Posted on 12/10/2011 6:15:59 PM PST by Libloather
New York City sues roll-your-own-smokes shops
Sees tax evasion in do-it-yourself business
By David B. Caruso - Associated Press
Monday, November 21, 2011
NEW YORK — There is no place in the U.S. more expensive to smoke than New York City, where the taxes alone will set you back $5.85 per pack.
Yet smokers who visit Island Smokes, a “roll-your-own” cigarette shop in Chinatown, can walk out with an entire 10-pack carton for less than $40, thanks to a tax loophole that officials in several states are trying to close.
The store is one of a number around the country that have come under fire over their use of high-speed cigarette-rolling machines that function as miniature factories and can package loose tobacco and rolling papers into neatly formed cigarettes, sometimes in just a few minutes.
Customers select a blend of tobacco leaves, feed the tobacco and some paper tubes into the machines, and return to the counter with the finished product to ring up the purchase.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Cigarettes are a "suicide machine". Suicide is illegal. Is it really a legal product? Rest In Peace, Dad. I wish you hadn't been a smoker.
Thanks for the ping!
Just before I quit wmoking cigs, I started to roll my own. The machines that take filters are pretty good, and I could get very high quality leaf with no additives in both Maryland and VA for about 40% of the cost of the pre-rolled silage most cigarette companies use. The difference in flavor is worth the extra trouble.
Authoritarianism and gubmint social engineering slays ends in epic failure in the central planners attempt to control millions of the unwashed masses.
He thinks he is smarter than a million people combined. NY anti smoking policies should be renamed the NO CIGARETTE BOOTLEGGER LEFT BEHIND ACT.
They don’t want to kill it just collect outrageous taxes on it....bast*rds.....
If they are suicide machines, it sure takes a long time to kill you according to my family...
I am sorry about your fathers death. May he rest in peace and you find peace in his passing......GG
Back when I was a twenty year old sailor and stupid enough to smoke I bought cigarettes for one dollar a CARTON on the Saratoga when we were at sea. In Barcelona we could go ashore and have a blast on three or four dollars. My pay was a princely one hundred and eighty two dollars monthly back then. I was wealthy.
Unbelievable.
Suicide is illegal?
What’s the penalty——death?
60 year smoker here,goat granny.
I certainly don’t plan on quitting now.
Statist thugs
God forbid Westerners, should be able to smoke in peace as they’ve done for centuries.I believe the Persian and their culture of control and taxation,which the liberals absolutely love,were the ones who started executing people for smoking publicly by pouring molten lead down their throat.
It is a cultural vice that mostly doesn’t harm that many lives, at the end of the day Liberals and their brand of stupidity which again smacks of Oriental despotism(in the name of the greater or public good) is far far worse.
Believe it, dude. The nanny state stops at nothing these days...
Actually, I don’t give a rip if people want to smoke, however I do get upset at smokers that feel it’s their right to litter their butts all over the place. I once asked a lady to pick up her butt, after she flicked it on the ground, and both she and her young son flipped me off and told me to mind my own business.
A couple of years ago before she left the governorship, Granholm and the democrats gave Michigan a lovely present...Raised the cost of loose cigarette tobacco 25 dollars a pound...Don’t democrats know greed is an ugly thing and they are full of it....
These idiots don’t want smokers to quit - they fill the coffers. It’s amazing how these nitwits will increase taxes the way they do so folks will quit and their tills will dry up.
typical of leftist democrats...kill the goose that lays the golden egg....GG
Exactly.
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