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I order cigars on line and I have been reading everything I can about this subject.

This media report is a bit misleading. Here is the situation as I understand it:

--The Jenkins Act (federal law) prohibits the export of cigarettes from one state to another without the receiver promptly notifying their state and making arrangements to pay the state sales or use tax. This law was totally ignored until the last couple of years. Now states are threatening on-line cigarette vendors with litigation if they refuse to give up their customer lists. If a vendor rats out their customers they are out of business, so the names the states have gotten are from vendors who are going or have gone out of business. To date that is a small minority of vendors.

--Several attorney generals have also reached an agreement with major credit cards and UPS that they will not handle on-line cigarette purchases.

--In some states it is illegal to purchase cigarettes online. That law has also not been enforced to date anywhere to my knowledge. However the law is being used to intimidate on-line cigarette vendors and some will not ship to certain states.

--While the cigar community is very very nervous about all this activity cigars are not covered by any of these laws--so far. It is probably only a matter of time before they are. When that day happens cigar folks will be criminals no matter what they do so they probably would be better off ordering Cubans since at least those wouldn't be subject to the states' use tax. :-(

This nanny socialist political-correctness environment makes me want to puke. :-(

When I was a kid growing up my parents would always lecture me about the Holocaust and how we always had to jealously guard all our freedoms because the Nazis took away German freedoms one at a time.

The notion that the government should control our health since they are now paying for it with Medicaid and Medicare is very scary. They need more tax money to support these high-cost programs. Then they need to control our behavior to reduce those costs. Since there is zero likelihood of the government getting out of the health care business it appears we are doomed to drift into a cradle to grave government control.

At this point there is only one thing to do--smoke 'em if you got 'em.

The company my husband orders his cigars from has a list of states they will not ship orders to or take orders from - but I have yet to be able to get anyone there to explain to me why or even talk to me about the situation regarding the many credit card companies that will not honor tobacco charges online. And believe me, I have tried and tried danged hard.

The only reason the various states have finally remembered the Jenkins Act is that they have raised their cigarette taxes so astronomically that everyone started looking elsewhere for cheaper smokes.

I believe all lawmakers need to take at least an introductory economics course when it comes to such taxes as those on tobacco products (particularly cigarettes). doubling, tripling and in many cases even more than quadrupling cigarette taxes is no way to generate revenue. In fact it becomes a revenue loser because of expenditures to enforce it and deal with the criminal element of the black markets usoruious taxes create.

I am no math whiz, nor an economist, but I do have enough common sense to see what problems these ridiculous taxes create.

The next time you read of the busting up of a cigarette smuggling operation that has ties to terrorists - remember it is the lawmakers, not the smokers who are actually funding terrorism. And remind your elected representatives of that.