No doubt smuggling will increase BUT smoking will also decrease. I and many conservatives want a decrease in smoking.
Getting people to quit smoking through reasoned argument, shame, or any other private interaction is fine. Empowering government to coerce people to stop smoking is ideologically no different than any other leftist social engineering experiment.
We can use that reasoning to fix so much of what ails this country. I don’t like fat people ergo I support a tax on junk food so I can force people to conform to my wishes. It would be for the greater good and that is all that matters in the end. I don’t like mass shootings so a bullet tax is a great idea. I really like this ideal of signaling out certain groups to punish because the ends justify the means.
Poor Blacks and Latinos who evade a lot of other taxes pay cig tax.
I’d probably vote nay on any tax increase on principle but I ain’t gonna complain. Call me a fascist if you like but the sh*t is pure poison and a foul-smelling menace to my nostrils, I hope it can slowly be eliminated, damn the Indians for introducing it to the White man. Even trade for giving them smallpox I guess.