California residents must read !!!
For those living in CA read this and make sure to vote against it !!!!!
Los Angeles, July 21 – At the close of the first day of the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America (RTDA) trade show, more than 100 retailers, manufacturers and distributors gathered for a meeting with none of the excitement or enthusiasm present on the exhibit hall floor.
Instead, they heard from California Association of Retail Tobacconists (CART) President Charles Janigian and others about the danger of California Proposition 86, the Tobacco Tax Act of 2006, which will be on the state’s election ballot in November.
If passes, it would raise the tax on cigarettes by $2.60 per pack and create a $2.27 billion windfall for various health and service agencies, including more funding for the First 5 California organization created by film director Rob Reiner via the passage of Proposition 10 in 1998.
For cigar smokers, the already-unfriendly California scene would turn frigid as the tax on the wholesale price of cigars would rise from 46.76% to approximately 135%! A similar increase would apply to pipe tobacco.
In addition, California smokeshops would face a floor tax on all tobacco inventory on-hand on January 1, 2007, projected to be approximately 88% of the wholesale price. It would sound the death knell for many California retail tobacconists.
A strong grass-roots campaign will be mounted, including information availability at California tobacconists, to ensure that (1) the stakes are understood, (2) that smokers and friends are well informed and (3) go to the polls on election day.
Attendance at the event was strong and enthusiasm to defeat the initiative is high. Given the solid defeats of two initiatives on the California ballot in June, including a Reiner-backed measure to raise taxes on upper-income Californians, the possibilities are promising.
