Tobacco tax is worth saving lives

Published 10:24am Thursday, February 14, 2013
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Letter to the Editor

Most people don’t like to hear the word “tax,” but there is one instance where the word actually means money saved not just spent and that’s a cigarette tax.

Smoking takes more than 5,000 lives and costs Minnesotans more than $3 billion each year. It’s a cost we all pay whether we smoke or not. Raising the cigarette tax by $1.50 per pack is estimated to prompt nearly 36,000 Minnesota smokers to quit and prevent nearly 47,000 kids from becoming addicted adults. Over the course of 5 years, fewer smokers means more than $5.6 million in savings from smoking-related lung cancer alone. It also means fewer Medicaid dollars spent treating preventable tobacco-related illness.

When you consider the lives and dollars saved in the long run by adding $1.50 per pack now, most would agree — and a majority of Minnesotans do agree — a tobacco tax is a tax worth doing.

Linda J. Baier,

Austin

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  • drschminke05

    Good heavens! Leave the poor smokers alone. I know everyone loves to hate them, but jeez! Taxes are already high. They fall disproportionally on the poor. MN tax plus the cost of the so-called ‘tobacco settlement’ have already pushed the cost to north of $5.00 per pack. If that is not enough to deter smokers (or youth) do you think $6.50 will? As far as costs–#1– I think you are mostly giving us someone’s more-or-less made-up numbers. Further, why is someone else’s cost your concern? Where does plain old personal responsibility come in? Healthcare costs? Easy. How ’bout we let the market handle that? You wanna smoke? You pay higher premiums. Can’t afford the premiums? Then don’t smoke, pay your own medical costs, or do without healthcare. Extra cost to the government? Then get the government out of the business of paying for irresponsible people’s healthcare costs (at taxpayers expense–other people’s money, as the government HAS NO MONEY.) Beware the law of unintended consequences. All of this do-gooder social engineering ignores the simple solution, and substitutes complicated ones that DON’T WORK.

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