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Saskatchewan First Nations leaders are reacting angrily after Premier Brad Wall said changes to the way tobacco is taxed on reserve could be part of next week's budget.
"Push has come to shove," vice-chief Morley Watson of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations told CBC News.
"Right now the chiefs of Saskatchewan have said, 'Enough is enough. Let's get together and counterattack the aggression, the attack on our treaty rights by this provincial government.'"
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Another price hike on cigarettes... I hear smokers shrugging it off, as it has no affect to them. What's another 10 cents? . . .
In Brunei's case, the Tobacco Order 2005 was finally enforced in 2008. This noble measure is seen as one of steps towards a smoke-free and healthier nation. In 2009, a local newspaper article published a story entitled the following - 'Increasing the price of cigarettes would persuade smokers to kick the habit for good, which is more effective than the Tobacco Order 2005'.
However, a year has gone by and arguably the number of smokers in the country has not budged as smokers continue to light up. Recently, the Ministry of Health stated that lung cancer is now a major concern becoming the number one killer in the country. . . .
However, there remains the question of whether we have done enough. The setting up of the legal framework and the establishment of the 'quit smoking' clinic in Anggerek Desa (that only gives out tobacco patches) are certainly steps in the right direction. . . .
If we are serious in making a change, a friendlier approach should be explored, opportunities and options should be open to the public to ensure them that their wish to quit can be achieved. As for now, smokers will continue lighting up one of their 'little pleasures' after a hard day at work.
By the new proposal, when cigarette use declines, less money would be available for the schools.
We can imagine the bumper stickers we’ll see if education in the state is primarily funded by the lottery and cigarette tax money: “I smoke and gamble to that your kid can be smarter.”
A third option would be to use the extra money from a cigarette tax increase as part of the state’s general fund, giving our legislators a free hand to direct the dollars to where they are needed most.
So what do you think? Go to www.theeasleyprogress.com and vote. You will be given four options. One would be not to raise the cigarette tax in South Carolina. The other three would be to raise the tax and direct it to healthcare, schools or the state’s general fund.
Governor Christie has let down New Jersey's kids and taxpayers with his proposal to eliminate funding for New Jersey's tobacco prevention and cessation program. This proposal will lead to more kids becoming addicted to tobacco, fewer tobacco users getting the help they need to quit, more lives being lost and New Jersey taxpayers paying the bill for higher tobacco-caused health care costs. It is truly penny-wise and pound-foolish budgeting.
First impressions say a great deal, and Governor Christie's first budget is leaving the impression he doesn't care about protecting New Jersey from tobacco or saving taxpayer's money. Steps have to be taken to close the budget deficit, but without funding tobacco prevention and cessation efforts, 7,090 more kids in New Jersey will become addicted adult smokers. This will result in 2,260 premature smoking related deaths, and cost taxpayers $124 million in increased health care spending by the state government.
If the legislature follows the Governor's budget we will save a few million in the short term, pay more in healthcare for years to come and have more people dealing with cancer, emphysema and other smoking related illnesses.
New Jersey this year will collect $968 million from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes. . . .
Governor Christie and the Legislature also have a far better solution to address the budget deficit that will not hurt New Jersey's health -- increase the tobacco tax. Instead of eliminating funding for tobacco prevention, they can raise taxes on other tobacco products to the current level of cigarette taxes, $2.70 per pack. This would bring in $20.8 million in new annual revenue.
The joy of lighting up is real. I smoked a pack a day for six years in my early 20s. I didn’t plan to become a smoker, but when you cross the line from repulsion to pleasure, you’re there. And it doesn’t take long. . . .
If you smoke, you’re accepting a higher risk for medical calamities. Smoking leads to enormous health expenses for society. As a group, smokers shouldn’t be dismayed about footing more of the down payment on what they ultimately cost society. While a $1 increase wouldn’t eliminate smoking, it would cut down on the number of packs people will buy, which would lead to fewer cigarettes smoked, and ultimately a reduction in smoking-related health care costs. This would have the effect of raising more revenues for the state and reducing some expenses. It’s a sensible thing. Those opposing the tax say that all tax increases are bad, but what about one that simultaneously reduces costs?
Plus, if the packs of smokes cost $1 more, maybe fewer 18 year olds such as myself will light up with their friends, youthfully oblivious to the addictive fire they play with.
The South Carolina House pulled an all-nighter to finish its version of the state budget, meeting from 9:30 Wednesday morning until 7:30 Thursday morning. The House plan includes a 30-cents-per-pack cigarette tax increase, with the money being put aside in a special fund for health care needs starting July 1, 2011.
The increase would bring in an estimated $88 million. South Carolina has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 7 cents.
The move angered smoker Teresa Laverne of Columbia. "I don't think it's fair that smokers should be singled out as a class. It's not fair. Tax everybody if you're going to tax us," she said.
But fellow smoker Allison Walker of Columbia said of the increase, "I don't think it'll stop people from smoking that really do smoke, but it's a wonderful thing that it'll be used for health care."
Two controversial parts of a $5.1 billion House-passed budget may not survive in the Senate's spending plan, senators have told The Greenville News .
One provision would prohibit the state health plan from paying for abortions for women who are victims of rape or incest, while another would raise the state's 7-cents-per-pack tax on cigarettes to 37 cents.
Senators said they prefer that the cigarette tax issue be settled in standalone legislation already pending in the Senate instead of in the budget, where it would only last a year.
The proliferation of tax-free tobacco products on reserves will be addressed in next week's provincial budget, Premier Brad Wall said in a speech Wednesday.
In his "state of the province" address to the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce at TCU Place, Wall said the province needs to take some steps to reduce tobacco use and cited a report saying one of the biggest obstacles to that has been the lack of taxation on tobacco products sold on First Nations.
"Smoking remains one of the most harmful and costly health issues. The financial cost is great; the human cost is greater," said Wall. "And the problem continues to be greatest among our First Nations people."
Wall referred to Statistics Canada surveys from 2007-08 that showed the rate of smoking to be twice as high among the aboriginal population (45.3 per cent) in Saskatchewan compared to the non-aboriginal population (23.3 per cent). . . .
"Together in partnership with First Nations, maybe the objective should be we don't have tax-free tobacco," he said. "That would have to be a decision First Nations are a part of, because it's a treaty right."
In Wednesday's column disparaging Maryland's life-saving 2007 tobacco tax increase ("Did cigarette tax increase do more harm than good?" March 17), Marc Kilmer neglects to mention that this increase, along with other policies such as Maryland's smoke free workplace law also encated in 2007, have combined to make Maryland's smoking rate the fourth lowest in the nation, saving thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been lost because of tobacco caused illness and death.
Like the tobacco companies and other critics of tobacco tax increases, Mr. Kilmer wrongly asserts that the drop in tobacco sales in Maryland after the tax went up was caused by people buying their tobacco in other states and that the tax did not bring in as much as was expected. . . .
Plainly, Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly can be very proud of the success of the 2007 tobacco tax increase, and we look forward to working with them very soon to raise that tax again in order to keep reducing smoking and continuing to expand health care in Maryland.
Vincent DeMarco, Baltimore
The writer is president of the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative.
The increase would bring in an estimated $88 million. South Carolina has the lowest cigarette tax in the nation at 7 cents. . . .
Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Gaffney, said, "I'm one of those that's not crazy about a tax increase at all. But when I talk to my constituents they say, 'If you must raise a tax, that's the only one we would agree with, is a cigarette tax.'"
Superintendent of Education Jim Rex called on the state Senate Thursday to raise South Carolina's cigarette tax to the national average, saying a 30-cent-per-pack hike approved by the House is "woefully inadequate" for health care and education needs.
Rex proposed moving the tax from 7 cents to $1.34 per pack and splitting the increased revenues between public education and health care. According to Rex, his proposal negates the need for school districts to furlough teachers and would add more than 20,000 health-care related jobs to the state's employment rolls.
The House spending plan would put its extra 30-cents-a-pack increase in a Medicaid reserve account, said Rex in a Thursday press release. He claimed the House budget would also mean schools would see a multi-million dollar reduction.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) is behind Georgia’s legislation, claiming it’s only fair that people who cost the health care system more money should have to pay more taxes. But experts say taxes on cigarettes are regressive. . . .
Despite all that, cigarette taxes are popular and easy to pass into law. Why?
“Smokers have been cowed into thinking they are bad people,” says Jane Gravelle, a senior specialist in economic policy for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, D.C. So not many people speak out against taxing cigarettes. . . .
In the1990s, Gravelle, a Georgia native, and her CRS co-worker Dennis Zimmerman were assigned to research the effect of a $1 tax President Bill Clinton wanted to put on cigarettes. They looked at studies by scientists and economists from across the nation and came up with an assessment generally considered so rude that Capitol Hill was thrown into a ruckus: Smokers actually save Americans money because they don’t live as long as the rest of us.
“If you’re justifying a cigarette tax because of the burden smokers place on other people, we didn’t think it was justified,” says Gravelle. “The way that other researchers have looked at it, they don’t consider that smokers die sooner. Lung cancer is pretty cheap as illnesses go.” . . .
“Basically, you add up all the cost over a lifetime, including absenteeism from work and a whole slew of factors—lung cancer, heart attack, emphysema—and you find that a smoker who dies at 65, before he collects Social Security benefits, is less costly than an Alzheimer’s patient who dies at 85,” explains Gravelle. “Some illnesses are quicker than others.” . . .
“It is looking less and less like teenage smoking is really affected because many of them don’t buy their own cigarettes,” she says. . . .
Dennis Zimmerman, who researched Clinton’s proposed cigarette tax hike—which was not passed by Congress—says he and Gravelle found “smokers were already paying more in state and federal taxes than the cost they imposed on society.”
Controversially, they also found that studies tended to overstate the effects associated with secondhand smoke. . . .
Zimmerman, now retired and living in Virginia, says there is a moral problem with taxing smokers to offset costs for which they are only partially responsible. . . .
Gravelle and Zimmerman based much of their research on the work of Kip Viscusi, then an economist at Harvard University.
“No, smokers don’t impose disproportionate health care costs,” says Viscusi, who is now a professor at Vanderbilt University.
A Nassau County Supreme Court Judge has thrown out a lawsuit against the state for boosting tobacco taxes paid by retailers.
A group of gas station operators sued the state opposing an amended tax law to increase fees for stores selling tobacco from a $100 flat fee to a graduated scale ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 based on the gross sales of all products sold, rather than just tobacco items.
The suit was led by the Long Island Gasoline Retailers Association, as well as four other trade associations representing about 10,000 retailers statewide. In September, the associations won a temporary restraining order allowing them not to have to pay the new fees until a judge could determine the impact of the changes to the law.
But Justice Thomas Feinman ruled on Wednesday that the groups did not have standing in the case and they did not prove that their business would be adversely affected by the new fees.
CAMPAIGNERS are calling for the price of a packet of cigarettes to be increased to £7.42.
The Policy Exchange think tank say there should be a five per cent tax hike on fags announced in next week's Budget, followed by further rises over the next five years.
On current estimates, that would see the cost of a packet of cigarettes rise by £1.29 over the course of the next parliament.
Policy Exchange said the extra revenue would pay for health measures such as giving a £10 weekly reward to pregnant women who give up smoking.
They claimed the cost to the public of smoking far outweighed the revenue from duty, leaving the taxpayer with a 6.5p bill for every cigarette smoked.
Henry Featherstone, of Policy Exchange, said: "It is a popular myth that smoking is a net contributor to the economy.