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The Guv's pack attack

Gov. Kaine's proposed cigarette tax lets other sinners off the hook

Date published: 12/21/2008

LET'S GET out of the way the obligatory acknowledgment that cigarettes are bad things. They've put millions of people in the ground, including some non-users forced to "smoke" through their nostrils the gaseous detritus of actual puffers. They've degraded the health of countless others, driving up medical costs. Their slovenly use, manifested in roadside litter, annoys the majority who don't mistake public space for an ashtray. No wonder Gov. Kaine, facing a serious budget shortfall, wants to double Virginia's cigarette tax to 60 cents a pack.

Yet let's recognize that Mr. Kaine's proposal represents a kind of classism. Cigarette smokers generally occupy the lower economic strata, which means that few of them inhabit the social sphere of governors and of the business and journalistic elites with whom the political class hobnobs. A cigarette tax, in short, is a tax on "them," not "us." Elites still like their microbrews, their merlots, and their double-malt Scotches, which is perhaps why Mr. Kaine isn't pushing higher taxes on another socially problematic substance, alcohol.

State Republicans and their polemical shops don't make the above argument, because they oppose all tax increases, including on Satan if he were an incorporated business or had a Social Security number. (Americans for Tax Reform reminds us that 30 Virginia legislators have promised in writing "to oppose any and all efforts to increase taxes.") They argue that raising the cigarette tax would throw people out of work. But the cigarette makers of Greater Richmond send their products all over the country, with Virginians consuming only 3 percent of all cigarettes domestically sold, notes city resident Peter Fisher of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Philip Morris International boasts that it sells its wares to 160 nations. A tax increase in wee Virginia is going to bring 1933 to Richmond's South Side? Or cause the collapse of the Emphysema Empire?

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Date published: 12/21/2008

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