HELENA — Montana’s tax on a pack of cigarettes is $1.70 – right in the middle when compared to other states, and barely below the national average. The tobacco tax hasn’t gone up since 2005, but now, some people want to change that.
On Friday, advocates held a news conference in Helena, announcing that they’ll campaign for a $2 per pack increase in the tobacco tax during the Montana Legislature’s 2027 session.
“We had a number of good conversations with Republicans and Democrats at the end of the last Legislature,” said Denver Henderson, Montana government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. “It's interesting: the more that they learned about the issues and the problems, the more they were compelled to take action.”
(Watch the video to hear more on what advocates hope to see in 2027.)
At the event, they unveiled a new Montana poll, commissioned by the Montana Kids vs. Big Tobacco coalition and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, showing a majority of respondents favor raising the tax.
Among those on hand Friday were high school students from across Montana, in Helena to take part in the annual summit for the tobacco use prevention campaign ReACT.
Lily Simkins, a junior at Powell County High School in Deer Lodge, said more than half of the students in her church youth group have been caught with nicotine or marijuana products.
“I think raising a tax could save lives all around Montana,” she said.
Henderson said, in addition to the $2 increase on cigarettes, advocates want to see equivalent increases on other tobacco products – and they want to expand the tax to electronic cigarettes.
“It's important to understand that in 2005, when the cigarette tax was last raised, a lot of these products were not even on the market,” he said.
Natalee Bohrer, a senior from Powell County High School, said she hopes taxing vaping products may help discourage teens from using them.
“I support taxing e-cigarettes because I've seen the impact that it has on the youth in my town,” she said. “I have seen students as young as first grade using e-cigarettes in my schools.”
One reason why Montana’s tobacco tax hasn’t gone up since 2005 is that voters rejected a proposal to raise it in 2018. Initiative 185 would have increased the cigarette tax by $2 and added taxes on e-cigarettes and used the proceeds to pay for Montana’s Medicaid expansion program.
Henderson said a lot has changed in eight years.
“Just because you fail one time doesn't mean that you stop working,” he said. “There's a very clear problem with youth use of tobacco in Montana, there are very real needs financially for our state, and so this is a win-win.”
Henderson said, in addition to creating revenue for the state, a tax could help reduce the health care costs that go along with tobacco use.
“The fewer people that are smoking, the fewer youth that get hooked in the first place, the less expenses we have as a state down the road,” he said.
There was a bill in the Legislature last year to raise the cigarette tax by $1 per pack, as well as two proposals to put a tax on vaping products. All of them were voted down in a House budget committee.
