Smoking poses a monumental problem for our society. It kills more Americans each year than alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, homicide, suicide, car accidents, fires and AIDS combined. It also costs this nation more than $100 billion a year in direct health-care costs, lost productivity and early death.
Despite the fact that smoking is the nation's No. 1 health problem, no battle plan has been proposed to win the war against smoking. Maybe that's why we're losing the war.The Clinton administration wants to raise the federal excise tax on tobacco by 75 cents a pack, but none of the revenue would be used to combat the spread of smoking-related diseases.
If the administration were serious about adopting a realistic and workable strategy to reduce health-care costs, it would consider raising the federal excise tax on tobacco products 25 cents a year for the next seven years. This would probably cut the cancer rate in half by 2000.
Raising the federal excise tax on tobacco products has also been proven to be one of the most effective ways of discouraging young people from taking up smoking.
Despite this fact, the federal excise tax on tobacco products has been increased just twice in the past 42 years, and it is lower today in constant dollars than it was in 1951.
With government's health-care costs for tobacco-related illnesses exploding, why shouldn't smokers be required to pay a portion of their own future health-care costs?
The federal government and, in turn, American taxpayers are forced to bear the direct costs of smokers' illnesses in a variety of ways. When an indigent smoker develops cigarette-induced heart disease, his or her medical bills are likely to be paid by Medicaid or public hospitals, both supported by the tax dollars of nonsmokers. Public taxes pay disability benefits to smokers disabled by emphysema. When smokers die of lung cancer, the general public supports their families through Social Security survivors benefits.
Increasing the federal excise tax on tobacco products would make cigarette prices better reflect their true cost to society and force smokers to pay for the illness and injury their smoking promotes. At the same time, higher excise taxes would curb cigarette use and curtail its pandemic harm. Economic as well as educational factors can influence tobacco consumption. The simplest economic disincentive to consumption is to raise the price of a product.
Part of any new tobacco tax revenue should be earmarked for specific anti-tobacco or health-related purposes, including educational efforts to prevent the next generation of Americans from becoming addicted to tobacco products.
True health-care reform, focused on preventive health as a means of reducing death and disease, must deal with the issue of tobacco use. Increasing the taxation on tobacco products has merit because it would decrease consumption, decrease health care costs and raise money, but it is vital and necessary to use a portion of the revenue to mount a major national, long-term anti-smoking effort similar to California's effective campaign.
(Ahron Leichtman is executive director of Citizens for a Tobacco-free Society (CATS). He is the author of "The Top Ten Ways to Attack the Tobacco Industry and Win the War Against Smoking," which will appear in the Spring 1994 issue of The St. Louis University Public Law Review.)