Experts increasingly contemplate end of smoking

Associated Press ^ | Feb 9, 2014 5:53 PM EST | Mike Stobbe

[Olog-hai]

Health officials have begun to predict the end of cigarette smoking in America.

They have long wished for a cigarette-free America, but shied away from calling for smoking rates to fall to zero or near zero by any particular year. The power of tobacco companies and popularity of their products made such a goal seem like a pipe dream.

But a confluence of changes has recently prompted public health leaders to start throwing around phrases like “endgame” and “tobacco-free generation.” Now, they talk about the slowly-declining adult smoking rate dropping to 10 percent in the next decade and to 5 percent or lower by 2050. […]

Some experts doubt it. As long as cigarettes and other combustible tobacco products are legal, it’s likely some people will smoke them. Efforts to prohibit them are likely to fail, they say. (Remember Prohibition?) …

[Olog-hai]

Well, there’s also a cigarette “black market” of sorts, where people in high-tax areas buy from states with far lower tobacco taxes, often from “smugglers”. This happens around the world too, especially in Europe. It’s so prevalent that it’s even been nicknamed “buttlegging” (in spite of the sexual overtones) . . .

[Olog-hai]

CT’s spike in taxes will go down once people discover illicit cigarettes.

[Drango]

Every single state that has raised its cigarette tax rate has subsequently received more tax revenue than they would have received without a rate increase, despite the fact that cigarette tax increases reduce state smoking levels and despite any related increases in cigarette smuggling or tax evasion," according to a report on the organization's website — http://www.tobaccofreekids.org. "Put simply, the increased tax per pack brings in more new state revenue than is lost from the related reductions in the number of packs sold and taxed in the state."

WORD.

[Daffynition]

**cigarette smuggling or tax evasion**

My new occupation. Word. ;)