In a Sept. 17 special election, Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 20, which increases the state’s cigarette tax by nearly 50 percent, from 68 cents to $1.28 per pack.
According to a recent survey by the University Health Education program, 22 percent of University students say they use tobacco.
English major Martha Grover said she would most likely quit smoking with the increased cigarette tax. “Cigarettes aren’t a necessity,” she said, “they’re a luxury, but there are other luxuries which could be taxed!”
Grover said she has a problem with the state lottery as well as cigarette taxes, which she sees as tantamount to encouraging people’s addictions. It’s unfair for the government to target one group, she said, especially when “a lot of smokers are poor, and they won’t quit.”
Bruce Blonigen, an associate professor in the department of Economics, said the problem facing the state government is a need for stable tax bases. The cigarette tax, Blonigen said, allows legislators to get a good sense of future revenue based on current demand.
Legislators are “hanging their hat on the fact that cigarettes are fairly price insensitive,” he said.
Architecture major Asmund Tweto is not a smoker, but he said the tax increase is “a little exorbitant.”
Tweto said he would support the tax if he knew the revenue was going to health care.
“I’m completely pro-tax,” he said, “as long as the taxes are fair and graduated.”
Measure 20 “requires revenues raised by the cigarette tax increase to be spent primarily on the Oregon Health Plan,” but also provides legislators with the option to use the revenue to fund “other programs.”
Philosophy and political science major Brynn Hildebrand is not troubled by the ambiguity.
“Not all the money from the gas tax goes to fix the roads,” Hildebrand said, “and no one who drives seems to care about that, so why should all the money from the cigarette tax go to the health plan?”
— Zena Chew for the Emerald