The Senate budget includes a 40 cent tax, per pack, increase on cigarettes. But wholesalers say the proposed 5.5 percent added to the tax on other tobacco products will hurt them a lot more. Statehouse reporter Jo Ingles explains.
Chewing tobacco, cigars and loose tobacco are examples of what is known as other tobacco products in the wholesale tobacco world.
Beth Wymer with the Ohio Wholesale Marketers Association says the Ohio Senate's plan to raise the tax on those products would mean Ohio wholesalers pay a total of 22 ½ % tax, far more than what surrounding states pay.
And in Pennsylvania, Wymer says wholesalers don't pay any tax.
"There are traffickers bringing that product into this state and selling it to retailers. And retailers are co-mingling it with tax paid product. All you are doing is giving them another 5 ½% price advantage over the tax paying wholesalers," Wymer says.
Wymer says more boots on the ground enforcement could bring in as much money for the state as the proposed tax increase.