DUH.
A federal tax is needed to stop interstate arbitrage.
“DUH.
A federal tax is needed to stop interstate arbitrage.”
Ah yes, spoken like a good servant to the supreme government.
Then you get an international arbitrage. The cartels would love it.
It's not so simple since states want to have their fingers into our wallets directly, not to beg for a trickle with strings attached from the feds. Of course, as the two fight over it, increasing fraction of smokers shifts to completely untaxed cigarettes and tobacco smuggled from abroad (e.g. China, Ukraine, Mexico) and from Indian reservations.
Smokers will naturally choose to do the business with the least evil and the least greedy criminals, which means mafia and drug cartels rather than state and federal governments.