The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Group wants to raise cigarette taxes
Anti-cancer organization asks Georgia lawmakers to approve more funds for anti-tobacco programs.
Georgia is among 11 Southern states where cancer rates exceed the national average. And an anti-cancer group is laying the blame in part at the feet of those states’ lawmakers.
The American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network pulls no punches, titling its announcement “Failure by Southeastern State Legislators on Tobacco Policies Leads to Higher Tobacco Use, Greater Cancer Burden.”
The society released a report showing that the states in question have among the lowest cigarette taxes in the country as well as the lowest spending on anti-tobacco programs. The society says those strategies reduce smoking, which in turn reduces cancer rates. So, the society says, it’s no surprise that those states that spend the least on such programs have higher than average cancer rates — some, remarkably high.
Georgia’s cancer rate is worse than the national average, though nowhere nearly as bad as some of the other states mentioned in the report. Georgia’s cancer mortality rate is 170 per 100,000, compared with 166 per 100,000 nationally.
Smoking currently accounts for 29 percent of all cancer deaths in Georgia, said Rebecca Siegel, the society’s strategic director of surveillance information.
Siegel said other factors helped tamp down Georgia’s cancer rate, including a diverse population with more nonwhite residents. Whites are more likely to smoke.
On the other hand, she said, Georgia’s cigarette excise tax is lower than all but two states’. It is 37 cents per pack and has not been raised in a dozen years. That’s compared with states such as Mississippi, where the tax is
68 cents a pack, and Florida, where it’s $1.33 a pack. The way Siegel sees it, that leaves Georgia with “enormous potential” to lower cancer rates by raising the tax again.
A company that has lobbied against higher taxes, Altria Group, did not respond to messages about the issue.
The tobacco tax debate has a long history in Georgia. The excise tax doesn’t rise with inflation, and the Legislature hasn’t increased it since 2003.
The state’s Republican majority is in no hurry to do so again. Some lawmakers have tried; state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, R-Rome, in 2015 requested an analysis that showed a tax bump could generate more than $500 million annually in new revenue for the state, even taking into account those who would smoke less.
Part of Hufstetler’s reasoning was that smokers need to help pay the cost of their smoking-related medical care that falls on society.
“The 82 percent of Georgia’s adult population that doesn’t smoke is heavily subsidizing the 18 percent who do smoke,” Hufstetler said. “The people who do smoke need to pay their fair share.”
Opponents said the burden of a higher tax would fall most on the poor and those with low incomes.
People who were most addicted would be least able to make an economic choice to spend less on cigarettes. .