Posted on 03/29/2009 8:09:02 AM PDT by FromLori
Many non-smokers have said this new tobacco tax doesn't affect them. Think again!
When the Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009 goes into effect on April 1, 2009, there will be unintended consequences for everyone in the United States - whether or not they smoke. There are also expected consequences, such as cigarette smuggling across our border. According to the Arizona Department of Revenue, increased taxes on tobacco will increase black market sales as well as tobacco smuggling from Mexico. Within a year of the enactment of this tobacco tax, our federal government will begin a study to find out how much revenue is being lost to tobacco smuggling and to find ways to recover this lost revenue. However, those are only the expected consequences. To find out how this law will affect you, your family and our nation, read "SCHIP Tobacco Tax: Bad News for Smokers - Worse News for the U.S." at:
http://headsupusa.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/schip-tobacco-tax-increase-how-it-will-affect-non-smokers/
(Excerpt) Read more at freedomsphoenix.com ...
Between the taxes, EPA dust regulation of farms, and FDA regulation of tobacco, the tobacco industry is walking dead.
Non smokers should prepare for the next round of taxes. How does a 2200% tax increase for prepared foods sound? And when the resturants are crushed it will be something else.
Grow tobbacco. Soon to be as profitable as illegal marijuana on the black market.
What will be the next consumer item taxed specifically to support government health care?
Potato Chips? Soda? Beer , wine and spirits?
Lunch meat? Bread? Rice? Coffee?
To think nobody will be impacted by consumption taxes is shrill lunacy. The feds are coming to save us. Run Run Run!
The Food Safety Act will take care of small producers and family farms, farmers markets and organic growing clubs.
The taxes placed on individual producers of healthy, locally produced veggies, milk, and meat will drive them out of business in the name of government imposed safety for the people.
This is one of the most important, unconstitutional land use restrictive bills ever to go through congress. It can even affect home gardens and availability of seed.
This program-based-on-tobacco-tax was a fraud from the start. You don’t support a program by adding horrific taxes on specific products - “bad” or otherwise and expect a steady or increasing income.
They intended to tax general revenue from the start and used the tax-on-tobacco smokescreen (no pun intended) to slide it through. People will go black market or just quit and collapse whatever revenue stream this tax was supposed to provide.
How about marijuana?
Make it legal and tax it like alcohol or tobacco.
Put a $50 per ounce tax on marijuana and it would be cheaper to the user and it would take the profits out of the hands of organized crime (if you don’t consider government organized crime that is).
Might see more rows of Burley in home gardens this year.
Why tax any consumer item so to feed the Fed appetite for control of anything?
I don’t work my ass off to feed the Fed Piggy Bank so they can feed and nurture the unproductive, lazy, and irrsponsible.
In my area Mexican pot goes for about $60 to $80 an ounce, less if people have really good connections. A $50 an ounce tax would be too high here for that dirt cheap low grade product, which is what most pot smokers around here use because they don't want to pay several times as much for fancy indoor grown stuff. I'm all for legalizing pot though. I think they should start with just regular sales taxes though to knock out the black market and then slowly start adding in excises as legal growers and distributors get their systems dialed in and competition drives the prices down to a fraction of what they are today. Eventually what they could do is tax it at different rates for low potency and high potency product, have two or three categories taxed at different rates. It will get so cheap that it won't cost that much more than tobacco in bulk wholesale and there will be a lot of room for taxes. High taxes would be the only thing that could keep the cost to consumers anywhere close to what they pay today. They just need to be mindful that if they go too high and prices to consumers start getting higher than they are today in the black market that they will encourage a organized crime to produce and sell black market marijuana and that would negate much of the benefit of legalization.
Had to make a minor correction there; none of us want our hard earned money going to those who suck at the government teat but we don’t have a choice.
Uhh...Actually, you do.
Just like the rest of us.
In my misspent youth I was some what familiar with the drug culture. So I know a little about MJ.
Remember that they call marijuana Weed for a reason; it will grow almost anywhere.
And as I recall there was never any effort to protect the seed stock of the “good stuff”. Whenever you got a bag of higher quality MJ there was always a few seeds in the bag.
Let’s also remember that there is no shortage of people in every state who are experienced growers of MJ.
Once they cultivation and sail of MJ is legal it will take no time at all for the price of marijuana to be forced down to the point where the good stuff is selling for $10 per ounce or less.
But you are correct that $50 per ounce is probably to high and that it would support a black market at that level. Some study would need to be done to determine the optimum level of tax that MJ could support.
On the other hand once it is legal there may need to be some sort of license required to grow MJ. Like I said above it will grow most anywhere with little effort. You could grow it in your garden or in a pot in your living room.
Why pay enormous taxes if you can grow your own?
It will effect nonsmokers because eventually they will run out of smokers to persecute. The overweight are next in line, and then drinkers. Glad to be free of tobacco, myself, though. That was a losing proposition for me all around.
Why do people who can legally grow their own by super expensive pot at these medical marijuana dispensaries in California or “coffeeshops” in the Netherlands? From what I've read people with medical marijuana cards who could just grow their own are often paying $20 or $30 a gram at these pot shops in California. Maybe they don't have anywhere to grow it, don't have the time or the patience or know how to mess with it for several months to get a batch grown and dried and cured. I don't know. Most pot smokers probably don't smoke enough to justify all that trouble.
We were talking about prices on ounces a moment ago and after I posted it dawned on me that most people don't buy ounces anyway because they don't need that much. They buy quarter ounces or eighth ounces and in the case of the super potent expensive stuff they actually buy single grams, and of course it's cheaper the more you buy. While Mexican might cost $60 an ounce where I live most who buy it pay $25 or $30 for a quarter ounce and a $50 tax on ounces wouldn't work out to that much, less than $1.80 for each gram that will get them high several times. It would only be a big deal for those who buy ounces, super heavy smokers or lighter smokers looking for volume discounts who only buy a few times a year.
Premium, regular and sh*t grades will carry different prices anyway, so the revenue generated will be different. Keep the tax rates the same.
If it is legalized, and a stoner rear ends my truck at a stoplight, I want the right to beat the livin' crap out of him with a tire iron and not get sued.
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