BRUNSWICK

A bill sponsored by Rep. Joyce “Jay” McCreight, D-Harpswell, would increase taxes on cigarettes by $1.00 per pack in an effort to reduce tobacco consumption.

McCreight’s bill is born out of a genuine desire to reduce the amount of tobacco-related diseases. Though the bill originally called for a $1.50 increase, the Taxation Committee compromised in a divided report for a $1.00 hike instead.

“To reduce the toll taken on the health of Mainers, on health care costs, and on our state budget, we need to both prevent youth from becoming tobacco users and support and incentivize current tobacco users of any age to quit,” said McCreight in testimony in May.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 19.5 percent of adults in Maine smoked a cigarette in the last year, and an average of 2,400 adults die from tobacco-related illnesses every year. In 2009, smoking cost $811 million in health care costs. Reducing tobacco use can have a direct effect on health care costs.

Maine Health, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society all stand behind the bill as an effort to reduce smoking-related illness and the accompanying health care costs. The state hasn’t increased the cigarette tax since 2005, when it doubled.

Additionally, McCreight argues that her bill will disincentive youth tobacco use. As of 2015, 11.2 percent of Maine high schoolers reported that they currently use cigarettes.

“The tobacco industry knows that in order to continue to make money, it needs to find replacement tobacco users,” she said. “Since almost 90 percent of adult tobacco users started using tobacco before the age of 18, the industry knows that the place to find those replacements is among young people. For every three kids who are prevented from smoking as a result of a higher tax on cigarettes, there is one less smoking-related death in the future.”

Other efforts to reduce youth tobacco use have taken place at the municipal level. Last year, Portland increased the minimum age to purchase tobacco to 21 in an effort to decrease access to tobacco products for high school students.

Not everyone is on board, however.

Convenience store owners, who make a lot of revenue off of cigarette and other tobacco product sales, are diametrically opposed to the legislation.

As president of the Brunswickbased Maine Energy Marketers Association, Jamie Py represents many of those convenience stores which also sell fuel, and he has a different understanding of how

increasing the tax will play out.

“With tobacco prices going up, businesses on this side of the border with New Hampshire will be put at a price differential with those in New Hampshire,” said Py.

“When we had the last increase — which was quite a while ago — we were about $1.50 a pack more than New Hampshire and that created an onslaught of people leaving the state to go to New Hampshire to buy cigarettes by the carton,” he added. “So you lose a lot of money.”

While Py admits that the effect will be felt less in the Midcoast area than those regions directly bordering and competing with New Hampshire, it still could have a negative effect. Higher taxes can create an incentive for cigarette smuggling.

In 2010, a man in Alfred was arrested for selling bootleg cigarettes out of the trunk of his car, which he had imported from Ukraine by the carton. He was convicted in 2013. Some research has shown that higher taxes lead to increased cigarette smuggling.

New Hampshire’s current sales tax for cigarettes is $1.78 per pack, just 22 cents less than Maine’s.

“I don’t know that that’s happening here — the bootlegging part,” said Py. “But it could if your excise taxes start to get so divergent from the rest of the states near you.”

Whether or not this bill moves forward in the current legislative session, which is winding to a close, similar legislation will certainly return in one form or another in the 129th, or 130th, Legislature.

• ACCORDING to the Center for Disease Control, 19.5 percent of adults in Maine smoked a cigarette in the last year, and an average of 2,400 adults die from tobacco-related illnesses every year.

• IN 2009, smoking cost $811 million in health care costs.

• MAINE HASN’T increased the cigarette tax since 2005, when it doubled.

nstrout@timesrecord.com