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Charlotte Observer: Cigarettes more costly today in S.C.

July 01, 2010

Observer Staff and Wire Reports


Smokers have traveled across the state line into South Carolina for years to get cheaper cigarettes.

Today, the traffic flow reversed, into North Carolina.

South Carolina enacted a big cigarette tax increase today – the first hike for that tax in 33 years – that made a pack of smokes more expensive in the Palmetto State than in neighboring North Carolina and Georgia.

The tax increased from 7 cents to 57 cents a pack, which means South Carolina no longer has the lowest tax in the nation. Missouri, with a 17-cent-a-pack tax, now has that position.

South Carolina’s state excise tax compares to 37 cents in Georgia and 45 cents in North Carolina. The nation’s most expensive tax, $3.46, is in Rhode Island.

Convenience store employees in South Carolina reported brisk sales of cigarettes Wednesday, in advance of the tax hike. One store owner, Kenny Patel, told the Associated Press that the sales boom at his store off Interstate 95 in Hardeeville will be short-lived.

“They come from Georgia and all the way from Florida,” Patel told the AP. “It (the increase) is going to affect us big-time. In one day, that’s it. Then we’ll get nothing.”

“Those folks who passed the bill, they don’t have a business, so I don’t think they understand.”

State legislators managed to pass the bill earlier this year with enough votes to override a threatened veto by Gov. Mark Sanford. Supporters of the increase said it will prevent young people from starting to smoke and eventually lower health care costs.

“Those kids will grow up to be adults who never smoke,” Kelly Davis, coordinator of the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative, told the AP.

The tax is expected to produce $125 million in the next 12 months. State legislators are setting aside most of that money to pay for growing Medicaid costs, but $5 million is earmarked for the Medical University of South Carolina, for cancer research; and another $5 will go to smoking prevention programs.

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