This is not an equitable tax as it will be a tax that targets groups that have the highest rates of smoking.
Those groups are minorities, the poor and the less educated.
Personally I hope they tax the crap out of cigs. but politically it would reduce revenue so they should keep them where they are.
Suckers.
PreSchool is not the place for the country’s crumb crunchers. All day kindergarten isn’t either. Our children who have attended all day kindergarten were probably more hindered than helped by the waste of time. Our half day kindergarteners were happy, rested, and given a lot more personal attention than our all day-ers. And the half day-ers were able to happily participate in sporting activities. Our all day-ers are too tired and want to skip practices. That is not a good thing.
But this administration is so full of evil that it does not surprise me that they want to take children into state controlled incompetence.
Smokers are already heavily subsidizing state education budgets and they are funding the SCHIP program! Smokers should be given medals and smoking should be encouraged! Think of the revenue that could be raised “for the children.”
The black market on Cigs is coming soon and the new Mafia will be born.
And the companies that actually produce the product sell it for what? $0.25 per pack?
"Government agents acting without authorization conducted dozens of undercover investigations of illegal tobacco sales, misused some of $162 million in profits from the stings and lost track of at least 420 million cigarettes, the Justice Department's inspector general said Wednesday.
In one case, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold $15 million in cigarettes and later turned over $4.9 million in profits from the sales to a confidential informant — even though the agency did not properly account for the transaction."
The Czar and his team of fancy-pants advisors realize that his jolly Muziks are always plastered and this could damage the war effort.
So, brilliant Czar that he was, he put a heavy, like very heavy, tax on Vodka. Unfortunately, talk about unintended consequences, it turned out that this was the government's (such as it was) major (read only) source of real revenue. No body could afford the taxed vodka, but they could sure slip over to Igor's still and buy some bootleg hooch, of which the Czar saw nary a ruble.
The rest, as Professor Peabody was wont to say to young Sherman, "was history." So if the nicotine fiends buy fewer and fewer cigarettes, where's the money for research and "the children" supposed to come from?
"Hey can I buy cigarettes with my EBT Card?"