Did anyone think stuff like this wouldn’t happen?

Over the last four years, Missouri has recieved over one billion dollars from what’s called the MSA, or master settlement agreement. That’s money from the big tobacco companies, paid out to settle claims from the states for injuries caused by tobacco use.

…but in Missouri, not one dime of the tobacco money has been spent on its intended purpose.

[...]

That’s because the sale of cigarettes put more than one billion dollars into the Missouri treasury since 2002, with billions more to be paid out over the next 20 years.

States are addicted to smokers. Or at least the excise taxes they pay. That’s the fraud of the sin tax (well, in addition to the fact that modifying personal behavior simply isn’t a legitimate act of governance). Eventually, the state develops an interest perpetuating the sin, not eliminating it, because it grows too dependent on the sin tax revenue.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2005 at 6:13 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.