Submitted by Bill Godshall, Oct 23, 2007 15:07

The NY Sun editorial board wrongly prefers early deaths for more than a hundred thousand NYC residents (who quit smoking due to the cigaratte tax hike) and doesn't even acknowledge that remaining smokers in NYC are consuming fewer cigarettes or that everyone in NYC is breathing less tobacco smoke pollution.

But the Sun editorial is correct about raising the legal age for tobacco sales.

Although I share concerns about cigarette smuggling, which increases as state and local cigarette tax differences increase, pragmatic policy solutions include:
- increasing state efforts (and perhaps local efforts in NYC) to collect unpaid cigarette taxes from smokers,
- increased state and local (in NYC) cigarette tax law enforcement to better contain smuggling,
- increasing cigarette tax rates in states with law cigarette taxes, and
- increasing the federal cigarette tax rate (e.g. S-CHIP legislation), which will have little or no impact on intrastate or interstate cigarette smuggling.

Bill Godshall

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