Smokers may soon pay more for cheaper brand cigarettes in Mississippi 

Smokers who buy non-premium brand cigarettes would start paying an extra 43 cents a pack starting Wednesday in Mississippi under legislation approved in the opening hours today of a special session called to adopt a $6.01 billion state budget.

The state faces a shutdown of all but essential and constitutionally mandated services at midnight Wednesday unless legislators adopt a budget and it is signed by Gov. Haley Barbour.

The legislature adjourned June 3 without reaching agreement on a 2010 budget. That meant they could reconvene only at Barbour's call and on his terms. . . .

Mississippi received more than $1 billion in the 1990s and is due to get $100 million a year in perpetuity from big tobacco in settlement of a lawsuit filed by the state's attorney general.

Barbour has said that gives the smaller cigarette companies, who did not participate in the lawsuit, an unfair advantage, and they should have to pay a higher tax.

House members raised the 25-cent a pack tax proposal to 43 cents a pack and sent the measure to the Senate, where some members argued big tobacco was behind the proposed tax increase because it was losing market share to the smaller, cheaper tobacco companies.

"Don't you think that just kids are buying these cheap cigarettes," said Sen. Bob Dearing, D-Natchez.

"And don't you think kids aren't buying these expensive cigarettes."

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