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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992                   TAG: 9202030154
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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ALSO TAX CHEWS, PIPE TOBACCO, SNUFF

YOUR EXCELLENT and informative editorial Jan. 17 on Gov. Wilder's proposal to tax medical providers indicates Medicaid has grown threefold in the past decade. A recent study showed that lower-income persons are the largest users of tobacco products.

Obviously, they are large users of Medicaid. (Granted that some of the Medicaid consumers are those of higher income who have "spent down" and have gone onto Medicaid.) I agree that tobacco should be taxed at the very least to bring Virginia up to the middle of the tax rates of all states.

But why only cigarettes? What about cigars, pipes, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff?

This is not to let off the hook those medical providers who have taken advantage of patients' illnesses. It is to turn the attention of the public to the great liability of tobacco in our health-care costs - both state and national.

The tobacco interests have a stranglehold on the General Assembly; and the citizens of Virginia remain silent as a few farmers (in comparison to total population), who can raise other crops, claim this is their highest-profit crop and refuse to change. Why don't we legalize other drugs and start highly profitable businesses in them? Profits for disease and death!

I suggest that medical providers, who will be hit with taxes, might wish to turn on the tobacco industry as part of the problem in making such huge health-care bills.

I invite all citizens to demand of their taxing officials that they tax tobacco and alcohol products more in line with progressive states. CAROLYN P. WHITE BLACKSBURG

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