896 million reasons why cigarette smoking will never be banned in Massachusetts

With cigarette excise taxes $2.51 per pack and $562 million taken in as tax revenue, plus $315 million from the tobacco settlement, you would figure that half of that money goes to smoking cessation programs, right?

Wrongo.  According to WBZ's David Wade, out of nearly $900 million, only one half of one percent - $4.5 million - is earmarked for programs that help people quit smoking.

The other $895.5 million heads right to the General Fund.  You buy a $7.50 pack of cigs in a poor section of Boston, you buy a firehouse for a well-to-do tony village in the Berkshires.  Your dirt-cheap $5.75 pack of below-generic cigs purchased in Springfield may show up as a perdiem for a representative in North Andover, a dedication for a library of a state senator in Taunton, or even a re-election campaign push for the governor.  Redistribution and super-easy cash at its best.

Put another way - if the state ever banned cigarettes, the tax revenues from cigarettes at both the state and federal level (which was raised to $1.01 in 2009) would mean billions of dollars lost per year.  Now we know why the state will never ban cigarettes, at least until the federal government determines that all cigarettes are a health hazard and must be pulled off the shelves immediately.  Once the Federal government is willing to give up their money habit, the state will be forced to follow suit.

Russet Morrow Breslau, head of Tobacco Free Mass, makes this astute judgement: ""You can't balance the budget on the backs of smokers[.]" 

Who are those smokers, who are shelling out an effective tax rate of 45-60% to the general fund?  The poor and middle class.