Free Republic

Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him. And even though lots of people don’t want to hear it, reasonable people can disagree on whether illegally excessive force was to blame. Personally, watching the ubiquitous video of Garner’s arrest, it looks like excessive force to me. But the simple fact is that a Staten Island grand jury saw evidence that led it to conclude otherwise. People should...

Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him. And even though lots of people don't want to hear it, reasonable can disagree on whether illegally excessive force was to blame. Personally, watching the ubiquitous video of Garner's arrest, it looks like excessive force to me. But the simple fact is that a Staten Island grand jury saw evidence that led it to conclude otherwise. People should at...

Strict laws must be put in place to combat New York City’s massive tobacco smuggling problem, former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives Assistant Director Rich Marianos told The Daily Caller News Foundation.“Street gangs, narcotics crews, Russian and Asian organized crime networks, and terrorists are trading cigs for guns, narcotics — even humans,” Marianos, who was with the ATF for 27 years, said.NYC’s disproportionately high cigarette tax is allowing hardened criminals and even terrorists to fund illicit activity and make huge profits, with almost no risk, thanks to lax tobacco smuggling laws.Since 2006, the tax rate on NYC...

The rapid decline in Americans' tobacco use has leveled off, and now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling for new taxes, regulations and warnings to force Americans to kick the habit. In a new report, the CDC found that 50 million, or one in five, Americans use tobacco every day or some days, and 60 million, or one in four, “every day, some days or rarely.”It also revealed that the use of electronic cigarettes is surging, and and e-cigarettes now account for nearly 5 percent of the smoking market.Worse: Americans aged 18-24 showed up as the top...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From TheHill.com: "Two weeks after fighting for the survival of its signature healthcare reform law before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration will be back in court Tuesday to defend another part of the president's agenda to make Americans healthier." Do you love the way that's written at TheHill.com? Let me read this to you again. The headline: "Another Health Law Faces Court Challenge." But TheHill.com, total slaves to the Obama administration: "Two weeks after fighting for the survival of its signature healthcare reform law before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration will be back in court...

RICHMOND, Va. -- More work needs to be done to keep young Americans from using tobacco, including creating smoking bans and increasing taxes on tobacco products, the U.S. Surgeon General's office said in a report released Thursday. Almost one in five high school-aged teens smokes, down from earlier decades, but the rate of decline has slowed, the report said. It says it's particularly important to stop young people from using tobacco because those who start smoking as teenagers can increase their chances of long-term addiction. They also quickly can experience reduced lung function, impaired lung growth, early heart disease and...

Online cigarette buyers hit with taxes She lost her job. She lost her husband. She lost her home. And that's when the state Department of Revenue delivered yet another blow, a $9,876 lien on Judy Christy's assets for cigarettes she had bought and smoked years ago. Ms. Christy, of Butler County, was one of tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians caught up in the state's ongoing sweep of people who bought cigarettes by the carton online and failed to pay the state's sales and excise taxes. Similar sweeps have been carried out in other states. * * * * *...

After decades of increasing tobacco taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, some states are beginning to buck this fiscally burdensome and irresponsible trend. On March 17, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut the state’s cigarette tax by a dime, to $1.68 per pack. Two other states with high tobacco taxes—New Jersey and Rhode Island—are also considering proposals to reduce taxes on tobacco products to make their state’s tax rates more competitive. This reversal in policy would be fiscally responsible and especially beneficial to low-income people. Many economists have noted that many states’...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Family and friends have suddenly found themselves blocked from shipping cigarettes and other tobacco products to American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq because of a new law meant to hamper smuggling and underage sales through the mail. The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2009 quietly took effect June 29.....

For years tobacco companies have successfully fought off attempts by California lawmakers and health groups to increase the cigarette tax. But next month, as the state grapples with the worst financial crisis in recent history, that may change. Lawmakers will consider a proposal to hike cigarette taxes by $1.50 per pack and raise $1.2 billion annually. During the last decade, cigarette makers have spent tens of millions of dollars to kill 14 straight attempts to make smokers pay more. But with the state facing a staggering $21.3-billion deficit and due to run out of cash in July, the tobacco tax...

USUALLY, I would wait until later in the year to protest a proposed $2.60-per-pack tax on cigarettes. But it's such a rotten idea, I can't wait. (No, I don't smoke.) Huge new taxes on specific groups of people create weird backlashes, probably skyrocketing sales of black-market cigarettes as smokers find creative ways to avoid this huge grab at their wallets. But far worse, the proposed $2.1 billion tax is horribly backward. It uses scandalously little of the windfall to pay for research into lung cancer or other smokers' diseases -- 2 percent. Instead this measure would transfer money from smokers'...

SACRAMENTO — An emerging new tale of age-old certainties — taxes and death — begins in California with the flip of a cigarette butt and ends in Iraq with a bullet hitting a U.S. soldier. Democratic legislators from the Bay Area and Los Angeles, focused on quality of life in the state, are pushing three bills that would hike cigarette costs for litter cleanup or easing deficit pressures. But federal terrorism investigators told The Argus on Thursday that such seemingly innocent legislation, further hiking high cigarette costs in California, would fuel their already tough battle against terrorist groups' lucrative smuggling...

If you are a smoker you remember too well when Governor Granholm pushed to raise the state’s tax on tobacco products from a $1.25 to $2.00. This increase forced many smokers to find alternatives. Some people quit, some people cut back, or found a cheaper place to buy. For many smokers they turned to the online vendor to purchase their tobacco products. It’s cheaper and best of all they don’t have to pay the $2.00 per pack sales tax. The luxury the internet shopper enjoys is the convenience of shopping at home. Products are less expensive and they think that...

Indians trying to save their reputation 10:42 PM PDT on Friday, June 11, 2004 By PAT McREYNOLDS / KING 5 News TACOMA, Wash. Native Americans are fighting back after federal agents raided 12 tribal smokeshops earlier this week. Shop owners didn't like their businesses being mentioned in the same sentence as Al-Qaeda. Just as motorists cross into Tacoma on I-5, a new sign blinks in to view that says: "We are not terrorists. We are American Indians. We have been fighting terrorism since 1492." KING "We are not terrorists. We are American Indians. We have been fighting terrorism since 1492."...

Russia, home to some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes and most committed smokers, is to risk the wrath of the tobacco industry and raise cigarette taxes by up to 30%. The excise increase has already been approved in a first reading in the country’s Duma (lower house) and is expected to take effect on 1 January 2005. For Russia the move is a radical step, but the traditionally smoker friendly country is starting from an extraordinarily low base. Domestically produced unfiltered cigarettes, which are popular with many Russians on lower incomes, cost as little as 20 p ($0.35; €0.29) a...

House set to reconsider increasing cigarette tax By AMY F. BAILEY The Associated Press 5/26/2004, 12:01 a.m. ET LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A proposal to increase the Michigan cigarette tax from $1.25 to $2 a pack as part of a budget-balancing effort is on the move again in the state Legislature. House leaders said Tuesday that they expected the chamber to vote on the measure during its Wednesday afternoon session. Last week, the chamber came up 11 votes short of the 55 needed to approve the 75-cent-per-pack increase on all tobacco products to help close deficits in the state budgets...

Just a half-mile into DuPage County, a banner hanging at a gas station beckons: "Attention smokers. No $10 Cook County tax." But the sign wasn't needed to draw in Sergio Zapata, 41. The Chicagoan buys a carton of cigarettes whenever his job as a security technician takes him outside Cook, where taxes have run $1 a pack--or $10 a carton--since April 1. < SNIP > Bud Kelley, a lobbyist for the Illinois Association of Tobacco and Candy Distributors, predicts that within six months at least 15 tobacco shops will open in the collar counties just across the Cook line. "I...

<p>New Yorkers dodging heavy taxes on cigarettes by buying from Native American sellers on the Internet could be hearing soon from the taxman.</p> <p>Under a settlement in the federal appeals court, the Ojibwa Trading Post, a popular online cigarette vendor based in upstate New York, has agreed to report its sales and hand over customer names to authorities every two weeks, effective immediately.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson proposed Tuesday to abandon a plan to raise California's car tax and instead increase cigarette taxes to $3 a pack -- the highest in the nation.</p> <p>"This tax is a voluntary tax. If you don't smoke, you don't pay the tax," said Wesson, D-Culver City.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) — As state after deficit-ridden state ratchets up cigarette taxes, authorities are bracing for some unwelcome consequences in the form of more aggressive smuggling and bolder use of the Internet as a tax-evading tobacco shop. Never before have so many states — 17 this year alone — approved cigarette-tax hikes in such a short time. Anti-smoking advocates call it a win-win situation, enabling states to reduce smoking and budget deficits simultaneously. In many legislatures, even tax-averse conservatives have supported the increases — expected to generate $2.2 billion annually in new revenue — as budget woes and anti-smoking...