City smokers to start paying $7 a pack today

News Radio 88 ^ | 7/1/02

[areafiftyone]

(New York-AP) -- It's costly to be a smoker in New York City now.

Beginning today, cigarette smokers in the city will pay more than seven dollars a pack for many major brands. The Bloomberg administration's new tax on cigarettes is expected to raise an additional 111 (M) million dollars of revenue this year.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the tax will prevent 50-thousand deaths -- including over 33-thousand premature deaths among city children.

The law raises the city tax on cigarettes from eight cents a pack to one dollar and 50 cents a pack.

Smokers in New York City will now pay more than double the national average for cigarettes.

Critics of the new tax say consumers could avoid the taxes by buying cigarettes over the Internet, in nearby states or from Indian reservations and from the underground market.

The mayor spent months negotiating with the City Council over how to close a five (B) billion dollar budget gap.

Besides the new cigarette tax, new fees were approved for cell phones and parking tickets for the budget year -- which begins today.<

[biblewonk]

If you 'talk' this way about your mother-in-law in front of your children, I wouldn't doubt if they feel the same way about you when you are elderly and sick. I feel sorry for you.

My 8 kids see me give 10 percent of my income to the Lord via my Mother in Law. They see me do what the Word says I should do for a woman that is very unpleasant and who has always treated my political views with contempt. They see me be kind to a woman whose 2 husbands beat her up to the point of having a stroke and a brain tumor. They see me very sad at what she had done with her life and how hard she has made it on herself by picking crummy husbands and by abusing her body.