Posted on 04/08/2010 11:01:35 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fourteen states and the District of Columbia raised cigarette taxes in 2009, but none of the new money went to programs to cut smoking and prevent tobacco-related disease, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.
Higher cigarette taxes can substantially curb smoking but states can make an even bigger dent by investing the new funds in programs to help people quit, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
"None of the 15 states dedicated any of the new excise tax revenue by statute to tobacco control," lead author Karen Debrot of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health wrote.
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causing nearly one in five deaths per year, according to the CDC.
All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have cigarettes taxes.
The national average state cigarette tax rose from $1.18 per pack in 2008 to $1.34 per pack in 2009, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
how much $ was actually left after theft by trial lawyers?
Obama’s doing his part,but the man can only do so much.
cigarette taxes are enacted so hypocritically.
raise taxes, put money into general fund. say taxes will help fill a budget shortfall. act surprized when they end up with a budget deficit becuase tax money never came in because people quit. raise taxes to cover next year’s shortfall. rinse. repeat.
then they continue to use larger number in counting budget income, then limit places where people can smoke. and again, act surprized when the taxes don’t come in.
Why would they do that when there are votes to buy?
As far as I’ve been able to tell, the states have never used the cigarette taxes for what they said they would. Once politicians get your money in their greedy little hands, they’ll use it for whatever they darn well please.
Footnote: Here in NY, Paterson used the 2010 stimulus money to balance the budget...Of course, welfare payments went up...courtesy of ordinary working folks....but no new taxes for us...yeh right....they numbered 90+ either new or raised...
States are still spending like drunken sailors. However, there is a benefit to the tobacco taxes. Due to the law of supply and demand, less people (particularly kids) are smoking. That’s a good thing.
Up until the late unpleasantness, the tobacco “settlement” was the largest transference of wealth in US history, iirc. Probably was the seed-corn for the late unpleasantness, who knows. We were a lot better off when tobacco companies could advertise on TV, but lawyers couldn’t.
I was wondering when people would start to pay attention, maybe when the jobs were outsourced, the push for state lotteries was sweetened with the claim that revenues would go “for schools and state parks”. Yeah.... righhhhht.
In the NE and West Coast, and many other parts of the country, the retail price includes a 2/3 combined state and FedZilla tax.
Now, conceivably, the tax could reach well over 100%.
But, seems to me, that cow has been milked.
Now, all you citizen subjects Nanny State Butt Worshippers who drooled and frothed and cackling gleefully, rubbed your hands in virtual sexual anticipation of the hammer being lowered on smokers in form of bans and over the taxes imposed on the new *iggers of America, what say you?
Tax your soda? VAT up the wazoo? Thermostat taxes?
Your QuarterPounder? Your hotdog? Mileage fees? Road use fees? Garbage fees?
The list is unending.
Funny, one vice is demonized and the other, gambling is considered AOK with states like MA envisioning state managed gambling compounds, not to mention the TVKeno lottery and the myriad of others......
If they tried forcing us to quit I'd probably start smoking again in defiance.
Oh, you mean idealism did not prevail? Why, this could mean..... NO! It’s possible that global warming taxes would not be spend ont global warming idealism! How inhumane, How cruel. Oh, the inhumanity of it all!
I quit last Sept. screw their taxes.
Cigarettes no.
Pipes and cigars yes.
Don’t tar moderate tobacco users with the same brush as cigarette addicts — not that I really blame them, because smoking can be quite pleasurable.
But in all these years of public debate over second-hand smoke, etc. never once have I heard the word “moderation.”
With leftist neo-puritans, it’s all or nothing.
Take that Sasieni Four-Dot out of your mouth! From now on you’re going to have to restrict your pleasures to liberal-approved things, like any kind of perverted sex you can dream up.
This whole controversy about tobacco and, now, fattening foods is really just a campaign of leftist brainwashing, although probably more because of media groupthink than any cabal.
What better way to mess with people’s minds than insisting they will die miserably if they continue with old-fashioned indulgences like a piece of pie or an after-dinner cigar?
I know Ayn Rand isn’t every Freeper’s cup of tea — she really isn’t mine, truth to tell. But I remember one passage from “Atlas Shrugged” where a character explains that one of the keys to preparing the sheeple for a statist future is to keep them in a state of generalized misery about their lives.
Health scare stories have been a staple of the popular press for a long time. But as I recall from growing up in the 60s and 70s, the noise level was relatively tolerable compared to today.
Now, you turn on the tube, and all you hear is this broken record repeating “diet and exercise, diet and exercise.”
Here’s news: I don’t care whether the message is true or not. People don’t like being talked down to. People don’t like being nagged. People don’t like being lectured that their lives as s**t and they are s**t.
I’m not saying that the constant din of health scare news is some kind of conspiracy.
Groupthink can accomplish a lot more than any conspiracy, because you have built-in deniability.
Having worked in the media for 25 years, I know what most of these people are like. They may be trying to herd the sheeple, but they are mostly sheeple themselves.
-30-
It gets better. Smoking is outlawed in “public” places like bars, but casinos are exempt. Otis Campbell (a bar in SE Iowa) sued for redress, arguing that he isn’t being treated fairly or equally under the law.
The court basically said, “we get a lot of money from the casinos, so it’s OK.” But of course they couch it in pseudo-intellectual babble to try and confuse the mouthbreathers. Bad cess to them.
States are still spending like drunken sailors. However, there is a benefit to the tobacco taxes. Due to the law of supply and demand, less people (particularly kids) are smoking. That’s a good thing.
*****
WHY is it a good thing? People have enjoyed smoking for years..they enjoy it. What is it with people who can’t stand to see anyone enjoy something. I promise you it won’t add a single year to your life that anyone has quit and it is not our business to police our neighbors or to try and control them!! LOOK how brain washed people in this country have become....it HORRIBLE!! No I don’t smoke...I quit because I am to bull headed to pay the tax but I RESENT that kind of control...it is NOT AMERICAN!!!
Of course, the argument of a “level playing field” was used in MA years ago (2004, the same year the SJC and Romney legalised gay marriage! -Marry a fag, don’t smoke one) when some towns banned it, and others did not, causing smokers to go to bars and clubs that allowed it.
But, the law is not a loaf of bread, if you want consistency, buy bread.
>>particularly kids) are smoking.
Well, then, who will replenish the coffers of the SCHIP program, health care for kids that smokers are funding.
Oh, Obamacare. But, you think they’ll get rid of the SCHIP Tax on smokes?
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