Translations:ENDS Taxes/69/en

• Cigarette taxes are regressive. Poor New Yorkers spend close to a quarter of their income (23.6%) on tobacco.
• Only about half of the families that qualify are enrolled in SNAP, but when cigarette taxes go up, people sign up in droves, so much so that, after a tax hike, an eligible but unenrolled household is almost 10 times as likely to sign up for food stamps than to have a member quit smoking. (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp program, is a federal benefit program that helps low-income households buy food.)