COLUMBIA, S.C. -- There is talk in Columbia, S.C., about raising the state's cigarette tax. Some want to raise it to have additional funds to put towards rising health care costs, while Governor Mark Sanford has proposed raising it 30 cents per pack to lower income taxes. But according to WCBD-TV, State Representative Rex Rice (R) has a different idea. He has proposed a bill in the State House that would not raise the cigarette tax, but instead would add a deposit of 60 cents to each pack.
The money would go into a separate account. Palmetto Pride, the [image-nocss] Governor's Council on Beautification & Litter, would set up and run refund sites around the state, the report said.
Smokers would get their deposits back by bringing their receipt, the empty pack and 20 cigarette butts to those refund sites, added the report.
Randy Lawson, a smoker from Columbia, said he wouldn't bother trying to get his deposits back if the bill became law. "There's no way I'm going to hold on to cigarette butts and have them stinking up the car or anything. It's free money for the state, basically," he told the news outlet.
Fellow smoker Ben Salley of Lexington agrees. "I think it has some merits," he said of the idea. "I believe that they're not going to have many people go to the trouble of returning those packages. It'll cost more money than it's worth."
All unclaimed deposits would go toward the state's health care costs, said the report.
It's clear that cigarette trash is a major problem in the state and elsewhere, WCBD said, citing Keep America Beautiful, which claimed that cigarettes are the nation's No. 1 trash problem. During the 2003 national cleanup, more than 34% of all the litter picked up was either cigarette butts or filters, the group said.
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