Mississippi residents pay the highest grocery taxes in the country, and some local lawmakers want to ease the burden on poor families by cutting the tax while offsetting the lost revenue with an increase in the state's low tobacco tax.

The Associated Press reported March 7 that legislators are proposing to cut Mississippi's 7-percent grocery tax in half while raising the tax on cigarettes from 18 cents per pack to $1 per pack.

"For the poorest state in the nation to have the highest sales tax on groceries is cruel," said state Sen. Alan Nunnelee, a Republican.

"Our citizens smoke and get sick because they smoke much more so than citizens of other states. And I have to believe that in some way that's tied to the fact that we have the third lowest cigarette tax in the nation," Nunnelee said. "But there is a corresponding issue that I think is equally a public-health issue, and that's a sales tax on groceries."

But Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, a former tobacco industry lobbyist, opposes the plan and has vetoed similar legislation twice in the past. GOP Sen. Tommy Robertson, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, also opposes the measure, saying that poor people don't pay the tax anyway because they use food stamps.

Some observers say Barbour is taking a hard line on tax increases because he is eyeing a run for president or vice president in 2008.