SCHIP
The $32.8 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Care Initiative, which was funded by an increase in the federal excise tax on cigars, the tax paid to the U.S. government on cigars as they are brought into the United States. Signed into law in 2009, the SCHIP expansion went into effect in April 2009, and boosted the federal excise tax on large cigars from less than five cents per cigar to 40.26 cents per cigar. Some cigar companies didn’t increase prices, but most did.