Our view: Legislature pushes limit on cigarette tax

May 10, 2008 08:14 am

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The Massachusetts Legislature seems to think cigarette smokers are a bottomless piggy bank. But there is a bottom, and with their latest raid on smokers, lawmakers could be reaching it.

The House and Senate have passed bills that would hike the cigarette tax by $1 per pack, putting it at $2.51, which is expected to bring in another $175 million.

Perhaps it will. The Senate bill would also eliminate state control of tobacco prices, which legislators believe would cushion the impact of the added tax. State Sen. Steven Baddour, D-Methuen, went so far as to say it would "negate" any price increase, and therefore protect merchants in communities that border New Hampshire.

That is a dubious claim — does Baddour know that cigarette manufacturers and merchants are prepared to cut their prices by $1 per pack to offset the tax?

And New Hampshire is not about to dilute its existing advantage anyway. The New Hampshire Legislature, at the urging of Gov. John Lynch, is considering raising its cigarette tax as well, but has put it on hold to see if the Massachusetts tax hike drives more smokers north.

But this is not just about the border towns. What is also likely is that the increase will put taxes at the point where a black market in cigarettes will become irresistibly attractive.

Massachusetts taxes will then be 40 to 50 percent of the retail price of a pack of cigarettes, second only to New York, where the state is about to raise its tax to $2.75 per pack. In New York City, which levies its own $1.50 tax on every pack, smokers there will be paying in the $9 range for a pack of legal cigarettes.

But "legal" is the key word. In the 1960s, the last time New York's cigarette taxes were at such a confiscatory level, the black market exploded — an estimated 25 percent of all the cigarettes consumed in New York were bootlegged, an operation that fueled the expansion of organized crime.

Do Massachusetts leaders want to risk that?

They browbeat smokers about quitting, yet they want them to continue their deadly addiction to feed a government that is even more addicted to spending. Those who are both demonized and seen as an easy source of money will likely have few pangs of conscience about buying their smokes on the black market.

This tax simply gives them one more reason for doing so.