Mayor Makes Case for Higher Cigarette Taxes
Attributing a dramatic drop in teenage smoking to higher taxes on cigarettes, Mayor Bloomberg is urging state lawmakers to raise them even further to keep up with inflation.
Spencer Platt / Getty
With placards from anti-smoking campaigns in the background, Mayor Bloomberg leaves the podium yesterday after a news conference at City Hall addressing a new anti-cigarette initiative.
"The single most effective way to get people to smoke less that's available to us is raising taxes," Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday at a press conference. "I hope they would let us do the same thing again." He added that higher cigarette prices discourage teenagers from smoking disproportionately more than adults.
Mr. Bloomberg said that cigarette taxes, which were raised in his first term to $1.50 from $.08 a pack, are not a means to boost tax revenue or reduce medical costs, but to improve the overall health of city residents.
"You don't make the case against smoking based on economics," he said, "you base it on letting people live longer."
In addition to cigarette taxes, the mayor said the decline in smoking was aided by a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars and awareness campaigns featuring subway and TV ads.
According to new figures from a poll of public school students across the city by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teenage smoking has plummeted under the current administration.
The survey shows that teenage smoking has declined by more than half in recent years — to 8.5% of the population in 2007 from 17.6% in 2001.
Nationally, the teenage smoking rate is declining at a slower place and remains much higher overall, at 23%. Smokers are defined as those who smoked once or more in the past 30 days.
Among the individual boroughs, the Bronx boasted the lowest teenage smoking rate, at 6.2%, while Staten Island had the highest, with 14.7% of the age group saying they smoked. Queens had a 10.5% teenage smoking rate, Brooklyn 7.9%, and Manhattan 6.9%.
Each borough saw a decline in teenage smoking since 2005, when the last survey was administered.
"At the very least, this reduction in teen smoking will prevent about 8,000 premature deaths in the years to come,"Mr. Bloomberg said.
"Clearly teens are getting the message: There's nothing cool about smelling like an ashtray, being hooked on nicotine, or dying young," he said.
