News
Backer of tobacco tax hike: 11,000 adults would quit smoking
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Omaha World Herald
LINCOLN — A proposed 72-cent increase in taxes on a pack of cigarettes would not only stop more Nebraskans from smoking but do “a lot of good things,” a state senator said Wednesday.
“The most effective way to get people to quit smoking is to raise the price,” said State Sen. Mike Gloor of Grand Island.
Gloor is the sponsor of Legislative Bill 439, which would raise the state's tax on a pack of smokes from 64 cents to $1.36 a pack. That would equal the tobacco tax in Iowa, and would raise nearly $67 million in new revenue in Nebraska to increase reimbursement to health care providers, double research on tobacco-caused diseases and stabilize a state fund that funds health care services.
Nebraska's tobacco tax now ranks 38th among the 50 states, and Gloor said that his proposed increase would still leave the state's ranking in the middle.
He predicted that the price increase would cause 11,000 adults to quit and prevent 20,000 teens from picking up the habit.
But operators of grocery, liquor and convenience stores and gas stations opposed the tax hike, saying it would decrease their business and push cigarette purchases into other states, where taxes were lower.
Steve Moskovits of No Frills Supermarket Inc. said that one of his company's stores in Council Bluffs saw cigarette sales drop by 50 percent over three years after Iowa raised its tobacco taxes by $1 a pack in 2007.
He and other opponents also said that raising cigarette taxes hurts low-income people the most, since the rates of smoking are higher among the poor — 34 percent of adults with incomes of $15,000 or less smoke. By comparison, only 13 percent of those with incomes of $50,000 or more smoke. They also said that such “social engineering” via tax policy for a legal product is wrong.
Gloor said that the implementation of the federal health care law will increase health care costs for the state and that the added revenue from a higher tobacco tax would help finance that.
The fate of LB 439 is uncertain. A similar proposal failed to pass two years ago, and members of the Legislature's Revenue Committee had more questions than praise for the idea on Wednesday.
David Holmquist of the American Cancer Society, a supporter of the bill, pointed out that since Nebraska last increased its tobacco taxes, in 2002, 44 states have raised their tobacco taxes.
Contact the writer: 402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
