JUNEAU EMPIRE
To tax or not to tax — that is the question during these difficult economic times.
Voters will be asked in the Oct. 6 municipal election to consider raising taxes on tobacco to go toward health and social service costs. Opponents argue the proposition is just another “sin tax” being placed on the backs of a select group, while proponents feel an increased cost of cigarettes means less young people will begin smoking and curb future health costs associated with tobacco.
The Assembly voted to put a proposition on the general election ballot to raise city taxes on cigarettes from 30 cents a pack to $1, and taxes on all other tobacco products from 12 percent to 45 percent.
The National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence-Juneau asked the Assembly in July to raise city taxes on cigarettes and tobacco to be closer in line with the rest of the state. Anchorage charges $1.30 per pack for cigarettes, and Sitka, Barrow and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough each charge $1.
The present city tax rate brought in $517,800 for Juneau in 2008. The new tax rate is expected to bring the total revenue to about $1.7 million a year if approved.
At $3.01 per pack, Alaskans pay among the highest taxes on cigarettes. The tax is higher in five states and equal to Alaska’s tax in seven others. The highest tax is in New York, at $3.76 per pack.
“The more expensive cigarettes are, the fewer youth start and it delays the age at which youth start,” has said Wendy Hamilton, tobacco program coordinator for NCADD-Juneau. “Studies have shown across the nation that there is a certain reduction in youth initiation based on how much you go up in your prices. That’s our main motivation.”
Some 90 percent of people who end up smoking as adults start in their teens, NCADD-Juneau Executive Director Matt Felix has said.
Initial ballot language for the proposition earmarked money for the Rainforest Recovery Center, but that was changed when elected officials argued that funding an alcohol treatment center with tobacco money was not appropriate. The Assembly decided in favor of more ambiguous language on where the money would be spent, deciding it should go toward “health and social service needs related to substance abuse and tobacco use, prevention and cessation.”
This push follows a 2003 ballot initiative when voters approved raising tobacco taxes to their current rates in a roughly 2-1 ratio. The tax went from 6 percent per pack of cigarettes to a flat 30-cent per pack tax, an average increase of about 15 cents per pack. Taxes on all other tobacco products from 6 percent to 12 percent.