Lewiston City Councilman Stavros Mendros is at it again.

His effort to repeal Maine’s law that prohibits smoking in bars and restaurants flopped, but there’s a new front in his crusade to protect smokers’ “right” to poison themselves. Mendros is among those trying to collect enough signatures to have a people’s veto placed on the ballot to undo a $1-per-pack increase in the state’s cigarette tax. On Sept. 19, the tax will go from $1 – a low tariff when compared to other states – to $2 per pack. The tax will hit heavy smokers particularly hard. The cost of a carton of cigarettes will jump $10.

About 20 percent of the state’s population still smokes. Smokers tend to have a lower income than nonsmokers, and some opponents of the tobacco tax increase say that it balances the state budget on the backs of the people who can least afford it.

But smoking takes an incredible public toll. It drives up health care costs for everyone. Smoking can cause cancer and is directly linked to lung cancer, which claims 163,000 lives every year. Secondhand smoke puts nonsmokers at risk, which is why it’s banned in all public buildings in the state.

The state will raise an estimated $170 million from the tax increase, money the state needs to balance its books. But that figure can’t be considered in a vacuum. Almost 21 percent of all state spending is directed toward Medicaid and smoking contributes to those costs. According to the Partnership for a Tobacco-free Maine, smoking adds about $169 million to Medicaid spending. Overall, annual health costs in Maine attributed to smoking hit $545 million. The campaign estimates that smoking costs every taxpayer $576 a year in federal and state taxes, and causes a loss of productivity in the state of $406 million a year.

Tobacco companies build their profits on the addictive nature of the products they sell. They depend on smokers getting hooked. And as anyone who has ever tried to kick the habit or been close to someone who has, breaking tobacco’s hold is hard to do. One of the best incentives to reduce smoking is to raise the price of the habit. It discourages young people, with limited resources, from starting in the first place and gives smokers a new reason to quit.

Smokers get picked on a lot. They’ve been booted outside to smoke. But the best way to respond is not to sign a petition to reject the tobacco tax increase; it’s to quit.

Cigarettes are a legal product, but they do enormous harm to people’s health. The state has a direct interest in reducing that damage.