Raising the tax isn't as simple as 'the state needs money, and smoking is bad.'
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2009-06-29
Author: Patrick Fleenor
Intro: Nicholas Goldberg's "How and why taxes go up, in smoke" (June 14) reads more like press release from the anti-smoking lobby than an objective question-and-answer backgrounder: Smoking is bad and the state needs more money, therefore hiking the cigarette tax is good. If smokers quit, so much the better. It's a win-win!
Oh, if life were only so simple. . . .
An overarching theme of the article is that smoking is simply a bad thing. Yet we live in a diverse society in which tastes vary widely. For some, total bliss is a pack of Marlboros and a day at the monster truck show; for others, it's a bottle of Cabernet and a night at the opera. There is no reason one group should be subject to punitive taxes while the other is praised for its sophistication. . . .
It doesn't take a Nobel laureate to know what would happen if the cigarette tax were doubled or tripled. The marked rise in bootlegging would mitigate any health benefits of the hike. Moreover, as commerce migrates from the corner store to the street corner, youth access to tobacco products would probably increase.
A higher tax would also probably trigger a wave of cigarette thefts, a problem that has plagued the state in the wake of past tax hikes. The increase in such lawlessness coupled with the rise in the crimes traditionally associated with black markets -- murders from deals gone bad, gun battles over turf and so on -- would adversely affect smokers and nonsmokers alike.
Conclusion
There are no easy answers to California's budget woes. These problems have been building for decades. Perhaps it's time for citizens to fundamentally reappraise exactly what they want the state government to do and devise a fair and efficient tax system for collecting revenue. Hiking what is already one of the most unfair and disruptive taxes on the books will only increase the harm to smokers and nonsmokers alike.
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