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In the war on drugs, a tax plan that makes sense
04.04.07|Newsday Online

'Marlboro," Tom Suozzi was saying yesterday. "Red."

The Nassau County executive was never a heavy smoker. "I'd smoke when I'd go out drinking with my buddies," he said. "Back then, nobody really talked about how dangerous it was."

For Suozzi, as for many smokers, the end didn't come all at once.

"I started seeing reports about the health issues in the newspaper and on TV," Suozzi said. "But I didn't stop until my daughter was coming home from school saying 'It's so horrible to smoke.'"

At 44, the county exec is more of a health nut than a physical self-abuser. He finds time for the gym. He ran a half-marathon not long ago, without a single cigarette break. And yesterday, he joined officials from Suffolk and six counties north of New York City, seeking authority from Albany to impose a $2-a-pack county cigarette tax.

It would make cigarettes as expensive in the suburbs as they are in the city, often $7 a pack or more.

The idea was originally floated by Judy Jacobs, presiding officer of the Nassau Legislature. Like Suozzi, she has her eye on health - but also the $140-million budget gap the county is facing next year and the $25 million to $30 million a county cigarette tax hike could generate every year.

That's what politicians call "win-win." That's what smokers call "a lot of money for a pack of cigarettes."

But a question lingers:

Will higher prices really push smokers to stop? Will $7 packs persuade kids not to start? Or is the lure of smoking and grip of addiction so all-powerful, the customers will pay whatever it costs?

Most of the research says that higher prices have the most impact on teenagers. They have less money in their pockets, even in the affluent 'burbs. At the same time, tax opponents warn about a rise in tax cheating, counterfeiting and illicit sales from Indian reservations, should higher taxes come in.

Only one thing is certain: This debate will never be settled on the facts. Addiction issues almost never are, and that certainly applies to the new suburban cigarette-tax debate.

Why is tobacco legal and marijuana not? Why is alcohol taxed, while cocaine and heroin are just available? Is it because some of these substances are more dangerous than others?

Of course not. We've never had a War on Drugs in America. We've always had a War on Some Drugs. And the teams were never chosen rationally.

The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published a fascinating study last month.

Researchers from Oxford and Bristol universities set a straightforward challenge for themselves: Make a science-based assessment of the harm caused by various drugs, legal and illegal.

The researchers relied on three scales: the physical harm to the user, the drug's addictiveness, and its impact on the user's family and community.

Their data are hard to argue with: Alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than marijuana or ecstasy. Heroin and cocaine topped the list as most harmful. But there was hardly any connection at all, the scientists pointed out, between the harm a drug does and how the law has chosen to treat it.

Otherwise, pot would be legal. Tobacco and alcohol would not.

No one in the New York area yesterday was calling to make cigarettes illegal, even if they have now been banned from offices, restaurants, sports arenas and bars. (Suozzi did mention adding public parks to the no-smoking list.)

No one likes to pay more, even in a sin tax.

But if an extra $2 a pack will make some adults smoke less and persuade a few kids not to start, at least the change is connected to some kind of reality.

In this war, at this time, with these drugs, that's actually saying something

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