How Gov. Jay Nixon can raise cigarette taxes without breaking his campaign promise

Time published a story earlier this week discussing how raising Missouri’s laughably low 17-cent cigarette tax — the lowest in the nation — would be an easy and logical way to help close the state’s looming $500 million budget deficit.

At the risk of sounding like a high school student trying to pressure a peer into smoking, raising the cigarette tax to somewhere closer to the $1.45 national average is cool, and everybody else is doing it. Seriously, everybody.