ROANOKE TIMES Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times DATE: Monday, March 17, 1997 TAG: 9703170095 SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
Tripling the federal cigarette tax could provide health insurance for 10 million youngsters whose families now can't afford it. Would Virginia go along?
THE PUBLIC'S dislike of tax increases in general usually doesn't extend to cigarette taxes. In fact, polls show, most Americans think cigarette taxes should be increased to offset tobacco-related health-care costs.
That's not precisely the rationale for a proposed tripling of the federal excise tax on cigarettes, from 24 cents to 67 cents. But it's for an equally good purpose: to finance health insurance for 10 million youngsters who don't now have it.
Indeed, the Census Bureau reports, one out of seven kids has no health coverage. Most of the have-nots are kids in working-poor families, with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too meager to afford health insurance.
A cigarette-tax increase is a reasonable way to meet this health-care need. As a bonus, it would likely dissuade many price-sensitive adolescents from taking up the smoking habit, a habit linked to 400,000 premature deaths each year.
Given those benefits, could anybody be against it? Ho, ho. The boardrooms of tobacco companies are probably packed today with lobbyists planning an all-out assault on the measure. And not for nothing do tobacco barons contribute millions of dollars to congressional campaigns.
This proposal, introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, will be a major test of federal lawmakers' rhetorical commitment to children's health, as opposed to their own interest in keeping the tobacco money rolling into their campaign treasuries.
It could become a test, too, for state lawmakers in Virginia. Revenue from the higher federal cigarette tax would be awarded as grants to states, which would contract with insurers to provide child-only health coverage and help low-income parents buy it. But states would have to pay a portion of the costs.
Could that become the impetus for an increase in Virginia's indecently low cigarette tax - at 2.5 cents per pack, the nation's lowest. With children's health at stake, would Virginia lawmakers finally find the gumption to defy Big Tobacco?
Congress may call the question.
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