Smokinglobby gets mentioned in an AP article:
By Tom Bell
Associated Press

Original Article: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/new_jersey/6248129.htm

TRENTON - New Jersey smokers are forced outside most buildings and into small sections in most restaurants.

Meanwhile, their place in the state budget keeps expanding.

Last year, New Jersey raised its tax on cigarettes by 70 cents a pack to help balance the budget. This year it raised the tax by 55 cents a pack, to bring in $190 million more.

That makes New Jersey's cigarette tax $2.05 a pack, second only to that paid by smokers in New York City.

Lawmakers searching for revenue find it difficult to resist turning up the heat on a habit toward which many people have become hostile. Siding with high-profile organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association also is an obvious winning move for politicians.

Smokers, on the other hand, are not considered a voting bloc. The tobacco industry and cigarette retailers do lobby to protect their interests, but typical smokers have not organized to protest the soaring cost of their habit, although they can vent their frustrations at www.smokinglobby.com.

Those are among the reasons that 21 states increased cigarette taxes last year, and 14 others proposed raises this year.

If it's any consolation, New Jersey officials are not yet planning to raise the tax again next year.

"The sentiment from legislators is that this is about it," said Micah Rasmussen, a spokesman for Gov. McGreevey.

Rasmussen said lawmakers also targeted cigarettes because of the high health-care costs that smoking is believed to generate. Figuring into the equation are efforts to keep teenagers from taking up the habit.

But officials do not deny that it is hard to resist the easy money that cigarette taxes offer.

"The revenue is definitely a consideration," Rasmussen said. "But if the state failed to collect enough revenue due to people quitting, that's a shortfall we'd be happy to deal with."

Dale Florio of Princeton Public Affairs, a New Jersey lobbyist for cigarette conglomerate Philip Morris, convenience stores and wholesale marketers, said there was no proof that higher taxes made smokers quit.

"The zealots like to think consumption goes down" when taxes rise, but the result has been a "fairly level" rate of cigarette sales, Florio said.

He said New Jersey's higher taxes would send smokers to bordering states or the Internet, where packs can be bought for less. Florio said that hurt business for convenience stores in New Jersey.

Jennifer Golisch, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris, said New Jersey also might see a rise in police costs as law enforcement dealt with the smuggling of cheaper cigarettes into the state.

Obviously opposed to the tax increase are the cigarette companies, which said New Jersey plugged holes in the budget by unfairly targeting the 21 percent of people in the state who smoke.

"We see that as tax profiling," said John Singleton, director of public affairs for R.J. Reynolds.

"When you do that, you are clearly picking on 21 percent of the population when the budget problem was statewide."

Singleton also said the tax hurt those in lower income brackets: His company's research indicates that median income for New Jersey smokers is about $44,000, compared with about $53,000 for nonsmokers.