Wednesday the Senate Ways and Means Committee heard a proposal of mine to increase the cigarette tax by $1. As this bill continues to gain attention, I thought I would take a moment to offer a few thoughts as to why I’m bringing this legislation forward now.

I don’t look at this as a "revenue" or a "tax bill." I see it as a public health measure and an effort to reduce the public’s subsidy on smoking. It's hard to believe that at a time when we're cutting K-12 or higher education to the bone, that smoking is effectively being subsidized. The direct medical cost of one pack of cigarettes is $8.47. This does not include productivity costs, which drive the total societal cost of one pack of cigarettes to around $16. In 2004, the last year that data was available, smoking accounted for an estimated $1.95 billion in health care expenses in Washington. Consider these statistics in illustrating the health risk created by smoking regularly:

· Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for approximately 443,000 deaths, or one of every five deaths, in the United States each year. Of these deaths, 8,000 are in Washington.

· Tobacco kills more Americans than AIDS, drugs, homicides, fires and auto accidents combined.

· Smokers have more than twice the risk of heart attacks as nonsmokers.

· Smoking during pregnancy causes about 5-6 percent of prenatal deaths, 17-26 percent of low-weight births, and 7-10 percent of pre-term deliveries.

· Lung cancer kills more women now than breast cancer and female smokers are 13 times more likely than males to develop the disease.

Disincentives, like taxes, are the most effective ways to decrease smoking rates. For every 10 percent increase in price, the number of smokers drops by 4 percent.

When you’re talking about people who have been smoking a pack a day for more than a decade, simply providing a disincentive is not enough. Which is why part of the revenue raised from this tax will go towards re-opening our state quit-line.

The quit-line fell victim to budget cuts in recent years and was closed down entirely, leaving those seeking to quit with little help to do so. When the service was up and running, it was so successful that Washington saved $5 for each dollar invested into it. Today we are the only state in the entire nation without a quit-line to help smokers without health insurance kick the habit.

In this difficult economy, we should be leveraging our dollars where it counts the most. That means preventing smoking, not subsidizing it.

The text of SB 6166 can be read here.