Cigarette taxes make smokers happy. Really.

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2002, found escalating cigarette taxes also raise smokers’ spirits. And not just American spirits, either, as a comparison with our neighbor to the north – Canada – revealed similar smoker sentiment.

The joyous overture to this tax – and only cigarette taxes, the study said, as other taxes were still viewed with contempt – is because many smokers see it as incentive to quit. They were assumed harmed by tax increases, the study said, when all along, smokers were thrilled.

They must be ecstatic now. On Monday, the Maine Coalition on Smoking OR Health announced its desire to see an additional $1.50 per-pack tax on cigarettes enacted, which would make the Pine Tree State the national leader – by a wide margin – in taxing tobacco, at $3.50 per pack total.

It’s an additional 50 cents on top of the governor’s proposed cigarette tax increase; the $90 million in estimated revenue, the coalition said, should be earmarked for health care programs.

While this might make smokers break into a yellow-toothed grin, this news must be tempered with a sobering assessment of cigarette taxes as policy. As social policy, it’s fine form, as the MIT study shows. For any tax to make those most affected “happy” is a wondrous incongruity.

As fiscal policy, however, hiking cigarette taxes is, at best, a short-term solution.

Cigarette taxes are regressive, meaning low-income people are impacted more than high-income people. They decline as users quit, which anti-smoking organizations have been wildly successful in doing here in Maine, the only state to receive straight A’s from the American Lung Association for its anti-smoking results.

The tax’s saving graces, according to tax analysts, are stability and predictability. States can bank on a gradually shrinking funding source for programs, such as health care, which can thrive until its costs outstrip expected revenues.

Monday’s announcement is part of the coalition’s ambitious tobacco agenda, a slate that includes reclassifying “little cigars” as cigarettes (which could capture an estimated $1.5 million in lost tax revenue); banning fruit-flavored cigars and cigarettes, and tightening loopholes on indoor smoking.

All are worthwhile. Little cigars are cigarettes wrapped in a brown disguise, and peach-flavored White Owl cigars are arguably more appealing to youth than its traditional tobacco-flavored brethren. (Even the coalition’s criticism of the phrase “sin tax” as demeaning to nicotine addicts is quite astute.)

Escalated tobacco taxes, however, should make Mainers wary, as it is revenue that is smooth and satisfying for the short-term, but comes with long-term issues for the state’s financial health. Perhaps the better course, instead of raising taxes, is simply avoiding becoming hooked on them.

Kind of like smoking itself.