JIm Rex has announced a plan to raise the cigarette tax to the national average with the proceeds split between health care and education. 

The plan would:

- create and preserve jobs and put South Carolina on sound economic footing

- improve health and wellness

- keep the state’s federal tax contribution here at home, instead of going to help other states.

- and prevent 48,000 teachers from being furloughed for one full week.

Here are the details.

The plan would also trigger millions in federal matching funds for health care for kids. These are dollars that North Carolina, Georgia, and almost every state in the union are maximizing to help pay for health care for their children, but that South Carolina has left on the table. 

For every dollar raised by this tobacco tax that we spend on health care, we will get up to four dollars back from the federal government. By leveraging this pot of money, we will generate thousands of good-paying jobs in the health care sector – precisely the kind of jobs that we need to be focused on creating in our state. 

In addition to the economic benefits, the plan will also reduce the number of kids who start smoking, saving not only lives, but money over the long term in future health care costs associated with cancer and other tobacco-related illnesses.

By asking smokers to bear these costs instead of our school teachers, the plan simply does what other states all across the country have already done.  

This is an idea that is long overdue. South Carolina has been debating this course of action for years, but the political insiders in Columbia have been frozen into inaction by the big tobacco special interests, who have fought this idea. 

Sign the petition today and send a strong message to our state’s teachers, families, small businesses and communities that it's time to put them first – not the special interests.