Posted on 09/30/2003 5:59:04 AM PDT by CSM
The Senate will soon be asked to vote on S. 1490, a bill sponsored by Senator Mitch McConnell, that if passed, attempts to impose a new $13 billion tax on tobacco manufacturers. Worse yet, Senators Judd Gregg, Ted Kennedy, and Mike DeWine plan to introduce legislation granting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) complete authority to regulate all areas of the tobacco industry. The mark-up of this bill will take place in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee within the coming weeks. Should the FDA bill be considered on the Senate floor, the McConnell tobacco quota buyout bill will be offered as an amendment.
Passage of these bills will burden lower and middle income Americans with one of the largest tax increases in the last decade, cost hundreds and perhaps thousands of jobs in economically depressed areas, exacerbate states' budget shortfalls, and stifle legitimate competition to the benefit of one market-dominant company, Philip Morris.
Dating back to the 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Act, government limits tobacco farmers by quantity and geography through quotas and a system of price supports that guarantee minimum prices for tobacco. But under the proposed bailout legislation, quotas would be eliminated and tobacco manufacturers would be forced into paying "farmers" anywhere between $11.4 billion to $15.7 billion, depending on the manufacturer's market share – the greater the manufacturer's market share the more the manufacturer pays. However, the vast majority of quota holders are not actually farmers. Rather, 85% of recipients simply own "quota." In fact, quota owners outnumber farmers by about four to one. These non-farmers are due to receive nearly $6 billion.
Compared to other commodity programs, the tobacco quota buyout is far richer. The average payment to tobacco quota owners under the proposed buyout will be more than 307 times higher than the average payment to any other farmer in the United States.
It's 12 times higher than peanuts, 137 times higher than corn, 167 times higher than wheat, and 1,467 times higher than soybeans. We're turning to you--our ACU Actionnet Army of Activists--to stop this bad legislation in its tracks. Type your zip code in the box above and urge your two Senators to vote "NO" on this legislation that would enrich only a handful of individuals and companies, most of whom do not even grow tobacco.
Begging to differ with you, there are some farmers I know who have yet to see one dime from their crop confiscated in the name of a "buyout". If the farmer can't get paid for his crop, and lawyers and government(s) are making loads from tobacco lawsuits, my idea to go offshore can't hurt the farmer very much.
As I stated elsewhere, if I were CEO of RJR, I'd announce today that I'd no longer sell tobacco products outside of North Carolina, but I'd ship them to an offshore retailer immune to gov regs who in turn exports them back into ONLY the states that request them. Then, I'd tell the Feds, if you want any more money find a constitutional means of getting it.
I've been rolling for 5 years.
I'm already planning for when I'll have to grow it as well. It's just a matter of time.
When it becomes illegal to grow, it won't matter anymore. McConnell and Kennedy will have turned us into a communist country by then.
Plenty of hypocrisy to go around. For many years, the French government has been clucking its tongue about tobacco, while raking in huge profits from it. Now, our own government is following suit, adopting tobacco as a major government cash cow while stigmatizing both the product itself and the consumers who are getting gouged.
If a certain portion of restaurant demand consists of diners who will prefer any smoking restaurant to any non-smoking restaurant, another portion of consists of diners who will prefer any non-smoking restaurant to any smoking restaurant, and the balance consists of people who will eat at either, then in a free market the proportion of smoking to non-smoking restaurants will roughly mirror the ratio between those first two categories.
If smokers are underserved in the marketplace, then odds are very good that a non-smoking restaurant would improve revenue by catering to smokers. Likewise if people who can't stand smoke are underserved, a smoking-allowed restaurant would benefit by catering to them.
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