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Don't Douse Chance to Torch Tobacco

Indianapolis Start Editorial

Our position: The time is right to invest in the health of Hoosiers with a cigarette tax hike and anti-smoking funding restoration.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has all but thrown down the gauntlet on the cigarette tax, and the legislature is running out of room to hide. While he won't explicitly say he intends to take another stab at the tax increase he failed to get through last year's session of the Indiana General Assembly, the governor told The Star and another newspaper recently that the subject is on the table.

Daniels stressed that health, not revenue, would be the motivator for any cigarette tax in these times of fiscal surplus; and well he should. The correlation between tax increases and reduced cigarette purchases, particularly among young smokers, has been convincingly demonstrated. And Indiana's tax of 55.5 cents per pack is the lowest in the Midwest.This gap is not the only one state government can close.

There's also the drastic cut made two years ago in funding for Indiana's tobacco prevention and cessation program. The result was predictable: A significant reduction in smoking by Hoosiers dissolved into an increase, dragging us to the second-worst rate in the nation.

The governor's laudable health initiatives can't abide that kind of number, and neither can the economy in which health-related costs play such a large part. It is time, therefore, to present the legislature with a couple of numbers.

Last year, Daniels proposed a tax increase of 25 cents per pack. The request quietly died in committee while sensational measures and controversies held the spotlight. The session beginning this January should be an easier one in which to force attention on the state's worst public health problem.

Another number to consider is 67 percent. That's how much of the $32 million annual payout from the national tobacco settlement has been diverted to other budget areas by the legislature as of fiscal 2004. Restoring it would take courage, as would the imposition of a new tax. Ducking the task would not save money, and it would cost thousands of lives. The governor must stay in his bully pulpit and pound away with that message.