Jackson Free Press

g forward a bill seeking to raise the cigarette tax.

"She didn't do it this week, but Amy Tuck will certainly be dropping that bill on the Senate floor next week," Tuck's Communications Director Joseph Ammerman said.

Last January, Tuck floored the Legislature and incensed Gov. Haley Barbour by supporting a bill increasing Mississippi's 18-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes—the lowest in the nation for a state that doesn't grow tobacco—to $1, with a two-part incremental jump.

The move surprised many political pundits who had classified Tuck among the Republicans snapped securely into the governor's back pocket.

Tuck said she championed SB 2310, not just because it upped the cost of tobacco but also decreased the price of groceries by eliminating the state's regressive 7-percent grocery tax on groceries in eight years. The state is one of only three states in the nation that applies full sales taxes to groceries with no offsetting relief for lower income families.

Barbour, a former tobacco lobbyist, claimed the bill would bankrupt small-town coffers filled through the grocery tax.

The Municipal League of Cities—an earlier critic of the bill—worked with the Senate last year to make changes in the bill, sending replacement revenue to accounts dependent upon the grocery tax, and eventually came away happy with the bill.

"The original bill probably would have taken a big hit out of municipalities," claimed Ward 1 Councilman Ben Allen, who sits on the league. "I think the cigarette tax should be increased and the grocery tax should be cut, but the bill in its original form could have given big major cities like Jackson a huge hicky. But then they were discussing putting together a pool to offset the cities' losing money, and I believe we were happy with (the bill changes)."

The Senate bill this year is almost identical to the 2006 bill, according to American Cancer Society Government Relations Director Kimberly Hughes, who endorses the bill.

"We've been pushing for several years for a $1 increase on the tax, and we're more than happy to work with legislators on adapting it," Hughes said.

Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Tommy Robertson, R-Moss Point, will not handle the bill, despite expectations. Advocates of the bill claim Robertson was not willing to take the bill into his committee, with Barbour's eyes upon him, but Hughes could not confirm the rumor. "All I know is that he did handle the bill last year, but he's not handling the bill this year. That's all I know," Hughes said.

Robertson did not return calls for comment.

Advocates say Sen. Alan Nunnelee, R-Tupelo, will likely be considering the bill in the Public Health & Welfare Committee, which he chairs. He did not return calls.

While the Senate waits for Tuck to drop the bill, several versions of the cigarette tax are already haunting the House.

One bill, which mirrors the 2006 Senate bill, pairs the tax with a grocery cut, while another merely imposes the tax increase as an additional revenue generator for Medicaid. The consensus among House members is that the House is going to wait for the Senate to take the lead on the bill, since the Senate is where the bill is most likely to be contested.

The state could do with the tax for health reasons, according to a report by the John C. Stennis Institute of Government. Mississippi has the 8th highest percentage of adult smokers in the U.S., with 23.6 percent of the population over 18 smoking, according to the report—and the consequences are clear. The state has the fourth highest smoking-attributable death rate in the U.S., with nearly 5,000 smoking-related deaths every year. Mississippi also has a higher lung and bronchus cancer death rate than the U.S. average—with black men suffering disproportionately higher death rates than other groups.

The report added that Mississippi ran up $662 million in smoking-attributable health-care costs in 2004, with Medicaid bearing the cost of $243 million of that. A $1 cigarette tax could generate an additional $184 million in tobacco tax revenues, plus an additional $12.9 million in sales taxes, the Stennis report said.

The tax is popular among Mississippians, according to poll results, and Hughes hopes that the election year will temp senators that shirked poll results during the last session will have a more sensitive ear this time.

"A majority of the Mississippians want this, and we're hoping that this year we'll make it happen," Hughes said.