Cigarette tax is about revenue, not public health

The early evidence, at least anecdotally, is that Alabama's tax hike on cigarettes isn't having much of a deterrent effect on smokers -- not even in "border" towns like Phenix City.

As reported by staff writer Kyle Nazario, the state cigarette tax increase didn't seem to be driving many smokers across the river to Columbus, although it was driving some of the conversation.

That probably shouldn't be surprising, either to merchants or to state officials. If hiking the price of a deck of smokes -- already in the $6 range for well-known name brands -- by not quite a quarter were to have a significant deterrent effect, that would certainly be a welcome bonus, and one that would ultimately save more than a few lives.

But make no mistake: This tax was about desperately needed revenue for the state, and it was a relatively minor concession Gov. Robert Bentley managed to get from a balky legislature.

Bentley, as was widely reported and debated, sought to raise some taxes, and to close special-interest exemptions and loopholes in others that have long been overdue for closing, to avoid devastating cuts in essential state services.

Most lawmakers opted instead to take an uncompromising no-tax stance, largely at the expense of the state's most vulnerable populations -- a stance which they will no doubt sell to voters as political "courage." The cigarette tax, along with the shifting around of some other money (including education funds), was the best Bentley could get for child welfare, mental health and other such political irrelevancies.

Kimble Forrister, executive director of Alabama Arise -- the closest thing you'll find to an actual lobby for the state's economic and political underdogs -- said it would take a cigarette tax of at least 55 cents to be both an effective deterrent and a significant economic benefit, but that's "a fight for another day."

Checkmate, dirtbag

If there were medals of valor and Purple Hearts for ex-soldiers, a 75-year-old Army vet and chess instructor in Illinois would be in line for both.

James Vernon was teaching chess to 16 children in a library near Peoria when a 19-year-old man -- who, it turns out, was already facing child porn charges -- ran into the room armed with two knives shouting, "I'm going to kill some people."

Vernon tried to calm the man down, backing him slowly out of the room and positioning himself between the attacker and the door, and then gave the children a signal to "get the heck out of there." The attacker then slashed Vernon, cutting two arteries and a tendon, but Vernon's Army training enabled him to hold the man until help arrived.

The vet told a local reporter that while he won the brief scuffle, "I felt like I lost the war."

Ask those kids' families who won.

This story was originally published October 19, 2015 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Cigarette tax is about revenue, not public health."