Abstract:
Tobacco taxation was a hotly contested topic in the late twentieth and early
twenty-first century America. Tobacco taxes in this period, from 1985 to 2009, were
increasingly aimed at shaping behavior, expressly stating deterrence as an objective. This
paper tracks these taxes overtly aimed at lowering consumption – occurring first at the
state level and then at the federal level – and the debates these taxes sparked. Proponents
of a high “sin tax” on cigarettes favored its use as a health policy measure, promoting the
public health and helping to shield people from the exploitation of tobacco companies.
Opponents, conversely, decried such tax measures on economic grounds as a coercive tax
policy. Thus the debate over using taxation as a tool to interfere with individual's market
choices reveals decidedly different views of the role of government – either taking a
positive position to ensure the people's welfare, or a negative position, avoiding
interference with the individual. This implies the existence of significant ideological
divisions in American society and politics at the turn of the twenty-first century, but also
the triumph by 2009 of the notion that “the people's welfare is the supreme law.”
