Kentucky could become the first state in the country to tax opioid prescription painkillers under a proposal intended to generate more revenue for a state struggling to pay retirement benefits to public school teachers and other state employees.<\/p>\n
House Republicans unveiled their two-year spending proposal Wednesday (2\/28). Budget chairman Steven Rudy said lawmakers realized the state did not have enough money to pay for all of its obligations, so they included a tax on opioid prescription painkillers. They also included a 50-cent cigarette tax increase.<\/p>\n
Kentucky has the highest smoking rate in the country. It also has one of the highest rates of overdose deaths in the country, mostly attributed to the opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n
Rudy said the tax would send “a clear message” the state is serious about the opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kentucky could become the first state in the country to tax opioid prescription painkillers under a proposal intended to generate more revenue for a state struggling to pay retirement benefits to public school teachers and other state employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,59],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main-news","7":"category-news","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6aKAp-4GF","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-02 16:46:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18022,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18021\/revisions\/18022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wvih.com\/wp1\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}