States walk a fine line on tobacco

The first post on the BP in '06... What an honor!!! :-)

From George Will:

The states' ability to continue treating the tobacco industry as a ``budgetary Alaska'' -- the last frontier for exploitation -- depends on brisk sales of cigarettes far into the future. So all 50 states, which in 2004 reaped $12.3 billion in cigarette taxes, have an incentive to carefully calibrate these taxes so as to maximize revenues. They want high taxes, but not high enough to cause large numbers of smokers to quit the habit that is so lucrative to states.

The state governments seem to be calibrating cleverly: The adult smoking rate has not fallen much recently. So we have here a rarity -- a government success story. Of sorts.