JACKSON - If your legislators had the guts to say "no" to the tobacco company lobbyists shoving money in their pockets and to the dwindling 25 percent minority of Mississippians who use tobacco products, your local schools might have more money next year.
More money might be available to provide public health care for patients with cancers not self-inflicted from years of smoking. More roads might get resurfaced.
College tuitions might not again increase in 2004. And perhaps members of the 2004 Legislature - a group that will pass a tax increase next year as sure as the sun rises in the east tomorrow - won't be tempted to do what they always do when times are tough.
What's that? Raise the general sales tax and continue to tax the food purchased by the people of the poorest state in the union. That includes the 1.1 million low-income Mississippians - about 550,000 of whom are literally the poorest people in America.
But rather than rein in the regressive general sales tax, the Legislature typically goes back to that well in times of financial trouble in fear of offending a few lobbyists and special interests. That's what happened in 1992, when the Legislature raised the general sales tax from 6 cents to the present 7 cents - an increase of 16.6 percent.
If the Legislature goes that route again next year to alleviate the current budget crunch, another penny of general sales tax would represent a 14.3 percent increase that all Mississippi consumers have to pay.
But there's another way.
State Rep. Jay Eads, D-Oxford, has offered a plan to provide some budget relief that makes dollars and sense for Mississippi. And it's a voluntary tax.
As he did last year, Eads wants to raise the tax on tobacco products. Specifically, Eads has proposed HB 607, styled as Increase in Tobacco Products Excise.
The bill would raise the tax on cigarettes from the present 18 cents a pack (42nd lowest in the nation) to 68 cents a pack and increase the tax on other tobacco products (cigars, chewing tobacco, snuff and roll-your-own) from the present 15 percent to 20 percent.
Eads projects that his tobacco tax hike would generate an additional $128.5 million over the $55.4 million in tobacco taxes already collected.
Voluntary tax? Sure. If you don't want to pay it, don't smoke, chew or dip. But if you've got 'em and want to smoke 'em, knock yourself out. Pay your taxes.
Hard-core smokers won't bat an eye at paying another 50 cents a pack for cigarettes. How do I know? I was one for about 20 years.
Tobacco is an addiction. I kicked my tobacco addiction six years ago, but I still fight the urge every day.
Society bears the cost of tobacco addiction through the expenditure of public dollars for health care for smoking-related illnesses. Therefore, society should not apologize for exacting a high price for indulging in the behavior that generates those costs.
The tobacco industry whines that increased tobacco taxes might actually cut tobacco consumption and reduce some of the tobacco excise taxes presently collected.
Great! What a wonderful problem that would be!
Former Gov. Kirk Fordice said a decade ago that the legislators wouldn't keep their mitts off the so-called tobacco trust fund. Boy, was he right.
So let's leave the tobacco trust fund alone. Use it to provide health care in the future for today's smokers as the Legislature promised when it was established.
A tax on smokes makes more sense for Mississippians than a tax on milk, bread and meat. Gotta eat. Don't gotta smoke.
