In Wednesday's column disparaging Maryland's life-saving 2007 tobacco tax increase ("Did cigarette tax increase do more harm than good?" March 17), Marc Kilmer neglects to mention that this increase, along with other policies such as Maryland's smoke free workplace law also encated in 2007, have combined to make Maryland's smoking rate the fourth lowest in the nation, saving thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been lost because of tobacco caused illness and death.
Like the tobacco companies and other critics of tobacco tax increases, Mr. Kilmer wrongly asserts that the drop in tobacco sales in Maryland after the tax went up was caused by people buying their tobacco in other states and that the tax did not bring in as much as was expected. In 2008, when tobacco taxes were increased in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, cigarette sales in those three states dropped by 108 million packs. At the same time, in the three neighboring states that did not raise their cigarette taxes, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, cigarette sales went up by only 37 million packs. Therefore, the vast majority of the net drop in cigarette sales in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, was from people smoking less.
