Comments on: Cigarette Taxes Up, Revenue Down

By: Offshore blog

Offshore blog — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:52:00 +0000

We do live in America, which is a free country last time I checked, and small businesses selling legal products, yes even cigarettes, are large contributors to our government cofers and society. If you truly are concerned about public health maybe you should look at alcohol sales and calculate the health costs and negatives on society from this legal product.

By: Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:25:12 +0000

Cigarettes are legal only by historical accident. And a lot of campaign cash. They shouldn’t be made illegal but smoking should be probibited in public places. Increasing the taxes is the right thing to do, but we obviously disagree.

And yes, we do live in a free country. We are free to bribe our state and federal politicians through our privatized electoral system. Not much different than Mexico, so watch our trend.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:12:20 +0000

You may never totally eliminate the outside supply chains, but the government must do something to try and limit their use. If people circumvent the “normal” chains of supply, they are not only evading the cigarette taxes but sales taxes also. The in-state businesses are paying cigarettes tax, sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc. and should not be ignored as part of the econonmy.

By: Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:29:52 +0000

You will never eliminate the outside supply chains, but that is no reason to trash the rest of the prevention efforts. Otherwise you might just as well say zero taxes on everything, ’cause, what the hell, we don’t want people to circumvent normal buying channels.

Besides, I am generally turned off by organizations like this that fight high taxes and then turn around and try to block the one thing that would curb high taxes in the first place, that being our corrupt political system.

For $5 per taxpayer per year we could have 100% public funding of our elections, which would eliminate the $1300 per taxpayer per year that politicians give away to their fat cat friends through government subsidies and giveaways. But this group (and others) let ideology stand in the way of their math skills.

Or, they are also funded by the fat cats, like the Club for Growth and Philip Morris, which are well known to fund grasstop organizations.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:15:27 +0000

In response to all the money that will be saved in health costs…WHAT? Don’t you get the entire point of the story, which is that people are not stopping smoking, they are simply getting the cigarettes illegally and avoiding the tax. If you really want the cost increases to stop smoking, then you need to address teh illegal supply chains (internet, black-market, lower tax states, etc.).

By: Jack Lohman

Jack Lohman — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 12:43:06 +0000

Oh give me a break. For all of the supposed “losses” in tax revenue there will be multiples gained in health care savings! Why should we continue killing people so we can keep tax revenues up? And the higher the price of cigarettes the fewer new children smokers!

Oh, I get it. But look at all of the tobacco industry employees we’ll put out of work!