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President's Budget Includes 94-cent Cigarette Tax Increase

March 4, 2014

In the budget submitted to Congress, President Obama proposed increasing the federal tax on cigarettes by 94 cents per pack.

Increasing the tax on tobacco products is proven to be one of the most effective ways to prevent children from picking up that first cigarette. Scientific studies have shown that a 10% increase in the cost of a pack of cigarettes can decrease youth smoking by over 6%.

ACS CAN's own studies show that the proposed increase would prevent 493,000 children from premature death due to smoking-related illnesses and 1.3 million American children from becoming adult smokers. The increase would have tremendous benefits for adults as well, reducing the number of adult smokers by 2.6 million over 10 years.

Despite broad public support for an increase, we don't expect congressional action on the proposal at this time.