Under Gov. Mike DeWine’s initial budget, a hike of taxes on cigarettes and e-cigarettes would have funded a child tax credit, but Ohio House GOP lawmakers rejected that idea, saying they wouldn’t vote to raise any taxes.
Cancer prevention advocates are pushing to at least restore the tobacco tax increase in House Bill 96 as the Senate considers the budget bill.
Jill McFarland is mom to three girls. When her youngest daughter, Elloise, was just nine months old, McFarland was diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s metastasized since 2015, but is stable right now, McFarland said.
McFarland lost her own mother to lung cancer just days before Mother’s Day in 2023.
“When she was admitted, she looked at me one day and said, ‘Is it crazy that I want a cigarette right now?’ That was really hard,” she said in an interview. “She couldn’t quit. When COVID hit, it even worsened, because she was just in her house, just smoking.”
McFarland and her oldest daughter, Isabella, said they believe higher taxes on tobacco would discourage more Ohioans from starting smoking—particularly minors, who might find it even more cost prohibitive. McFarland’s mom took on the habit in the 1960s, as a teenager.
The McFarlands and other advocates lobbied state lawmakers on the issue last Tuesday, arguing that just last month, the GOP-majority Indiana General Assembly hiked the tobacco tax by $2: from $0.99 to nearly $3.
“They said, we have too many holes in our budget, we have to fill it somehow, that’s why we’re increasing the tax. I mean, $2 is quite an increase. We’re only asking for $1.50 in Ohio,” said Leo Almeida, lobbyist for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
DeWine proposed raising the per cigarette pack rate from $1.60 to $3.10, a $1.50 increase, and raising the wholesale tax on other products from 17% to 42%, according to budget documents.
HB 96 is in the Senate, which is targeting a June 12 floor vote, according to Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland). It’s due to DeWine by June 30.
