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State Rep leading effort to increase taxes on cigarettes in Georgia

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A State House study committee focusing on the costs and effects of smoking met for the first time Thursday.

Democratic State Representative Michelle Au, who is a medical doctor, is leading an effort to increase taxes on cigarettes in Georgia, which is the second lowest in the nation. Experts say Georgia is spending hundreds of millions more on Medicaid for people sickened by smoking than it gets from the cigarette tax.

While Republicans generally oppose tax increases, a handful of Republican senators signed a 2019 resolution encouraging the House, which writes the budget, to raise the cigarette tax to at least the national average to help offset health care costs.

Jeff has delivered morning news at WUGA Radio for more than a decade. He was among a team at CNN that won a George Foster Peabody Award in 1991 for an educational product based on the fall of the Soviet Union. He also won an Edward R. Murrow Award from Radio Television Digital News Association in 2007 for producing a series for WSB Radio on financial scams. Jeff is a graduate of the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University (MBA) and holds a BS in Business Administration from Campbell University, both in North Carolina.
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