Legislation enacted this summer will raise the federal excise tax 15 cents between now and 2002. Big Tobacco is trying to strike a deal with the government. The proposed settlement could raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes 62 cents and lower teen smoking 18 percent over the next 10 years, according to estimates by Dr. Jeffrey Harris, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But the tobacco deal calls for the industry to lower teen smoking by 60 percent over the next 10 years. The direct expense of cigarettes isn't your only smoking cost.
Life insurance is yet another cost.
Cynics argue that he's not going to need all that money anyway. At any age, smokers have twice the death rate of people who don't smoke, said actuary William Carroll of the American Council of Life Insurance. I'm waiting for news, with my fingers crossed. Copyright 1997 Lexington Herald-Leader.