Federal MP Ewen Jones reckons giving up smokes was the best thing he ever did, amid speculation the federal government might follow Labor and hike the tax on cigarettes.
The Queensland coalition backbencher acknowledged the massive cost of smoking to the community and public health system with cancer patients "getting bits and pieces chopped off".
"One of the greatest things I've ever done is given them up," he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
Mr Jones said he had not heard any concrete proposals from his side of politics on changes to the tobacco excise.
"No government or party comes towards smokers with a position of policy purity - it is an income stream," he said.
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The government's budget razor gang is said to be considering a proposal to increase the excise which could lift the price of a packet of cigarettes to $40.
Labor already has announced it will increase the excise if it wins office and use the additional revenue to fund its Gonski schools policy.
Government MP Andrew Laming, who is an eye specialist, argued increasing the excise would hit addicts and low-income people the hardest.
It would also come at the "price of their family's well-being".
Dr Laming said Labor could not calculate how much money the measure would raise because it was a consumption tax and impossible to model.
"They spend the money before they've got it," he told reporters.
Labor MP Jim Chalmers said the issue would open up another front in the civil war eating up the Liberal Party.
He pointed out that Treasurer Scott Morrison and former prime minister Tony Abbott are on the record opposing any increase to cigarette taxes.
Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm says the move may grow the tobacco black market.
"We already have almost the highest taxes on tobacco in the world ... it is contributing to a major black market in cigarettes," he told reporters.
