By the numbers

■ $1.01: Federal tax on cigarettes

■ $1.71: National average cigarette tax ■ Missouri: 17-cent cigarette tax (lowest in the U.S.); 22.1 percent smoking rate (one of the highest in the U.S.)

■ Kentucky: 60-cent cigarette tax; 25.9 percent rate of smokers (highest in the country)

■ Nevada: $1.80 cigarette tax;

16.9 percent rate of smokers

■ New York City: $1.50 tax (on top of the state’s $4.35 tax); 14.3 percent smoking rate House committee. The tobacco lobby was so effective that, in the end, eight of the bill’s original co-sponsors voted against it.

“It was incredible. Just brutal,” Page-nei said. “I’d never seen this amount of money being poured into a session in my 17 years here.”

Health experts agree that raising taxes is the most effective way to reduce tobacco use. The U.S. surgeon general, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all concluded that raising taxes helps large numbers of smokers to quit and have advocated loudly for it.

But many states — Missouri, Kentucky and Georgia among them —

TAXES

have not significantly increased their cigarette fees in decades, bowing to pressure from tobacco lobbyists and an ingrained antipathy among conservatives to raising taxes of any kind.

“People around here just don’t like the ‘tax’ word,” said Ellen Hahn, a tobacco control expert at University of Kentucky who has struggled for years to raise Kentucky’s 60-centsper-pack cigarette tax. “Between that and the grip of the tobacco industry on our legislature, it’s hard to convince anyone, especially politicians.”

The huge gap in taxation rates across the country is the result of a long-running war between tobacco companies and health advocates. It is also, experts say, one of the biggest reasons low-tax states now suffer from high rates of cancer, heart disease,diabetesandamultitudeof other tobacco-related diseases.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because unlike so many other problems in the country, this is one case where we know the solution,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids. “Not only that.

It’s a solution that’s widely popular, doesn’t cost the government any-