I don't think anyone is arguing that poor people have a harder time quitting smoking. Poorer people are just more likely to start smoking. Health care should be important enough that we all chip in to foot the bill. This is a regressive tax!!

Can you point to stats on that? The only stats I found indicated that beginning-to-smoke rates were similar despite economic status, but higher income people were more likely to quit—but it didn't explain why that was. (I imagine it's social pressure, not something physiological.)

It is not that lower income people are not as capable of quitting, it is that the circumstances that surround them make it more difficult. Quitting smoking is a life style change, but when your friends smoke, your co-workers smoke, and your local pub allows smoking, it can make it more difficult to quit. It seems to me that some lower income jobs allow for smoking more readily than more then the office type jobs. However, I voted yes on 50 because raising the cost is one of the most effective ways to get people to stop smoking, or at least not to start.

We're hovering pretty close to 'poor people are too stupid to take care of themselves' here, since it isn't any sort of physiological difference, and the economic cost of quitting doesn't seem determined by class lines.

Now, I'm not espousing that line above, but as anyone who's ever driven a taxi, worked at a bar or hospital can tell you, it sometimes seems like it. Also, you'd be amazed how many people act like those babies they can't afford were entirely unavoidable.

Shitty education? There would be the economic divide, I guess.

'tax on the poor'... this is the first time I've heard it put this way. The tax does seem to be placed on a particular group of people. Cigarettes are on their way out. Places where people can smoke are becoming limited and now the price of smoking will increase. (and wait until the Feds add their tax to the price.) So... when smokers can't afford to smoke any more, where will the revenue come from to continue funding children's health insurance? This selected and limited source of funding is not stable and seems to be only decreasing. The placement of this tax does not seem very logical in the long term.

Ever priced quit smoking aids like Nicorette gum and the like? Depending on how much you smoke - those could almost be more expensive.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with this theory, but...

Lottery is a tax on the poor. We don't see outrage from the same incensed group in this regard?

Amy,

The consensus from my colleagues in tobacco cessation research is that, as a whole, it is harder for lower income individuals to quit than those with higher incomes. It's not because of any difference in physiology or intellegence, rather it is has more to do with things like access to health insurance, class and workplace differentiations, cultural image and differences in coping resources for stress, etc.

Let's not forget that we're talking about an addiction -- rational economic, cost/benefit decisions don't always apply. Studies show that increased tobacco taxes do help prevent potential smokers from ever starting, but they are largely ineffective at getting current smokers to quit.

Sorry I don't have time to look for more specific data, but I will send you something if I can find it.

That this kind of tax hike is going to hit poor people hard is self-evident. So too that smokers are not responsible for the lack of affordable health care for children in Oregon. They are just an easy target for shifting the burden for health care which the taxpayers of Oregon have repudiated. You stand in judgment of them and take for granted that you're in the right, but you're just dumping on an unsympathetic minority.

How about the flip side. Rather than talking about quitting how about talking about those who will not quit.

Addicted smokers will buy their cigarettes before anything else. Before food, before kids clothes, before school supplies. They have to. They're addicted.

My fear is that the kids of low income families might be hardest hit by the reduction of household income caused by their tobacco-addicted parents having to pay more for their cigarettes. The same kids we are trying to help.

This data wouldn't fly in a statistics class, but I recently saw a chart in the Oregonian saying that 91% of smokers don't have a college degree, which means they're either in high school, in college, or never graduated from college. I'm fairly certain all three of those classes are poorer than people with college degrees, on average.

Say what you will about the matter of choice, but de facto, this tax will be disproportionately hitting the poor. Same goes with the lottery.

You have to imagine that something's seriously screwed up with our tax situation when we go to the poor for health care and education, yet major corporations pay jack squat for income taxes. Don't they benefit from an educated, healthy populace?

Dead poor people is a tax on the poor. People who see the great injustice in cigarette taxes and not in the fact that cigarette manufacturers have a special exemption to directly kill off half of all their consumers for fun and profit need to reassess their sense of perspective. Cigarette taxation is one of the most effective ways not only to get people to quit, but to prevent young people from ever starting.

Trash smoke. It's indisputable.

Labeling it a "tax" is just a way of insinuating that there is an overbearing government at play and is designed to create division. Having to support your partner with emphysema while working a minimum wage job is pretty expensive for the poor too. As I told somebody who was wavering over this vote because of the "blank check" hoopla, tax the tobacco companies for all they're worth. I don't care if the money is secretly going to fund research into tying better balloon animals.

Amy,

The "tax on the poor" argument is a proportion thing, since the tax isn't a percentage (say, like income taxes). For example, a rich dude and a poor dude may smoke the exact same amount, but the extra $.85 is gonna hit the poor dude harder simply because he makes much less money so that amount is a higher proportion of his overall money. It's the same argument used to say the state lottery is a tax on the poor... a ticket still costs $1, but it's a $1 irrelevant of purchaser's income, so proportionally, yes, it is most definitely a bigger hit on the poor.

The issue of smoking and playing the lottery being a matter of choice, rather than a mandatory tax, is a whole other (valid) debate. The above comment is just the rationale behind the "tax on a poor" argument.

Jon - that makes sense, yet I hadn't thought of it in those terms. Thanks for jumping in!