When she started smoking in the 1970s, cigarettes cost about 50 cents a pack.
But after the federal tax jumped from 39 cents to $1.01 on April 1, Deb Nachtigal decided $5.30 a pack was just too much for her Old Golds.
So she set up a plan, asked her doctor for a nicotine patch and after 38 years of smoking two packs a day, she quit.
“It’s not that I really wanted to, I just decided it was time,” said the controller for Collins Outdoor Advertising.
She now uses her cigarette money for massage therapy. And she says she doesn’t miss smoking.
A new state tax that took effect Tuesday will bump up the price of smokes by 75 cents a pack, giving Wisconsin the fifth-highest cigarette tax in the nation.
Anti-smoking advocates hope the hike will spur others to quit.
The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids says every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces overall consumption by 3 percent to 5 percent and lowers the number of children who smoke by as much as 7 percent, an argument supported by data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Tobacco Control Resource Center for Wisconsin estimates the tax will prompt about 17,000 smokers to quit and keep 33,000 kids from starting.
State health officials estimate nearly one out of five – about 1 million state residents – are smokers.
Tax increases typically don’t generate a big surge in calls to the state’s Quit Line, said Moira Harrington, spokeswoman for the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, which runs the free counseling service for the state.
The line was flooded with calls after the state bumped its tax by $1 a pack in January 2008, but Harrington said that tax coincided with the new year – the “prime time” for people to quit – and the first time the Quit Line offered free medications. The April 1 federal tax increase generated only a “blip” in calls, she said.
Harrington said price increases have the greatest effect on kids, who tend not to use the Quit Line.
Maureen Busalacchi, executive director of SmokeFree Wisconsin, hopes the new tax increase will be an incentive for people who tried quitting before.
“The more you quit, the better you get at it,” she said. “It’s very difficult.”
source: http://www.lacrossetribune.com
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