Free Republic

President Obama’s new budget proposes paying for a $66 billion universal pre-kindergarten program by increasing the federal cigarette tax to $1.95 a pack. In theory, that raises about $78 billion over the next decade. Enough to fund the program—but not forever. The problem, as with all government programs funded under the kill-two-birds theory used to justify relying on smoking taxes as a revenue mechanism, is that cigarette taxes tend to discourage people from smoking. And with fewer people smoking, there’s less revenue to be raised from cigarette taxes. As The Washington Post’s Brad Plumer points out you can see the...

Supporters of punitively high tobacco tax rates should be careful what they wish for. According to the Mackinac Center’s latest estimate of cigarette smuggling rates, Michigan is No. 10 nationally in the proportion of cigarettes being smoked here that are illegally smuggled in. This is the third such estimate the Center has produced, and the details are disconcerting. The smuggling rate here increased 12 percent since 2009, with contraband smokes now representing 29.3 percent of all consumption. The increasing rate of both casual and commercial cigarette smuggling over the past two decades is staggering. Casual smuggling occurs when individuals shop...

BEAVER FALLS -- A dispute over a cigarette was apparently the reason a Beaver Falls woman was shot to death outside her home Saturday afternoon. Three teenage boys from Beaver Falls have been charged in the death of Kayla Peterson, 22, of 516 13th St. They are: Marcus Velasquez, also known as Marcus Cleckley, 14, of 2409 Seventh Ave.; Todavia Cleckley, 14, of 70 Harmony Dwellings; and Kyle Goosby Jr., 13, of 109 11th St. William Bailey, 28, said just after 3 p.m. he had walked to J’s News on Seventh Avenue to buy cigarettes, and as he left the...

A Florida man got the shock of his life on Wednesday when an electronic cigarette he was using exploded in his mouth. Honestly, you try to do the right thing and it all blows up in your face. A Florida man who finally came around to the idea of giving up smoking decided to use an electronic cigarette to help him try to kick the habit. So far so good, you might think. The problem for 57-year-old Tom Holloway, however, was that while it was in his mouth the thing exploded. The explosion was so severe that it destroyed some...

He is the man with the mustache who takes a rebellious drag on a cigarette in the Herman Cain Internet ad gone viral. "We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen," he says before taking a puff. "But then America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain." Meet Mark Block, Cain's unorthodox campaign manager. Perhaps no one is more responsible for the Georgia businessman's meteoric rise in the presidential polls than Block, a Republican strategist and tea party leader who's left a trail of questionable campaign work behind him. Block has been accused of voter suppression and was banned from...

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign says its overnight viral sensation is no joke. The quirky YouTube video showing chief of staff Mark Block taking a drag on a cigarette while asking supporters to “get involved” in the campaign is for real. “It was meant to tell supporters about the campaign,” campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon told The Daily Caller in an email. “It was a video with an edge — as the Chief of Staff says, just Block being Block,” Gordon told TheDC.

As states around the country continue to face ongoing projected budget deficits, many elected officials are advocating consumption tax hikes in an effort to close budget holes (see Dayton, Mark and Democrats, Minnesota). However, New Hampshire recently cut its cigarette tax in a move to increase revenue and now Michigan—the state generally regarded as having the worst economy in the country—may follow suit. Senate Bill 517 would roll back the $2 per pack cigarette excise tax, among the highest in the nation, and reset it at $1 per pack. It would be partnered with budget cuts including an option that...

Online cigarette buyers hit with taxes She lost her job. She lost her husband. She lost her home. And that's when the state Department of Revenue delivered yet another blow, a $9,876 lien on Judy Christy's assets for cigarettes she had bought and smoked years ago. Ms. Christy, of Butler County, was one of tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians caught up in the state's ongoing sweep of people who bought cigarettes by the carton online and failed to pay the state's sales and excise taxes. Similar sweeps have been carried out in other states. * * * * *...

Three Edmond men have been named in a 59-count federal indictment that accuses them of illegally profiting from the sale of more than $3 million in untaxed cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. Khawer Saeed Ghill, 40, Ahsan Ullah, 41, and Asmat Ullah, 60, all were charged ... Some of the profits were transferred to Pakistan, the indictment claims.

Smokers across Rowan County are fired up about the possibility of the cost of a pack of cigarettes increasing by $1, and some even say they’ll start growing their own tobacco if North Carolina House Bill 341 is passed. “I’m going to do it regardless of what they do, even if I have to buy tobacco seeds and grow it myself,” Shane Allman said of the proposed increase. “I’ll cut it up as I need it, and roll it up as I need it. That way I can throw my middle finger up at the government.” Allman, a 33-year-old employee...

CONCORD, N.H. – Bucking a national trend of raising cigarette taxes, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Rhode Island have considered reducing theirs, hoping to draw smokers from other states and increase revenue. Supporters argue reducing the tax by a dime would make New Hampshire more competitive with Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts, while opponents say that even if the state experienced higher sales as a result it still would lose millions of dollars in revenue. It's very unusual for states to lower the tax, University of Illinois at Chicago economics professor Frank Chaloupka says. The increase in sales isn't enough to...

<p>BUFFALO, N.Y. — A New York appeals court on Tuesday lifted a temporary order blocking the state from collecting taxes on cigarettes sold by Native American stores to non-Indian customers.</p> <p>On Sept. 1, a state appellate judge in Rochester restored a restraining order that barred the state from collecting the $4.35-per-pack tax. But the court's five-judge panel, which took up the case last week, ruled that the state properly approved regulations for the levy.</p>

New York has the highest cigarette tax in the nation, but about a third of the cigarettes sold in the state aren’t taxed at all — they’re purchased over the Internet or at smoke shops run by the state’s American Indians on tribal land. Tribes in New York are supposed to collect sales tax from any nonnatives who come onto tribal land to buy cigarettes. But the tribes have long refused to collect the tax. When the state announced that it would begin collecting the money on Sept. 1, the two sides ended up in court. A state judge last...

Two-year-old Indonesian boy Ardi Rizal puffs on a cigarette in the yard of his family home in Sumatra. The chain-smoking toddler has cut back to 15 cigarettes a day thanks to "therapy focused on playing", a child welfare official has said. (AFP/Ahmad Naafi/SRIWIJAYA POST/File)

Teenage smoking is often thought of as kind of innocent experiment, but a drag on a friend's cigarette may be the beginning of something that will be hard to shake. A study of adolescent smokers in the journal Pediatrics tracks the course of addiction to nicotine among a group of sixth-graders. After following 1,246 middle-school children for four years, researchers say a pattern emerged of occasional smoking that led to an addiction to tobacco: A cigarette a month will do it. "When people are just wanting a cigarette, every now and then, they think they just enjoy smoking," says study...

And you thought you had a bad smoking habit. Ardi Rizal isn't even out of diapers, but he already smokes around 40 cigarettes every day,

Two-year-old smokes 40 cigarettes a day Indo Asian News Service Ardi Rizal is just a two-year-old boy, but is not less than a chain smoker. Rizal who lives in a fishing village Musi Banyuasin, Indonesia, smokes at least 40 cigarettes in a day. He got addicted to smoking after his father gave him a cigarette when he was just 18-months-old, reports thesun.co.uk. He weighs more than 25 kilograms and finds it almost impossible to run with other kids. "He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells...

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found. In a paper published in the American Chemical Society's bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the scientists in China said they identified nine chemicals after immersing cigarette butts in water. They applied the extracts to N80, a type of steel used in oil pipes, and found that they protected the steel from rusting. "The metal surface can be protected and the iron atom's further dissolution can be prevented,"...

THE tax on cigarettes will rise by 25 per cent from midnight as part of the Federal Government's crackdown on smoking. The Government will also force tobacco companies to use plain packaging from July 1, 2012. The changes will cut tobacco consumption by six per cent and the number of smokers by two or three per cent - about 87,000 Australians, the Government said. The 25 per cent tax increase will mean an increase of about $2.16 for a pack of 30, raising the cost to about $17.95.

A new pill that could cure one of the most lethal forms of cancer is being developed by scientists. British researchers have found that a drug destroys tumours in a form of inoperable lung cancer that kills more than nine out of 10 sufferers. The treatment works by blocking the growth of the cancer cells and eventually causing them to self destruct. In more than 50 per cent of the trials, the treatment, which appears to have no side affects, killed all traces of the disease. "We are very excited about it," said Professor Michael Seckl, the molecular oncologist who...