Pennsylvania Cigarette Tax to Take Effect Today

Everyone knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. With links to cancer, every cigarette you smoke is chipping minutes off your life. Every smoker has heard it ad nauseum over the years: it’s on TV ads, magazine pages, and even on the packs of cigarettes themselves. Now, cigarette smoking in Pennsylvania just got a little worse for you, because it’s going to cost more than ever.

Cigarettes aren’t just bad for you, they are also bad for your wallet thanks to a higher state tax in Pennsylvania.

The state’s cigarette tax went up by $1 today. It used to be $1.60; now it’s $2.60. The tax will push the price of a single pack above $7, and it constitutes the highest tax increase since Pennsylvania first instituted a cigarette excise tax in 1935.

Why an extra cigarette tax? Well, to put it baldly, the state needs money. Badly. Governor Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled Legislature are attempting to address a long-term budget deficit that has harmed the state’s credit rating.

NBC 10 News interviewed several smokers for their reactions to the new tax. “Brent Johnson, a construction handyman and pack-a-day smoker from suburban Harrisburg,” said that he won’t give up the habit that currently costs him $6.84 a day and is about to go higher. Johnson says that, as a prior New York resident, he is used to paying $7 or $8 dollars a pack for cigarettes. Still, he said, he believes that it isn’t right to target smokers. He referred to the ill-fated casino bill, which would have put casinos in Pennsylvania airports and funneled money into the state budget that way. Johnson questioned why the casinos weren’t being used as a fundraiser, instead of “taking someone’s habit and… taking advantage of it.”

The new tax increase will make Pennsylvania’s cigarette tax the 10th-highest in the nation. The overall tax on cigarettes also includes a $2-per-pack tax that benefits state schools. That makes the overall Pennsylvania cigarette tax a whopping $4.60.