AUGUSTA – A coalition of health groups Monday said Gov. John Baldacci’s proposed $1-per-pack increase in Maine’s cigarette tax is too low and called for a $1.50 increase, which would give Maine far and away the largest state cigarette tax in the country.

The coalition said the $1.50 increase over Maine’s current $2-per-pack tax would help to achieve its goals of reducing Maine’s smoking rate even further and saving millions of dollars in health care costs.

“I welcome the coalition saying we could go to a buck and a half,” Baldacci said in response to the coalition’s proposal.

The Maine Coalition on Smoking or Health, which includes more than 50 organizations, said the $1.50 tax increase on top of the $2 already charged would lower the number of packs sold in Maine by nearly 22 million per year as 9,200 adults quit and 2,400 adult smoking-related deaths are avoided.

The coalition said the figures for youths are even more telling: It estimates that an 18 percent decline in the youth smoking rate resulting from a $1.50 increase would avoid 4,900 future smoking-related deaths because of the thousands who find the habit too expensive to take up.

“Maine needs to raise the tax by $1.50 as soon as possible,” said coalition director Becky Smith.

Even the $1 per pack increase sought by the governor would give Maine the nation’s highest cigarette tax. The $1 increase was already opposed by legislative Republicans, and the $1.50 “would trigger a black market the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” warned Jay Finegan, communications director for the House GOP caucus.

He said cooperatives in which people pool money to buy bulk quantities in other states are already appearing.

“It is a very regressive tax, especially when people are being stressed to pay for heating oil,” Finegan said.

The top Democrat in the House, Speaker Glenn Cummings of Portland, who in January dismissed a $1 increase as a “very unlikely political reality,” said Monday that there is support among Democratic lawmakers for an increase in the cigarette tax.

“We just held public hearings on the significant cuts we are already making in health care and mental health services for our seniors and families, and the impact is tremendous,” Cummings said. “The conversation now is really in the hands of the lawmakers who are saying they are unwilling to support the cigarette tax increase. They need to put forward an alternative in order to close this budget.”

Baldacci submitted his proposed $1 cigarette tax as part of his $6.4 billion two-year budget proposal. The $1 tax would raise about $66 million per year, while the $1.50 tax would raise $90 million.

“We want to send a strong message to the tobacco industry that Maine is serious about reducing smoking,” said Baldacci. “This is a long-term effort to reduce smoking in Maine and to address the costs placed on the health care system by tobacco.”

The Maine Medical Association, one of the anti-smoking coalition’s members, said it supports the $1.50 increase, even if revenues are not limited to health-related programs, because tobacco remains Maine’s No. 1 killer. Every pack of cigarettes sold results in $7 in medical costs, said Gordon Smith, MMA’s executive vice president.

MMA’s Smith dismissed earlier statements that the $1 proposed tax increase lacked political support, saying other proposals that seemed “dead on arrival” when they were proposed “are revived in the middle of the night” when lawmakers search for revenues to balance the state budget.

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