LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) By Shayla Reaves - New projections out this week shows Kentucky is facing a $450-million shortfall this fiscal year. It is a financial mess that has Kentucky leaders looking at a cigarette tax to help dig us out of that hole. WAVE 3’s Shayla Reaves asked a former U.S. Surgeon General to weigh in.

It has been nearly 14 years since Joycelyn Elders served as Surgeon General of the United States. Still, the former Clinton-era appointee and doctor supports higher cigarette taxes, just not how states sometimes use them.

“They haven’t used it for health for the most part, they’ve used it to help the whole state budget,” Elders said. “If we’re going to increase the cigarette tax, we need to use it for health.”

According to Elders, increasing the cigarette tax 10 cents would reduce the number of young people who start smoking by one percent.

This week, Indiana’s State Department of health released its findings about an increase there. Since upping the tax from 44 cents to 99 cents last July, officials say they have seen a 20 percent drop in the number of people who smoke. At 30 cents a pack, Kentucky has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation.

“90 percent of the young people, old people who smoke all people who smoke start smoking before age 19,” said Elders. “Making it less affordable makes fewer young people start and that is certainly what we want to do.”

Elders says cigarette tax money should go towards prevention, education and treatment, not to “help the whole state’s budget”.

“Cigarettes cause lung cancer, we need to use it to help Medicaid pay for taking care of poor people who have lung cancer,” said the former Surgeon General.

Still, raising taxes on cigarettes in a tobacco-growing state like Kentucky is difficult.

“This is a tobacco-growing state and realizing that it will affect tobacco farmers and the tobacco industry. It is also very costly and costly in terms of people’s lives,” Elders told WAVE 3 News.