IN.gov - Skip Navigation

Note: This message is displayed if (1) your browser is not standards-compliant or (2) you have you disabled CSS. Read our Policies for more information.


Subscribe for e-mail updates
Print This Page Rate This Page Suggest a Link E-mail This Page HELP Find a Person Find an Agency

Snuff Out Smoking with a Tax Hike

Indianapolis Star Editorial

Our position: Higher cigarette tax could reduce smoking and help pay for prevention programs.

If current trends continue, tobacco will kill more than a billion people this century -- 10 times the toll smoking claimed over the past 100 years.

This "largest train wreck" in human history, as John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, describes it, is especially tragic because it's largely avoidable.

Steady gains were being made against smoking in the United States for several years. But recent statistics show a reversal of that trend. The number of U.S. teen smokers, for instance, increased from about 21.9 percent in 2003 to 23 percent in 2005. Indiana's progress against smoking also is being wiped out.

Fueled largely by spending tobacco lawsuit settlement money on smoking cessation programs and anti-smoking advertising, Indiana reduced the percentage of Hoosiers who smoked between 2002 and 2004 from 27.7 to 24.9 percent. But last year the percentage of Hoosiers smoking rose to 27.3 percent, placing the state second only to Kentucky in the percentage of adults who smoke. It's no wonder. Indiana had been spending about $32 million a year in tobacco settlement funds on prevention and cessation programs. In 2005, however, it diverted about two-thirds of that money to ease the state's financial crunch.

Legislators also rejected Gov. Mitch Daniels' call to raise Indiana's cigarette tax -- one of the lowest in the nation. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry, which spent nearly $475 million in 2003 to promote smoking in Indiana, is winning the tobacco war. Every 10 percent increase in cigarette taxes deters about 7 percent of teenagers and 4 percent of adults from smoking, studies show. Using money raised by higher cigarette taxes on prevention and cessation programs would have led many Hoosiers to kick the habit. Or using it to pay for escalating public health costs that result from smoking could have saved money for non-smoking taxpayers.

A higher tax, coupled with stronger enforcement of laws against selling cigarettes to underage smokers, would steadily reduce what is not just a bad habit but a major public health hazard.