Earlier this month, Jeremy Pelzer of Cleveland.com reported Ohio House Finance Committee Chair Brian Stewart has said the House will be removing Gov. DeWine’s proposed tobacco tax hike from the state budget.
When DeWine rolled out his child tax credit increase as the centerpiece of his final budget proposal, he assured lawmakers in the General Assembly that he would finance it with an increase to the state tobacco tax.
The tobacco tax is not necessarily tied to the child tax credit. The tax credit will be paid for partially through foregone revenue and partially through payments from the state General Revenue Fund. But the governor was trying to “show his work” that he was balancing the budget with this particular proposal.
Much breath has been lost and ink has been spilled by those critical of tobacco taxes as a financing mechanism. Meanwhile, the most powerful human impact of a tobacco tax took a backseat in the discussion: its ability to discourage smoking.
Smoking reigns as the number one preventable cause of death in the state of Ohio. Tobacco kills more than three times as many people as heroin in the state of Ohio every single year. This state has a special problem with it: Ohio has the 4th-highest smoking rate in the country, behind only West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The state tobacco tax is an evidence-based strategy to discourage its use and save lives.
A 2011 report by the American Cancer Society projected the impacts of tobacco tax increases across each of the 50 states. In this report, researchers estimated the impacts of a $1-per-pack increase in tobacco tax in each of the states. This would equate to about a $1.44 increase in 2025 after accounting for inflation, which makes this study very helpful for analyzing the potential impacts of DeWine’s proposed $1.50 increase.
According to the American Cancer Society study, a tobacco tax increase would cause 59,000 adult residents of Ohio to quit smoking and prevent 72,000 youth from beginning to smoke in the first place. They also project a tobacco tax would save 56,500 lives by causing people to quit and preventing smoking habits from developing.
In addition to saving lives, the study projected the tax would reduce health care spending. This includes savings of $8.4 million in lung cancer treatment, $20.3 million in heart attack and stroke treatment, $5.7 million in Medicaid spending, and $22.2 million in smoking-related pregnancy treatment savings in the first five years of the program.
Some anti-poverty advocates worry about the potential household financial harm from a cigarette tax. In particular, people who are current smokers and unlikely to quit, especially those who are low-income, will bear the largest burden of the increased tax. To support smoking cessation, policymakers can invest funds toward evidence-based programs like tobacco quitlines and anti-smoking media campaigns. By preventing people from taking up smoking, Ohio can mitigate the impacts of health problems and the higher economic burdens imposed by tobacco taxes.
The tobacco tax is a powerful tool the state of Ohio has to reduce smoking rates, reduce medical spending, and save lives. If the general assembly cuts this program, they will be voting for more smokers and more deaths. On the other hand, if this increase makes its way back to the governor’s desk in June, we are likely to see progress on one of Ohio’s largest public health fronts.