Editorials

Once it was said that because of the importance of tobacco to its economy, Virginia was a colony built on smoke.

Today you can say much the same thing about Alabama.

According to a recent assessment of the money that goes into our General Fund to pay for prisons, health care, police protection, etc., cigarette taxes are the third-biggest source of income in this budget — $162 million. Add to that the $94.3 million the state expects to collect from the national tobacco settlement and you can see just how dependent we are on citizens who smoke (not to mention dip and chew).

We are not the only state addicted to tobacco revenue. Georgia is anticipating nearly $250 million. Florida, more than $450 million. And at the top is Michigan, with a budget built around $1.1 billion in tobacco money.

Which might explain why states like Alabama don’t do much to help smokers break the tobacco habit. If they stop smoking, we might have to do something to replace that money — like reform our tax code and tax property at a reasonable rate. We sure wouldn’t want to do something like that, would we? So Alabama spends only $682,000 on our anti-smoking campaign, a figure that is only 2.6 percent of what the Centers for Disease Control say we should be spending. Which ranks us 46th in the nation, a position in which we so often find ourselves.

Now give us credit; when conventional wisdom told us that raising the cost of cigarettes would cause smokers to cut back, we raised the state cigarette tax from 16.5 cents a pack to 42.5. But conventional wisdom turned out to be wrong. Before the tax was increased, about 25 percent of Alabamians smoked. Today, about 25 percent of Alabamians smoke. Now conventional wisdom (and at least one study) suggests that the price of cigarettes would have to go up to around $7 a pack to get people to quit.

And there is not much chance of Alabama doing that.

So we will continue as we are.

Today Alabama is rated as one of the most unhealthy states because of lifestyle choices that include smoking.

Yet as long as the state is so dependent on tobacco revenue, the state is not likely to launch an all-out campaign to get people to quit. And as long as powerful forces in the state do not want our government to find other sources of revenue, it is unlikely that this situation will change.

Isn’t it funny, or maybe sad, how so many positive changes in this state depend on positive changes in our Constitution and our tax code? And isn’t it funny, or maybe sad, that good people who are in favor of making Alabamians healthier, yet oppose tax and constitutional reform, fail to see this connection.