Senate Bill S. 1490; Tax increase on cigs

American Conservative Union ^ | September 26, 2003 | ACU Action Alert

[Conspiracy Guy]

bttt

[azhenfud]

"This newest bill is simply a huge income transfer from smokers to 'farmers'."

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.

[Bonaparte]

"start rolling your own, better yet - Grow your own!!!"

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.

[Bonaparte]

"About how much they [P. Morris] are against smokers and smoking."

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.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

Smoking has been picked on enough!Let's tax everything that is homosexually pornographic,health food and exercise equipment.Only a political coward would tax smoking.

[supercat]

That is how the market works without gov;t intervention. Eventually the there will be winners who dominate a market and those winners will begin to control the market. With or without the gov't the smoking bans are coming. Its just that the big business is using the gov as a tool to hasten them.

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.

[Thoughts]

Got a letter with my cigarettes yesterday telling about Senate Bill S1177 which will restrict where you can buy cigarettes, only from those vendors approved by the government. It will put the Indian's sale of cigarettes out of business & take away our economic freedom of choice & will be another blow against free enterprise. So I don't think they are thinking too much about a tax increase. They are more concerned about another government take-over, similar to 1767 when tea could only be transported & sold to selected vendors.