Commentary –

Connecticut Taxes Smokes Too Much Already

By Chris Powell

Don’t tax you.

Don’t tax me.

Tax the man

Behind that tree.

Some leading Democratic state legislators have seen a wisp of cigarette smoke emanating from behind that tree, and, in that smoke, the answer to their many unfulfilled promises of government largesse as crunch time for the state budget approaches.

That is, $100 million more a year might be gained by raising the state cigarette tax by 50 cents per pack. One hundred million dollars’ worth of otherwise having to say no might be avoided through more high-minded exploitation of a despised minority. And if Governor Rowland, no friend of taxes if only slightly less enthusiastic than the Democrats about spending, should veto such a tax increase, he could be portrayed as the stooge of the tobacco companies.

If only government’s insatiability was as easy to avoid as cigarettes are. At least cigarettes come with warning labels. Connecticut may have greater need of a warning about the cigarette tax increase idea. For it is an issue of social justice, which Connecticut Democrats used to care about before government for its own sake became the party’s primary objective.

As terrible as smoking is, there is no moral justification for making smokers pay a disproportionate share of government’s general costs. Yes, smokers inflict certain public health costs on government, the costs of treating the uninsured among them for smoking-related diseases. But smokers long have been paying these costs in full through the special state and federal excise taxes on tobacco. Indeed, actuarial studies suggest that, far from being a losing proposition, tobacco and smoking long have been hugely profitable for government, since smokers not only cover, through the excise tax, their uninsured medical costs, but also, through premature death, forfeit more of their Social Security and government pensions than other people do, in effect leaving much of their estates to the government.

That is, smokers already pay far more than their fair share for government.

If there is a case for taxing tobacco more to discourage its use, that is not the purpose in the Democratic legislative caucus. The purpose there is simply to find the path of least resistance for raising a lot of money to feed the party’s constituent groups. Since tobacco’s excise taxes already discourage its use and produce revenue in excess of tobacco’s public costs, further taxation would approach prohibitionism, of which the country already has too much.

It may be hard to imagine that the gangsterism that has developed around narcotic drugs because of their being prohibited, just as it developed around the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s, would develop around cigarettes. But any disproportionate increase in state cigarette taxes, such as what is under consideration for Connecticut, would drive much of the cigarette trade underground. Much of it is underground already.

And not that it would cause much concern to a Democratic legislator in the throes of acute spending withdrawal, but since smokers are less wealthy than the general population, the tobacco tax is especially regressive, falling much harder on the poor.

Despised and discouraged as they are, some people in Connecticut find their small happiness in tobacco. The extra $100 million a year that might be extracted from them for the happiness of others won’t buy them even a social worker to hold their hands. Enough of the persecution already.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)