Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993 TAG: 9309290328
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: C. EVERETT KOOP
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's what President Clinton said in February, when he suggested a hefty cigarette tax - perhaps as much as $2 a pack - as one of the ways to pay for the health-care reform that most Americans know we need. He's right.
A cigarette tax is different because it helps almost everyone. A substantial cigarette tax would benefit not only the entire nation by helping to provide more accessible health care at a lower cost, but it would also benefit particular groups: Smokers would benefit because it would help them to quit; nonsmokers would benefit because the air they breathe would have less harmful smoke; children would benefit because fewer kids would get hooked on cigarettes; and - if the tax is done right - even tobacco farmers could benefit. The only real losers would be the tobacco industry, which has made its profits by lying to the American people about the dangers of smoking.
Tobacco industry lobbyists are pressuring the president to back down, to settle for a cigarette tax as low as 50 cents, and they're linking arms with tax opponents in Congress to defeat this critical part of health-care reform. Now, more than ever, President Clinton needs to remember his own words - for cigarette taxes are different indeed.
Cigarette taxes are different because they are the most effective way to discourage tobacco use among young people. In Canada, where cigarette taxes have been raised to more than $3 per pack, youth smoking rates have dropped by 60 percent.
Cigarette taxes are different because cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans each year, and rob our economy of $68 billion a year in health-care costs and lost productivity. Increasing the cigarette tax could be one of the most important public-health measures this country has ever taken. Experts predict that a $2-per-pack increase would persuade millions of young people not to start smoking and would help millions of current smokers to quit. About 7.6 million Americans would choose not to smoke because of the tax.
Figuring that smoking kills about a third of all those who smoke, this tax could prevent the premature death of at least 2 million Americans alive today. No other single aspect of any health-care reform plan can make so dramatic a claim. Let's not lose this unique opportunity to prolong those 2 million lives just to please the tobacco industry and its friends in Congress.
Senators and congressmen should be happy to find a tax that is actually popular. Polls show that almost 80 percent of Americans - Republicans and Democrats, young and old, men and women - support a large cigarette tax. So those members of Congress elected on a ``no new taxes'' pledge can go along with this one; even Sen. Robert Dole, the dean of tax opposition, has singled out the cigarette tax as one he could support. Cigarette taxes are indeed different.
Even tobacco farmers could benefit from the new cigarette tax if it is as hefty as once planned. Most tobacco farmers know the right and smart thing to do is to get out of a business that produces disease, disability and death, and this tax can help them make the transition to the smoke-free society and smoke-free economy that lie in our future. A small percentage of the revenue from this tax could be returned to tobacco-growing states to be used to help tobacco farmers diversify. Instead of blindly opposing the $2 cigarette tax, tobacco-state members of Congress should be fighting for their share of the pie to help move their states into the economy of the 21st century.
President Clinton says he wants dialogue on the health-care reform package, and that should produce the plan the nation needs. But there's already one issue on which almost everyone agrees - a major cigarette tax. Let's not let the tobacco industry make victims of the public on this one. Health-related taxes are different; they're good for you.
\ C. Everett Koop was surgeon general from 1981 to 1989.
The Washington Post
by CNB