I have no problem with an increased cigarette tax. I do have a problem using the tax to fund general education. We are trying to teach kids to not smoke but smokers are going to pay for kids to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Doesn't sound right to me. I would prefer they use the money for healthcare and smoking cessation.

Wow...I think this is the first time I've ever disagreed with Bizgirl.

The short version is Tax the bad, help the good. This would have the effect of being an, albeit small, anti-incentive toward smoking.

We are so short on our funding of public education that I'll take it wherever we can find it.

Whitescreek,
The issues is that you're using money dependent on a form of consumption you want to go down, in order to fund a series of costs that are extremely likely to go up (whether or not that's actually effective).

This may be naive, but what happened to all the lottery money that was supposed to save our schools and educate the children. Wasn't that pushed through using the same arguements?

I don't get the connection between cigarette taxes and education, either.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

Section 5.

The Legislature shall have no power to authorize lotteries for any purpose, and shall pass laws to prohibit the sale of lottery tickets in this state, except that the legislature may authorize a state lottery if the net proceeds of the lottery's revenues are allocated to provide financial assistance to citizens of this state to enable such citizens to attend post-secondary educational institutions located within this state. The excess after such allocations from such net proceeds from the lottery would be appropriated to:

(1) Capital outlay projects for K-12 educational facilities; and
(2) Early learning programs and after school programs.

Such appropriation of funds to support improvements and enhancements for educational programs and purposes and such net proceeds shall be used to supplement, not supplant, non-lottery educational resources for education programs and purposes.

. . . other than smoking cessation programs (which I betcha do not work).

Oh yeah, they do work, you betcha. I had a guy in my crew at Y-12 several years ago - I won't say he worked for me because that would be a gross exaggeration. He took advantage of the plant's smoking cessation classes (during working hours with full pay) a total of four times. Each time he quit for at least six months, signing up for the class again every time he was transferred to a different department.

The Hill Online

"Four years of season football tickets."

Oh, yeah, I forgot! I don't know how it is in New Jersey, but here in Tennessee that is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about an education, FOOTBALL!.

I will point out that these restrictions have an actual valid reason behind them. If you know anything about what happened in states like Florida that dedicated lottery funds to education more broadly, it was a disaster. What they did was cut almost all of the general fund support of education and relied totally on lottery funds. But lottery funds are even more variable than the sales tax. They would go from one year with plenty of money, to not being able to buy textbooks the next. Lotteries are extremely susceptible to the business cycle.

I'll also point out that this is exactly the reason why a cigarette tax is a bad idea for any kind of recurring expense that isn't related to smoker's health or converting tobacco farms.