1. The fact that smoking rates are highest among lower-income groups means that lower-income families and communities currently suffer the most from smoking and will benefit disproportionately from any effective new measures to reduce smoking, including increased state cigarette tax rates. While tobacco tax increases that raise cigarette prices prevent and reduce smoking among all income groups, they work most powerfully to prompt lower-income smokers to quit or cutback and to stop lower-income kids from ever starting. As a result, low-income families and communities will not be the victims of any cigarette tax increase but its biggest beneficiaries. (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), “Responses to Cigarette Prices By Race/Ethnicity, Income and Age Groups---United States 1976-1993, “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 47(29):605-609 (July 31, 1998); Chaloupka, F.J. & R. Pacula, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541 (April 1998).
2. Increases to state tobacco tax rates will not place any new financial burdens of any kind on the more than 75 percent of Arkansas adults who neither smoke cigarettes or buy them.
3. Any significant state tobacco tax increase would bring in millions of dollars per year in new government revenues, thereby reducing pressures for other, broader-based tax increases or even make broad bases tax cuts more likely.
4. The smoking declines caused by tobacco tax increases saves lives, reduces human suffering, promotes the public health and prevents more kids from becoming addicted to smoking or ultimately dying from it.
5. In poll after poll, Americans strongly support higher cigarette taxes in order to prevent and reduce youth smoking. (Market Strategies poll of registered voters (February 24-March 5, 1998) & Market Facts poll of the general public (September 19, 1997) both commissioned by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids)
6. With an excise cigarette tax rate of 59 cents per pack, Arkansas ranks 32^nd (1=highest).
7. During 2004, Arkansas sold 219.6 261.6 million cigarette packs [down from 262 million in 2000] for a tax revenue of $126.3 million. (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “State Cigarette Tax Rates: Date of Last Increase and Related Data”  www.tobaccofreekids.org, December 21, 2001). This is less than 1/2 of the state's annual cost for tobacco related Medicaid expenses alone.
8. Arkansas ranks 43^rd (1=highest) in pregnant smoking rank with a rate of 18.7%. This is the equivalent of 6,860 smoking-affected births each year. Smoking-affected pregnancy births cost Arkansas $7.8 million each year. (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “Pregnancy Related Benefits and Cost Savings From Raising Cigarette Taxes”  www.tobaccofreekids.org, December 21, 2001)
9. The tobacco companies oppose tobacco tax increases by arguing that raising cigarette prices would not reduce adult or youth smoking. But the companies’ internal documents, disclosed in the tobacco lawsuits, show that they know very well that raising tobacco prices is one of the most effective ways to prevent and reduce smoking, especially among kids.

ü   Philip Morris: “A high cigarette price, more than any other cigarette attribute, has the most dramatic impact on the share of the quitting population…price, not tar level, is the main driving force for quitting. (Philip Morris Executive Claude Schwab, “Cigarette Attributes and Quitting,” PM Document No. 2045447810, March 4, 1993, www.pmdocs.com)

ü   Loews/Lorillard Tobacco:  Significant increases in federal and state excise taxes on cigarettes…have, and are likely to continue to have, an adverse effect on cigarette sales. (Loews-parent corporation of the Lorillard cigarette company-10-K Report, March 31, 1999.)