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Although the North Carolina General Assembly increased the state’s cigarette tax from 35 cents to 45 cents per pack in the last legislative session, it fell far short of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) recommendation of hiking it to the current national average, which was $1.34 as of November 2009.
In its Prevention for the Health of North Carolina Action Plan released October 2009, the NCIOM considered the increase of the tax as a priority recommendation and said “the cigarette tax should be regularly indexed to the national average whenever there is a difference of at least 10% between the national average cost of a pack of cigarettes (both product and taxes) and the North Carolina average cost of a pack of cigarettes.”
Such a move would yield great rewards for the state. “Increasing the cigarette tax to the national average would provide tremendous gain for the state in terms of reducing death and disability due to tobacco use,” the report stated.
Among the recommendations, was also that the state increase taxes on all other tobacco products to be comparable to the current national cigarette tax average, which would be 55% of the products wholesale price. It also said that all the revenues from the tax increases should be used for tobacco prevention activities.
The NCIOM is an independent, quasi-state agency that was chartered by the NC General Assembly in 1983 to provide balanced, nonpartisan information on issues of relevance to the health of North Carolina’s population.
According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, North Carolina’s cigarette tax of 45 cents was ranked seventh lowest in the country as of October 2009. South Carolina’s 17 cents tax was the lowest with Rhode Island’s $3.47 being the highest. Research has shown that when cigarette taxes are raised, the number of young people lighting up goes down. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommends price increases through excise taxes as an effective way to prevent smoking by adolescents and young adults, reduce cigarette smoking, and increase the number of smokers who quit.
The CDC also says that a 10% increase in the price of cigarettes yields about a 4% reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked by the general population and 4% - 7% decrease in smoking rates among youths.
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