Posted on 03/29/2009 7:28:53 PM PDT by GSP.FAN
President Obama signed a law early in his administration to raise taxes from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack of cigarettes and from 19.5 cents to 50 cents per pound for chewing tobacco.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Always refer to this as ‘The Obama Tax’. We will be saying that alot in the next 4 years.
Does the $24 per pound loose tobacco tax increase affect pipe tobacco or just loose tobacco for roll your own cigs?
Going to get my Chantix prescription tomorrow.
after this tax goes into effect i will rely solely on my electronic cigarette.
It’s ‘for the children’. /s
The spending side is an abomination and indefensible.
And I know it's fashionable to mock children's issues here on FR but, the tax increase makes a lot of sense. As price increases, demand decreases. Econ 101. The reality is 90% of all smokers started as teenagers.
Adults don't smoke. Teenagers smoke and then become adults after it’s way too late to quit. Reducing teenage smoking is a valid goal and I support it. Every conservative should support a reduction in kids smoking.
I’m just making fun of Nancy Pelosi defending every absurd law that it passed. It’s her ‘catch phrase’.
I read your post, and then I read your tagline, and I realized you must be joking with one of them. Which is it?
How many here are for a “Drango” tax?
I still have 2 days left to buy.....
You know, I don’t really care if anyone of legal age smokes.
I don’t like smoking, have never smoked, don’t like to be smoked around – but I’m not about to enter that slippery slope of telling someone NOT to consume something that’s perfectly legal for them to consume just because it’s not good for them.
The next step, then, will be for The Nanny State to tax things that *I* want to consume that they consider, in their infinite wisdom, aren’t good for ME - like Burger King.
Then we’ll find ourselves with a “beef tax” at our local grocery story because, after all, eating that hunk of steak can’t possibly be as good for you as a nice pre-digested soyburger.
Then, when they’re done with that, they’ll just follow it up with a general food tax, air tax, and perhaps a daily tax (payable weekly) just for allowing us to continue to live.
How do feel about children smoking?
> And I know it’s fashionable to mock children’s issues here on FR but, the tax increase makes a lot of sense. As price increases, demand decreases. Econ 101. The reality is 90% of all smokers started as teenagers.
As tax increases, more money for organized crime importing cigarettes from Mexico and Indian reservations.
Sorry, this is not going to work. Don’t believe me? Check out the Prohibition era.
children’s issues ?
I am a adult and i enjoy smoking,i drink as well, why am i getting taxed.
I guess we cannot tax the obese people or the gay people that would not be PC.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let's talk about this cigar tax, this cigarette tax. The president says he going to veto it. He "reiterated today his threat to veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children’s health insurance by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes." This includes that whopping 20,000% increase on the tax on cigars. The tax on cigars right now is five cents. It will go to ten bucks on large cigars. By the way, for those of you who are not cigar aficionados as am I, a large cigar is defined as anything that is not a cigar that will fit in a pack of 20, like cigarettes do. And those aren't cigars. They might be called cigarillos, but if they're made by a machine, you may as well give 'em to the homeless. So the point is, every cigar is a large cigar, ten bucks. The president is threatening to veto it.
Now, here's my problem with this. This is liberalism on the march. This is not a health issue, just like global warming is not a science issue. This is liberalism. This is a tax issue. This is what liberals do. They raise taxes, and they get people to go along with it by targeting a segment of society that is defenseless and helpless, the itty-bitty children. They target the evil in society who are behaving in ways that liberals highly disapprove, i.e., smokers. They've about wrung the cigarette tax thing dry, although that tax is going to be exorbitantly high now. But now they focus on a forgotten area of the tobacco industry, the premium cigar industry. I'm going to tell you people, there is no comparison to a cigar and a cigarette. The cigar is pure tobacco. There are no additives in it. There are no chemicals in it. Only idiots inhale 'em, and not many do for very long. They are a relaxation experience, and it's a whole different mind-set if you're cigar aficionado than if you're a cigarette smoker. If you want to smoke cigarettes, I'm not condemning anything, I'm just pointing out the difference here.
The percentage of the tobacco business that is devoted to cigars is less than 2%, all the cigarettes worldwide and so forth. This tax will put them out of business. But I'm getting off the main point. I am deviating from my main thrust. The main thrust is this is not a health issue. They're using again the little bitty children. Why in the world should one segment of our society be targeted for a tax increase to pay for health care benefits that the parents of these kids ought to be finding a way to afford themselves? If that can't be done, then spread the burden of paying for it, but we've already got how many damn children's health programs do we have? I know that taxes on cigarettes already are going to a lot of this. That's why I've said for years, the cigarette smokers of this country deserve our thanks. They deserve congressional medals of honor because they continue to buy these things and their taxes are funding children's health programs already. What I think ought to happen here, I think the products that these itty-bitty children use ought to be taxed. They're the ones, they ought to be forced, their parents, to pay for their kids' health care.
Why should cigar smokers have to do it? What do kids eat? They eat vanilla Ice cream, they eat Doritos, they eat Coke and Pepsi and 7-Up and whatever, Red Bull spiked with who knows what. I don't know what they do, but make the parents of these kids, every time they're buying a Snickers, raise the tax on a candy bar five up bucks. Diaper tax, absolutely. And if you get throw-away diapers to save the environment, tax those at ten bucks a diaper. Cartoon taxes, that's right. If you watch Cartoon Network, special tax collected on your cable bill. If the itty-bitty children are going to be the beneficiaries of this, why in the hell is somebody that has nothing to do with the itty-bitty children paying for it? How come big government's going to come around -- and I know they think this is going to succeed because they have created such hatred for cigarette smokers in this country. They have successfully over the years created such hatred, secondhand smoke kills. It doesn't. Firsthand smoke doesn't universally kill. I see these numbers, 400,000 cigarette related deaths a year. They don' t know that. Prove it. But the number's out there, just like three million homeless were out there.
Dawn, it looks like you're really getting irritated in there. Is it because I am not sympathetic to the plight of our poor, obese, itty-bitty children who don't have health care? This is not about the kids. It's just a technique to sell this. And of course, name for me the pro-smoker lobby. The cigar association, there's a trade group. I've spoken to them. Great bunch of guys. Everybody I've met in the cigar industry is a fine person, and they're being targeted here. They haven't done a thing. Kids don't smoke their product! Anyway, it just burns me up. The president is going to veto it; reiterated his promise to do that.
END TRANSCRIPT
July 17, 2007
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jerry in Scottsdale, Arizona, hello, sir.
CALLER: Morning, Rush. How are you doing?
RUSH: I'm fine.
CALLER: Let's get straight to it. The source of the controversy in the Democrat Congress was proposing to raise a tax on cigars to $10 per cigar --
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: -- to raise $35 to $50 billion for state children's health insurance.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: It's "for the children."
RUSH: It's for the children. In the name of saving the children, big government has targeted yet another industry to destroy.
CALLER: So the Winston Churchill that I just started smoking cigars with is going to go from $10 to $20 each.
RUSH: Oh, I know. The maximum cigar tax will be $10 a cigar. It's now at 5¢. The cigar industry as a percentage of the whole tobacco industry is like 2%, if that. This cigar tax increase is sort of hidden in here. Well, it's not hidden anymore, but the bill is written to make it look like it's really a tax that's targeted on cigarettes. The tax on cigarettes will go up a dollar a pack from what it is now -- and the cigar thing is even worse, from 5¢ to $10 -- to pay for kids' health care. Cigars have long been ignored as a source of revenue because compared to cigarettes and other tobacco products, there aren't that many of them sold. Somebody has figured out here that there's a whole lot of money to be made. Children's health care? I thought the tobacco settlements and all the taxes now were used and being directed to children's health care programs. I guess this is children's insurance. There's also -- and I'm not sure about this. The markup on this bill is still happening, but I think, in addition to the $10 a cigar tax, which is going to people these people out of business. It will be like the thing they did on the yachts, the luxury tax.
It'll put these people out of business. People will go elsewhere to find cigars. They'll find 'em. They'll find a way to do 'em. They'll find a way to get 'em to avoid paying this US tax. I'm still checking this out, but I think in addition to the per-stick tax, manufacturers as of January '08 next year, if this thing becomes law, are going to have a 50% tax on their current inventory that's all on the floor of the warehouse, before it gets to the retailers. I'm still checking this, but this is one of the bullet points that I got from somebody who analyzed the bill. So if a cigar company has a million dollars in inventory cigars, then before those cigars can leave for retail he has to pay $500,000 to the United States Treasury -- and this is Democrats, folks. This is who they are. I was telling somebody about this last night. They said, "Why are they doing this?"
"They're Democrats! They raise taxes."
This friend said, "No, this is aimed at you. You're the best known cigar smoker in the country. This is like the Limbaugh tax."
It's more than that. These people are trying to put the tobacco business out of business without doing it via legislation under the guise of doing it "for the children." This is what liberalism is. This is what Democrats do. They target businesses that they don't like and they use government to harm 'em, maybe even destroy 'em.
END TRANSCRIPT
“Every conservative should support a reduction in kids smoking.”
Should every conservative also support outlawing cooks using lard to fry things?
Should every conservative also support outlawing people spending more than 30 minutes in the sun per 24 hours?
Should every conservative also support outlawing plaid shirts?
Should every conservative also support outlawing...
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