A CHILLING REMINDER about the financial underpinnings of international terrorism raises anew this question: Will our legislators ever face up to the costs of their tawdry love affair with the cigarette industry and their idiotic blood oaths to never, ever raise any tax, no matter what the circumstances?

The Post and Courier of Charleston reports that because of our nation’s-lowest cigarette tax, South Carolina has become ground zero for tobacco smugglers.

That’s bad enough, but the gap between lowest and highest — currently $3.58 a pack, or more than the underlying product cost — has caused the market for smuggled smokes to explode, and created an irresistible trade for terrorists seeking a quick and easy buck.

Are our legislators so devoted to their nicotine-hawking benefactors and the creepy keepers of their mindless tax pledges that they’re willing to subsidize al-Qaida and its fellow travelers?

Before you dismiss this as paranoia or hyperbole, listen to the attorneys with Mount Pleasant-based Motley Rice, who are turning up clear links between cigarette smuggling and terrorist funding as part of their research on behalf of 9/11 victims.

Or look just across the state line, where smugglers with ties to Hezbollah were convicted of running trucks of cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan, and funneling profits from the $7.9 million operation into the Lebanon-based terrorist group. That was in 2002, when North Carolina had the nation’s lowest tax.

North Carolina turned that dubious distinction over to us in 2005 when it began raising its tax from 5 cents to 35 cents. Federal officials say that made South Carolina the most attractive state for smugglers of any sort.

Even before anyone painted the disturbing scenario of S.C.-subsidized terrorism, the people of South Carolina had the good sense to know that our rock-bottom cigarette tax could not be justified. Ever since they began to understand the financial toll cigarettes take on us all, through higher insurance premiums and exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs, and the dramatic role higher cigarette taxes can play in deterring teen smoking, South Carolinians have overwhelmingly supported increasing the tax, at least to the national average.

But our legislators, who stop at nothing to meet the demands of whatever vocal minority makes demands, have arrogantly and consistently ignored this one.

Now comes Gov. Mark Sanford’s proposal to increase the tax to a still-pitiful 37 cents, and then only in combination with a much larger reduction in the income tax. And again legislators are responding with laughable predictability: We could never raise the cigarette tax unless the money funds health care, declare those who would give up their first born before they would vote for an overall tax increase. We can’t be sure that the extra money from a higher cigarette tax won’t eventually go down, say others. And on and on, like any other addict trying to explain away his addiction.

Never mind that they entice 14-year-olds into a life of actual addiction, and prop up an increasingly profitable market for those whose stated goal is the destruction of America. Our lawmakers can rest assured that the cigarette companies will continue to lavish them with campaign donations, and that their libertarian puppet masters in Washington will smile upon them.