Smoky Perversity

When cigarettes cost more, people tend to smoke less--particularly young people who, except for the disincentive of price, might be lured into joining the tens of millions of their elders who have become fully hooked tobacco addicts. It follows, then, that keeping cigarettes expensive performs a social good: It’s easier and cheaper to discourage would-be smokers than it is to try to break their developed habit and treat their tobacco-related diseases later on. The House Ways and Means Committee didn’t have that goal uppermost when it voted this week to keep the excise tax on cigarettes at 16 cents a pack, but never mind. The panel did a favor for a lot of people, whether they know it or not, and a measure of gratitude is in order.

What the committee really had its sights on was the $4.9 billion that the 16-cent tax will bring in over the next three years. Had the tax been allowed to fall back to 8 cents on Oct. 1, as current law requires, the Treasury would have been billions of dollars poorer and the budget deficit in coming years would have been that much greater. The pity is that the committee turned down a proposal to increase the tax to 32 cents. That really would have been both a revenue-raiser of some consequence and, no less important, the kind of disincentive to smoking that would be a major benefit to public health.

In a perverse act the committee earmarked 1 cent of the tax for tobacco subsidies. This will help assure that, even as the government contributes billions a year to treat smoking-related diseases, hundreds of millions will continue to be spent to make the cause of those diseases available. The subsidy was justified as a political necessity to get tobacco-state congressmen to support the higher excise tax. So indeed it may be, though that does not make it stink any the less. Perhaps it’s just as well that the committee rejected the 32-cent tax. Had it approved, it might at the same time have been forced to double the tobacco subsidy.