Missouri should raise its abysmal cigarette tax
Thanks to the governor and legislature, Missouri has parked itself in the nation’s ashtray.
By refusing to increase the state’s lowest-in-the-nation cigarette tax, elected officials do more than create a gaping hole in the budget.
They invite citizens, especially young people, to take up and continue a harmful habit.
They damage the state’s economy by contributing to a loss of worker productivity.
They cost taxpayers millions of dollars in health costs that must be borne by state and federal governments.
And they stand by while Missourians continue to suffer heart attacks, strokes, smoke-related cancers and premature deaths at a higher rate than the national average.
Missouri is one of just three states that have not increased the tax on cigarettes since 2002. Smokers here pay a rock-bottom 17 cents a pack in state taxes. Virginia, with the second lowest cigarette tax, charges 30 cents a pack.
Statewide ballot initiatives to raise Missouri’s tax narrowly failed in 2002 and 2006, gaining 49 percent of the vote each time. Health groups fervently supported the measures, but tobacco lobbyists pushed back.
Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon and Republican lawmakers use those votes to justify the unconscionably low tax.
But Missouri taxpayers pay dearly for the failure of its leaders to act responsibly. Research by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has established that every Missouri household annually pays $586 to cover state and federal expenses caused by smokers.
Smoking-related illnesses create $2.13 billion in medical expenses each year in Missouri. About a quarter of that amount, $532 million, is covered by the state Medicaid program.
The relationship between cost and cigarette usage is well established — by the tobacco companies themselves.
“Tax increases are expected to continue to have an adverse impact on sales of tobacco products … due to lower consumption levels,” cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris said in a 2008 report.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids estimates that a dollar-per-pack rise in Missouri’s cigarette tax would result in a 16 percent decrease in smoking among high school students.
Researchers also calculate that increasing the price of cigarettes by a dollar would prevent 62,400 young Missourians from becoming addicted adult smokers, and encourage 38,500 adults to quit smoking in the first year.
Over five years, the state would save $18.4 million in medical costs from problematic pregnancies and births, and $23.7 million because of fewer heart attacks and strokes.
The Missouri Budget Project, a non-profit research and advocacy group, has calculated that by increasing the tax to $1.07 a pack — the average of the four largest states bordering Missouri — the state would raise about $500 million. Coincidentally, that’s about the size of next year’s budget shortfall.
But a tax increase that size would have to go to voters. So legislator Mary Still, a Democrat from Columbia, is also proposing raising the tax by 12.5 percent a year for eight years, to get to a dollar-per-pack increase.
The conventional wisdom is that a tax increase can’t be done. But Missouri has never experienced sustained, bipartisan leadership from the governor on down on this crucial public health issue.
It’s time for the state’s leaders to step up. Missouri’s cigarette tax should be in line with its neighbors and the national average. At 17 cents a pack, it’s making the state the butt of a bad joke.
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