Jump to full article: Meriden (CT) Record-Journal, 2009-09-26
Author: Jeffery Kurz, Record-Journal staff
Intro: On Thursday, the state tax on cigarettes will increase by a dollar, from $2 to $3 for a pack of 20, or from 10 cents to 15 cents for each cigarette. The increase makes Connecticut second only to Rhode Island, where the state tax is $3.46 per pack. . . .
Across Center Street from the Day Spa, Paul E. Raczynski runs "Fire N Smoke," a shop that specializes in cigars, other tobacco products and, somewhat incongruously, hot sauce. Cigar sales make up about 95 percent of his business, he said.
On Thursday, the state tax on those tobacco products will increase from 20 percent to 27 percent. The price of the only cigarettes Raczynski sells, American Spirit, will rise from $8 to $9 a pack.
Many cigar enthusiasts smoke just one or two a week, but there are others who puff anywhere from six to a dozen a day, said Raczynski . . .
But there are those who feel it's not right to tax cigarettes without spending at least some of the money raised on smoking-cessation initiatives.
The hope was that some of the money would go toward programs like nicotine replacement therapy for Medicaid patients, "and that just hasn't happened," said Margaret R. LaCroix, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association of New England.
"I go further and call it immoral and unjust," said Dr. Patricia Checko, an epidemiologist who is chairwoman of the coalition MATCH, which stands for Mobilize Against Tobacco for Connecticut Health. . . .
Connecticut continues to use little of the more than $100 million a year it receives from the settlement with tobacco companies, which Blumenthal signed in 1998, on smoking cessation or prevention.
Connecticut's tax increase will put the average state tax on cigarettes at $1.34 a pack, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. South Carolina has the lowest state cigarette tax rate, at seven cents a pack. . . .
South Carolina is also one of just four states not to have raised the tax on cigarettes since 2000. The others are California, Missouri and North Dakota.
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