As for machines, I strongly recommend the Excel.
Contrary to logic, this low cost plastic machine runs circles around the more expensive ones. Having used the more expensive metal machines, this one simply astounded us.
BUY IT!
Posted on 07/05/2002 8:06:56 AM PDT by Jean S
In Elizabethan England, the historian Egon Corti reports, tobacco sold for its weight in silver. That would suit New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just fine.
Bloomberg recently signed a bill raising the city's cigarette tax from 8 cents to $1.50 a pack. With a state tax of $1.50, the highest in the country, New Yorkers were already paying more for cigarettes than other Americans. Now the price of some brands is more than $7, nearly twice the national average.
Ostensibly, the tax hike was a revenue measure. "City officials say the new tax will bring a much-needed $111 million into the city's coffers this year," The New York Times reported, "helping plug a budget shortfall of nearly $5 billion."
But Bloomberg said it was really all about public health. "This may be the most important measure my administration takes to save people's lives," he declared, arguing that higher cigarette prices will encourage smokers to quit, giving them extra years in which to thank him for the favor he is doing them.
In fact, the mayor doesn't even want the money. "If it were totally up to me," he said, "I would raise the cigarette tax so high the revenues from it would go to zero."
Bloomberg thus announced the purity of his own motives even as he took his cut from a business the anti-smoking movement depicts as inherently evil, profiting from the deadly folly of its customers. When a New Yorker buys a pack of Marlboros, the city will make four or five times as much as Philip Morris does. But that's OK, because the mayor's heart is in the right place.
For politicians confronting budget deficits, the opportunity to raise money at the expense of an unpopular minority while expressing sympathy for the people they're fleecing is hard to resist. So far this year 10 states have raised their cigarette taxes, and several others are considering it. The levies in New Jersey and Massachusetts may soon match or exceed New York's.
But this competition to pick smokers' pockets--I mean, to save smokers' lives--does have limits. Although Bloomberg seems to think that a high enough tax would eliminate smoking, in the real world smokers have alternatives.
Rather than pay $7.25 for a pack of Camels, for instance, they can buy them online for $2.70. Or they can buy them untaxed in New York, courtesy of smugglers who already make a nice living transporting cigarettes from low-tax states in the South to high-tax states in the Northeast.
The cigarette tax in New York City, where I used to live, is more than 100 times the tax in Virginia, where I live now. I may get into the business myself.
Then again, the competition might be a little too rough for me. A few months ago the FBI announced the arrest of 17 people accused of smuggling cigarettes from North Carolina to raise money for the terrorist group Hezbollah.
The government said the ring was earning as much as $10,000 with each van load. Thanks to Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council, the potential earnings for terrorists have doubled.
Robert L. Shepherd, a former New York State tax official, predicts the city will see a decline in revenue as smokers shop around. "I think with $1.50 they'll pass the tipping point," he told the Times. That's what happened several years ago in Canada, where the government was forced to cut cigarette taxes in response to widespread smuggling and evasion.
Yet Bloomberg, who equates zero tax revenue with zero smoking, apparently thinks smokers will not be resourceful enough to avoid his tax. He also seems to discount the possibility that they will respond to higher prices by, say, economizing on other expenditures, getting a second job, dipping into their savings, going into debt, or turning to crime.
These assumptions are surprising, since Bloomberg also believes that life without nicotine is unthinkable for the average smoker. "This is not exactly freedom of choice," he informed opponents of the tax hike, "given that smoking is addictive and that the industry spends billions of dollars to get people hooked on it."
No doubt Bloomberg is right that some smokers will quit rather than pay exorbitant prices or go to the trouble of finding alternative supplies. But that choice will demonstrate that they were never the helpless victims he makes them out to be.
Bloomberg? Yep.
My wife loves to make cigarettes while watching TV. It keeps her hands busy.
So New York City - STUFF THAT!
New York City:
9 cartons x 10 packs per carton at $7.00 per pack =
$630.00
This is absolutly criminal!
Just a few minutes ago, I ordered the same 9 cartons, for the low price of:
Subtotal 57.99
Shipping 8.95
Tax 0.00
Total 66.94
Do these idiots think that we are just as brain dead as they are?
Here's some more math;
The average pack of smokes is 6.5 cubic inches and aren't very heavy
A typical semi-truck van measures 576" long (48') x 96" wide x 110" high....
How many packs of smokes can you smuggle in one trip? What is your minimum and maximum expected per/pack profits
Pretty much. For a while, there were some upstate NY'ers and Canadians making fat money floating smokes across Lake Ontario by the boatload...
As for machines, I strongly recommend the Excel.
Contrary to logic, this low cost plastic machine runs circles around the more expensive ones. Having used the more expensive metal machines, this one simply astounded us.
BUY IT!
I smoke 3 packs a day, so we would were these machines out in about 2 years. Just out of curiosity, we decided to order the cheep plastic Excell.
The quality simply astounded us! Each and every cigarette is now fully packed without any annoying gaps.
For those just starting, if the cigarette is not packed tightly along it's entire length, you may end up with burning tobacco falling upon you when you least expect it!
A machine that will pack a cigarette tube well, it worth it's weight in gold.
My bet is that 100s of building newspaper stand (many still run by blind guys) will go out of business as "lega;" cigarette sales shrink. Sure, smoking will decrease, but city tax revenue will decrease, as well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.