Posted on 03/13/2009 3:07:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Tobacco connoisseurs can't catch a break.
A new federal tax recently approved by President Obama has increased cigarette carton prices by more than $10 - about 75 cents a pack.
The tax was passed in January as part of a multibillion dollar package to provide health care for children and certain legal immigrants. Local tobacco users and dealers admit the cause is admirable, but said the tax is unjust.
“There is about zero common sense or logic in this whole tax,” said David Roth, owner of Tobacco Alley in Somerset. “It is a revenue stream that has been drying up for years.”
Cigarettes are not the only tobacco product with rising prices. Roth said bagged tobacco will be increased by $25 a pound.
The tax becomes official in April; however, retailers said that manufacturers have already increased their prices to prepare for the hike. As a result, prices in stores started going up on Monday.
“The more you raise taxes on this product, the less money the government is bringing in,” Roth said. “That many more people are quitting or going to the black market.”
U.S. Rep. John Murtha voted for the tax to help bring health care to 11 million children, including 227,000 in Pennsylvania, according to a prepared statement from his office.
“The CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) improves both the health and chance for success of these children, and it saves us money by reducing costly emergency room visits which have come to supplement primary care,” Murtha said.
Alice Holler, a smoker from the Meyersdale area, said she doesn't have a problem with helping children. But coupled with the state smoking ban, Holler said smokers are being hit too hard. The ban started in September and prohibits smoking in most public places.
“I feel they should start taxing something else instead of cigarettes,” she said while walking along West Main Street in Somerset on Thursday. She suggested levying a tax on alcohol instead.
Sheetz waited until Wednesday to raise its tobacco prices. Lou Sheetz, vice president of marketing, said tobacco sales equal about one-third of their in-store business.
“The tax is excessive,” he said. “The money will be put to good use, I am sure. It will be a burden to that (smoking) portion of adults.”
Sheetz said customers usually blame the retailer for price increases. But when it comes to taxation, Sheetz said, their hands are tied.
“It isn't real until it hits, and it hit us,” he said. “Now we have to pass it on to the customer.”
“Anything they deem frivolous or bad for Gaea. Booze, gas guzzlers, ammunition, snack foods, the list is endless..”
BINGO..BINGO!!
Frivolous has nothing to do with it however. It is social engineering..and if I were a senior in this society, I would take a look at the recent right to die laws, 50 million + abortions under Rov vs Wade, and etc., and I would be very nervous.
If we can kill millions of unborn babies, we can systematically rid ourselves of the elderly, chronically ill, disabled and anyone else that is considered a burden on society. How will we do this?? The gov. will withhold medical treatment and allocate it to those they deem capable of working and paying taxes to the system. Everyone else will be considered expendable.
If your lifestyle is considered “risky” you will be immediately added to the expendable list. The over-weight will be in the “Risky” category. Everyone will eventually progress into the expendable list.
Welcome to the Brave New World and life under a Marxist Regime.
What about alcohol? Coffee?
This STILL a relatively free country. Some smoke, some drink, some done one or the other or none.
FREEDOM means something.
$68 for a carton in Phoenix today...
Hasn’t gotten it yet.
The nicotine cartridges are flavored. They can taste like a regular tobacco cigarette, but you can also get them with the flavor or apple, cherry, coffee, and a couple others.
The other cool thing is that you can get different strength cartridges, so if your desire is to eventually kick the nicotine entirely, you can do it. They have four varying strength levels of cartridges (last one being zero nicotine).
They aren’t talking about raising the tax on ecigs.
I have heard the FDA is possibly considering regulating, (getting its fingers in somehow), e-cigs. Because they technically one could view them as a drug delivery system (since they are not tobacco cigarettes).
You know, sell a orange as fruit, you’re fine. Say it cures scurvy, it’s a drug and now you’re under their power.
And it isn’t about health, it’s about control.
And about you smokers paying the taxes they keep increasing on ya that don’t go for smoking prevention (like they ever really did)...
E-cigs have no smoking tax on them. Just sales tax. You can’t do that, in addition to being a lot healthier and continuing to enjoy what looks like a cigarette. Big Brother is not pleased, it is doubleplus ungood.
Fortunately, I haven't. I didn't mean to sound callous, it was just my understanding that there isn't much that can be done once lung cancer has been diagnosed.
Let me see: the tax went up over $10. per carton, and there are ten packs per carton.
Using “Journalists’ math” the tax increase equals ALMOST seventy five cents per pack.
No wonder the MSM is dying: they can’t even do basic arithmetic!
You completely miss the point. It’s not a matter of “supporting” anything EXCEPT for FREEDOM OF CHOICE!
Using government coersion (in the form of taxation here, and more and more restrictive laws everywhere on tobacco consumption) to FORCE SOCIAL CHANGE is most emphatically NOT a conservative gambit, and you should rethink your political stance if you think it is the government’s business to perform “social engineering” on the populace.
They are already going after the fatties, now that they have sufficiently ostracized smokers.
What’s YOUR personal foible? I *would* hope that it, whatever it is, the government and the nannies go for next. I CANNOT wish that upon you, or others who share your purported “weakness”, despite your cheerleading for those who wish to control the activities of other law-abiding citizens, simply because that would debase my argument, and make it moot through my stooping to the level of the control freaks.
No, I don’t smoke. Nor am I obese. I just despise nanny-statists and their supporters, of which you appear to be one or the other, judging by what I’ve read from you.
I am certain organized crime will now find great profit in selling bootlegged and stolen cigarettes.
A resourceful kid would just stand in front of one of those no smoking joints and get the almost virgin butts from the outside ashtray. Sure beats the gutter butts we had to smoke when money was low.
Hey, I have an idea, let’s tax sex. Just think STDs are running rampant, you can get HIV/AIDs, genital warts that lead to cancer and that’s just heterosexual sex.
You say that would be ridiculous? How would they enforce it? The same way they enforce all the other big brother stupidy, badly. Only really, really honest people and pregnant women will admit that they had sex. The others will lie, cheat and steal and most people who want to will have sex.
Good Idea. At the end of the year I would get money back unless they tax the self-employed too.
Yeah.
Conservatives should support any initiative where the government dictates what we should and shouldn't do. Go, Nanny State! :eyeroll:
Touche.
folks can always make “special brownies.”
I think the alcohol industry would lobby the hardest against pot legalization. Imagine the money they would lose if pot was legal.
Way back in the late 60s I remember seeing low tax Kentucky cigarettes being sold out of car trunks at factories in Ohio.
This was for pennies per pack savings.
I’m sure the black market in cigs is huge now.
Screw you a**s H**le. I hope your trim and lean no fat butt doesn’t drink or ever eat MacDonalds cause your next.
I tell you this, people are actually going to die because of this stupidity. Now they won’t need to rob for money, Just tobacco. In case you aren’t paying attention a $1.00 a lb pack of Bugler is going to $26. So you can’t roll your own. Here cigs are going from 27.00 a carton to almost 60.
You are going to see more violent crime. You think people will just quit because the become expensive? They would have quit already if they could have.
You make me sick. You are going to agitate the people at the bottom of the social ladder who already feel entitled steal whatever you own. Go ahead, give them another reason to steal from you. I hope they find your house before mine.
You are no conservative you are a damned fascist. I am more than a little ticked off about this. Slime like you cause this to crap to happen. Wait till they come for you jerk wad.
I’m proud to be called an a**s H**le/fascist by those who pimp death or are addicts.
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