Tobacco Tax 101

[MasterCylinder]

Yup. You have to realize that money for children's health care or whatever has relatively little to do with the tax increases - it is all about forcing people to cut down on, or quit, tobacco use. Raising prices is one of the most effective ways to accomplish that. The target is cigarettes, but, for effective tobacco control, one wants to raise prices of cigars enough so that cigarette smokers won't migrate to cigars in large numbers. That's why little cigars and drugstore cigars are getting (relatively) nailed. You, Mr. White Owl smoker , are being targeted.

Just an aside point (I'm feeling the need to vent...). This is all so frustrating because the United States was practically founded on the growth and use of Tobacco. We probably wouldn't be the nation we are today if it weren't for this plant. Even the column capitals inside the houses of congress are designed to look like tobacco leaves in honour of the crop's importance to the founding of the nation (I think the other one you see is corn...). Government, OUR EMPLOYEES, need to back off!

Okay... I'm done now.

[BunkyX]

O.K., I don't usually get political, but this hits me where it hurts. So let me run this scenario by all of you.

They raised the tax on Tobacco to fund the S-Chip (and supposedly to reduce the number of Americans that smoke). Now the bean counters in Washington have come up with a dollar value on the revenue this will make to fund S-Chip. So now people quit smoking, or quit smoking at least as much, people die (not necessarily by smoking), and young people never start smoking because of the expense and stigma we all put up with. The revenue starts to not meet projected amounts, Washington needs more money to fund S-Chip. What do they do? Raise the tobacco tax again? and again?

We all need to stand up for our minority rights, as smokers. I have figure that they have already reduced the places I can smoke by 60% at a minimum. We are looked at by the 80% of poeple, who don't smoke, like lepers or worse.

The old tip of the Iceberg anology comes to mind. We could have prevented this but we were too busy sitting back on our laurels hoping somebody else would do it for us. There is more to come and if we don't stand up in force we will lose again.

Gene

[bigwhiteash]

Again, not to get too political..

There was no preventing this, and it could have, and will be worse in the future. Tobacco users are a shrinking minority, and as such will never carry the weight needed to stop these actions. I have quite a stockpile of pipe tobacco... probably enough to last me 10 years, and cigars that would last about 2 years if I quit buying them entirely.. which I don't intend to do. I would imagine, with decreased sales due to taxes, manufactures and vendors will eventually be forced to lower prices to remain competitive. We'll see....

The folly of health care funding derived from taxing the ever decreasing use of tobacco is sheer lunacy in my mind. It's entirely unsustainable

I sent letters, (emails), to every political figure imaginable, as I'm sure most of us did.. obviously to no avail... There was no stoping this.

[craig]

FYI: http://www.reuters.com/article/domes...090315?sp=true

Anyhow, stock up on small cigars and daily smokes now. Normally, I spread purchases throughout the year, but I blew my whole 2009 cigar budget in Jan/Feb. I would've bought even more if I had more spare cash ...

[DeeDubya]

Again, not to get too political..

There was no preventing this, and it could have, and will be worse in the future. Tobacco users are a shrinking minority, and as such will never carry the weight needed to stop these actions. I have quite a stockpile of pipe tobacco... probably enough to last me 10 years, and cigars that would last about 2 years if I quit buying them entirely.. which I don't intend to do. I would imagine, with decreased sales due to taxes, manufactures and vendors will eventually be forced to lower prices to remain competitive. We'll see....

The folly of health care funding derived from taxing the ever decreasing use of tobacco is sheer lunacy in my mind. It's entirely unsustainable

I sent letters, (emails), to every political figure imaginable, as I'm sure most of us did.. obviously to no avail... There was no stoping this.

I don't mind contributing to a worthy program like the Childrens Health Insurance. Now if we could just deduct this added tax as a contribution I would gladley pay the increase. They would still get the money, the deterrent to smoking because of higher tobacco prices would still have it's effect and we would get a deduction to lighten the extra cost.

[golfermd]

What we will probably see is the death spiral with taxes like they see in many urban areas. Higher taxes means higher costs of doing business so businesses eventually move to more tax friendly locales to reduce their operating costs. This lowers revenues. In order to again raise revenues they increase the tax rates, which drives more businesses away, causing lower employment, loss of tax reveneues, and higher municipal costs to absorb people displaced by businesses moving out. Am I missing something here? Politicians, gotta love 'em...

[Artyman1200]

Tax those evil smokers to fund the health insurance program for all those poor little children! Our government is such a freakin racket...

[BurnDownKing]

Just another bump in the road like rising gas prices or inflation of bread prices. It will all be ok in the end and in a year no one will remember what happened until the next rate increase happens. If you're going to quit smoking a cigar because of a tax rate increase and you can't afford it, you should probably be finding something you can afford to do. :)

I will do my part, however, and stock up before the tax hike kicks in. My cigar shop said we can buy as much as we want and he'd store it for us and figure out where to put it after the fact if we couldn't bring it all home, so at least he's helping us out in that aspect.