As always, feel free to add keywords as appropriate.
While traveling in up state New York several years ago, I met an older lady from the U.K. She marveled at how cheap cigarettes were here (in New York). I gave her one of my Winstons to try, she had never heard of that brand, she liked it so I gave her what she referred to as a “packet” of them and since she had told me that she was traveling to Virginia and on to the Carolinas, I told her to stock up there, where they were much cheaper than New York.
Doesn’t the U.K. tax cigarettes to death as bad as or worse than the U.S.? Why would they want the tobacco companies to quit doing business in the U.K.?
Some UK tobacco stats here:
http://www.the-tma.org.uk/tma-publications-research/facts-figures/uk-tobacco-market-summary/
Tax-wise:
Tax revenue from tobacco in 2010/11 amounted to an estimated £11.1 billion – £9.1 billion in excise duty plus £2 billion in VAT.
(today’s L/US$ conversion around $17.5 Billion dollars
Apparently they don’t want any business in those taxes either...
You'd never know the Prime Minister is a Tory, would you !
Cameron's government is promoting gay marriage, also.
I guess the UK has their share of TINOs just like we have our share of RINOs.
Leni
American smokers pay less duty because they don’t have an NHS to fund which treats the hundreds of thousands of people suffering smoking related illnesses each year. If the UK stopped the NHS treating smoking related ilnesses and insisted smokers had to buy private healthcare, the duty could be reduced.
It won’t happen of course, but that’s the theory!
The poor sheep, formerly known as Brits, don’t have much of anything left to enjoy by now, and no freedoms left to enjoy any of it anyway. I’d feel sorry for them, if they hadn’t done it to themselves, and are still doing it.