The recent decision to make increased taxes on tobacco products illegal has become a very controversial topic.  After the decision was made, many parties were unhappy with the results, and I am among them.

The taxes on tobacco should be raised because, according to Quit Smoking Support, cigarettes alone have 4,000 chemicals, and 43 of them are carcinogens, or cancer causing chemicals.

Did you know that 8% of teens smoke? And AAP says that 5.6 percent of teens use smokeless tobacco.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there was an estimated 41,731,233 youths aged ten to nineteen in the United States, thirteen percet of the total U.S. population, who smoke or are exposed to second-hand smoke at some point.  Every one of them is at risk of cancer.

If tobacco taxes were raised, then less teens would have access to the harmful substance. This would cause revenue to increase for our government, giving them more money to do things like fix our roads, the roads that you drive on and your family uses.

My aunt and her husband smoke about two packs of cigarettes a week, and yearly they spend about $5,000 dollars on cigarettes.  Think of the things they could have done with that money, but instead it went into the ashtray.

If we decide that raising taxes on tobacco is “Un-Constitutional,” couldn’t we say that about absolutely anything?  The lawsuit takes issue with how it was passed and that it was labeled a “fee” instead of a “tax.”  While a $1.50 fee on cigarettes would increase revenue, I refuse to believe, as many cigarette companies claim, that would its only purpose, therein making it unconstitutional.

For whatever reason you believe, be it current leadership, past leadership or our leadership in general, our country is in a rut. Increased revenue from a higher cigarette tax would help us as a country and lessen the use of tobacco products, so in my mind…  it’s a win-win.