Posted on 03/29/2009 8:09:02 AM PDT by FromLori
Many non-smokers have said this new tobacco tax doesn't affect them. Think again!
When the Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009 goes into effect on April 1, 2009, there will be unintended consequences for everyone in the United States - whether or not they smoke. There are also expected consequences, such as cigarette smuggling across our border. According to the Arizona Department of Revenue, increased taxes on tobacco will increase black market sales as well as tobacco smuggling from Mexico. Within a year of the enactment of this tobacco tax, our federal government will begin a study to find out how much revenue is being lost to tobacco smuggling and to find ways to recover this lost revenue. However, those are only the expected consequences. To find out how this law will affect you, your family and our nation, read "SCHIP Tobacco Tax: Bad News for Smokers - Worse News for the U.S." at:
http://headsupusa.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/schip-tobacco-tax-increase-how-it-will-affect-non-smokers/
(Excerpt) Read more at freedomsphoenix.com ...
Yeah but in a legal environment when big agricultural companies like Monsanto get into producing marijuana strains and selling seeds and big corporate growers are able to produce huge volumes of super potent product on large efficient farms prices will drop and it won't necessarily cost several times as much to produce super potent product than mediocre product like the Mexican out there today. I bet they end up taxing the really strong stuff at a higher rate, just to keep the prices different and encourage people to use less potent product, kind of like what we see with whiskey and beer today.
“If it is legalized, and a stoner rear ends my truck at a stoplight, I want the right to beat the livin’ crap out of him with a tire iron and not get sued.”
Like you can take a tire iron and beat the living crap out of the drunk that hits your car today without getting in trouble? Personally I think most people who want to smoke pot are already smoking it and those few who will get really stoned and drive are already doing that for the most part. It doesn't impair people as much as alcohol can to begin with. I don't think we'll see any huge increase in marijuana intoxication related auto accidents.
How about we just STOP sending our money to the government! Taxing anything to support another group of people is Socialism. I don’t have children by choice so why should I be taxed to take care of some snotty nosed brat?
Taxing pot is just plain stupid. It’s like taxing welfare recipients on their illegal weapons in their government housing. Think they are going to pay voluntarily?
A lot of people who could theoretically grow there own do not do so because of the many who have been harassed by the Feds for doing so.
We were talking about prices on ounces a moment ago and after I posted it dawned on me that most people don't buy ounces anyway because they don't need that much.
In a few states you get a fine for being in possession of less than an ounce rather than a felony.
Like you can take a tire iron and beat the living crap out of the drunk that hits your car today without getting in trouble?
That'll work, too.
All RYO companies are running their shelves down to empty.
There’s the floor tax that goes in effect on April 1st at Midnight - however many pounds are at their locations or in transit will be hit with a $23.70 per pound tax.
You aren’t going to find anything decent until the first week or two in April and then they will be $24 dollars more expensive.
Can always smoke pipe tobacco :)
That tax only went up @ $1/lb
The government thought of a long time ago which is why we have federal income tax withholding.
Taxing pot is just plain stupid.
What is your opinion of taxing alcohol and tobacco? The real problem with sin taxes is that they are regressive. The poor are always hit hardest with sin taxes.
It’s like taxing welfare recipients on their illegal weapons in their government housing. Think they are going to pay voluntarily?
Well the whole point was to make it legal then tax it. If you buy MJ at your local lacquer store of course you are going to pay voluntarily.
Everyone around here seems to be buying from the local Indian tribe. Indians don’t get taxed, which is just more ‘equal justice’ nonsense.
Taxing cigarettes is fine, as long as it is at the sales tax rate of the state they are being sold in.
They were WARNED --- but no one listened.
So much for the "convenient conservatives" who gloated over the punishing of those who enjoy tobacco product.
I say put a 53% tax on Mountain Dew and Swedish cars.
Or how about guns? It's for the children.
Premium gasoline only costs a few cents more per gallon. It doesn't costs several times what regular costs. I'm just saying what I think will happen, and what I think will happen is that the potency of the lowest grade product on the market will improve dramatically if they don't tax lower potency product at a lower rate. I bet the government ends up having too or three potency brackets and taxing them at different rates, or adding in larger excises for more potent product. It's not going to be up to me though. This is just what I suspect will probably happen. Commercial producers would probably be required to have their crops tested and they'll have to show the average potency or range of potency of their product and the government will end up taxing it at different rates.
And a lot of people who don't have a problem with taxing weed, even at a higher rate than most products, will jump on the "tax the potheads til they bleed" bandwagon just as the smoking Nazis have done to tobacco smokers.
Organizations like "The Partnership for a Marijuana-Free Universe" will pop up everywhere, providing jobs for the otherwise unemployable.
Government grants will fund thousands of "studies" on the effect of contact highs (second-hand smoke) on children and/or anyone within a 100-yard radius of marijuana smoke.
The demonization of pot smokers will be intensified a thousand-fold so that "advocates" can soften up the ground for confiscatory tax increases to fund their worthless, non-productive "jobs."
All one has to do is look at the template established for tobacco smokers to see where this would lead. After all, people who have no problem with taxing marijuana at a higher rate than other products couldn't care less - hey, they don't use the stuff.
Could I have one of those small cans of mahogany colored lacquer and a quarter ounce of skunk please?
Thanks for the ping!
Funny how we uneducated, trapped in the lower-than-a-snake-belly economic class could see this but they couldn't, huh?
Said of all sin taxes.
“According to the Arizona Department of Revenue, increased taxes on tobacco will increase black market sales as well as tobacco smuggling from Mexico.”
If that happens cigarettes will become much more of a gateway drug than they already are because people will be buying them from the same people who sell illegal drugs. Smokers who buy cigarettes from the black market will have increased exposure to illegal drugs and increased opportunities to use and buy them.
It is all just chip, chip, chip at our liberty and our dollars. Except now it is chop, chop, chop.
Well of course, that's because we're addle brained drug addicts...........dontcha know!!!
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