Who pays more taxes for the right to pollute the air: smokers or motorists?

From the "duh" files, news came this week that cigarette sales are down since Arizona voters hiked cigarette taxes 82 cents a pack last fall. Some question whether we have become too dependent on cigarette taxes. In other words, we've now taxed cigarettes so much, that too few people are smoking to generate the tax revenue we expected from them.

Do you think we'll ever get into this situation with gasoline taxes, the point of diminishing returns? Today's Arizona Republic mentioned that asphalt costs have shot up 75% in the past four years, and cement costs have risen 30%, causing some previously planned road projects to be cancelled or postponed. Meanwhile, our state's gasoline tax of 18 cents per gallon, which is used to fund highways, has not been raised, even to keep up with inflation, in 17 years. So why not raise the gasoline tax a nickel or dime a gallon? Do we think the same thing would happen that we're seeing with cigarette taxes...that people would stop driving if we raised gasoline taxes? If so, then we'd raise more money for new highways while reducing the number of drivers using them, and that would solve our congestion problems right quick. Right now, only 10 states have lower gasoline taxes than Arizona, and even if we raised gasoline taxes a dime a gallon to 28 cents, we'd still be well below Washington state's 34 cents per gallon. But alas, it will never happen, because then all those folks in Bylthe, CA, would stop crossing the river to Quartzite to fill their tanks, and Arizona will never give up its tax on Californians! Maybe if there are any smokers left in Arizona, we can ask them to build us more highways?