Blowing smoke rings around the statehouses.

• Author: Mintz, Morton
• Position: Tobacco industry's effort to keep states from raising cigaret taxes

A few years ago, Doctors Ought to Care (DOC), an anti-tobacco group in Houston, Texas, received a batch of internal Philip Morris documents from someone claiming to have found them "in a garbage can." The documents were periodic briefings prepared for senior Philip Morris executives from 1989 to 1990 by an unidentified supervisor of the company's lobbying in seven Southwestern states: Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The primary mission of the operative, dubbed "Smoking Gun" by tobacco foes, was to prevent increases in state cigarette excise taxes. The level of taxation of tobacco products is important because it quite literally can determine whether huge numbers of people become addicted, sicken, and the. Over the 11-year period starting in 1980, Canada raised its combined federal and provincial cigarette tax drastically--from an average of 46 cents per pack to $3.27 per pack. By 1991 per capita cigarette consumption had fallen by 40 percent and teen smoking by two-thirds, after accounting for smuggling of cheaper cigarettes from the United States.

In the United States, the average of state levies on cigarettes is only 32 cents per pack. Combined with a 24-cent federal tax, our rate of cigarette taxation is the lowest among 13 Western industrialized countries. A recent survey found the highest tax, $3.88 per pack, in Denmark. Next came Norway, at $3.44 per pack, and the United Kingdom, at $3.27. Canada, after drastic cuts in federal and some provincial taxes in 1994, still ranked ninth-with combined federal and provincial taxes totaling $1.96.

For the United States to follow the example of these countries by dramatically raising cigarette taxes would be to preserve the health and save the lives of huge numbers of Americans. By the conservative estimates of independent and government economists and experts on smoking, every 25-cent increase in excise taxes, indexed to keep pace with inflation, would discourage about 1 million persons from smoking and save between 200,000 and 300,000 of them from premature death. A $2 increase-favored by majorities of voters in every region, according to a 1993 poll by Marttila & Kiley--would avert 1.9 million premature deaths. Higher taxes would be especially effective in deterring young potential smokers from getting hooked. And while producing sharp declines in cigarette consumption, higher taxes would yield greater revenues that could help state and federal taxpayers...