cent portion has not been built into the administration’s budget forecast for the 2012-13 fiscal year or future years.

Because this year’s session of the Legislature is a fiscal session, lawmakers are empowered by the state constitution to raise taxes. So the time to renew the tax expiring in 2012 is this year.

Most states have gone in the opposite direction from Jindal.

Under pressure to raise revenue to avoid budget cuts, and seeking to reduce smoking cigarettes because of its impact on health costs, even the most-conservative states have approved buy cigarettes tax increases in recent years.

Leave aside the inconsistencies — and they are many — in the governor’s self-serving anti-tax rhetoric.

His administration backed raising the fee on driver’s licenses, but was blocked in that by the Legislature. He’s pushed for increases in college tuition. He’s taken large sums of federal stimulus money to balance previous budgets, denouncing the stimulus all along. He’s allowed local tax or fee increases to become law without his signature, a pure political dodge that belies Jindal’s preening himself as an anti-tax hero.

Leave aside the fact that the state needs the money.

Jindal’s budget proposes an effective pay cut for state employees by raising retirement and other costs to them. He proposes raising tuition again. He already has cut vital programs, including higher education, during his term in office.

But to seek to kill an existing tax on a well-documented health threat in one of the unhealthier states in America? Not a new tax. And to do it when Louisiana’s taxes on cigarettes are near the lowest in the nation?

Jindal was a public health official in state government and in the administration of President George W. Bush. He must truly be alone among responsible officials in this area of policy in the entire nation in giving people incentives to smoke.

Failure to renew this tax is an explicit price signal, particularly to young people.

National studies have shown that fewer young people take up smoking cigarettes — a potentially deadly addition — if the price of cheap cigarettes rises.

The governor is wrong.

The renewal of the 2000 tax would keep Louisiana’s cigarette tax at 36 cents a pack. That’s third from last in the nation.

Further, Louisiana suffers severe health impacts from smoking cigarettes, and general taxpayers pay a heavy price when smokers show up in hospitals with expensive conditions related to smoking cigarettes.

It’s not just a matter of the state treasury. Because of cost-shifting in health care, every insured family pays for public-health impacts from smoking cigarettes. Polls consistently have shown that cigarette taxes — while not universally popular — are backed by large majorities.

Louisiana should go in the opposite direction from what the governor proposes. We should raise cigarette taxes at least to the national average.

If the governor wants to polish his political apple with a veto, then let him, and lawmakers ought to override that decision.

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