[goodieD]

Anti-smoking nazi BUMP.

[morjon]

I've recently heard that the price of name brand idiot sticks in CA can go as high as $49 a carton.

[hellinahandcart]

I actually hit the "smugglers" link hoping to find a list of names (cuz I need names!). LOL, no such luck.

[dr_who]

This guy is a total idiot. He's just started one hell of a black market in cigarettes.

[AdA$tra]

They just raised the taxes on smokes here in Kansas as well. The Dept of Revenue info gal went on all the news shows to make it clear that anyone in possesion of more that 200 cigarettes without a Kansas tax stamp affixed will be fined $1,000 and could face jail time. I do not smoke, but I am considering starting a little side business...LOL.

[general_re]

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.

Pretty much. For a while, there were some upstate NY'ers and Canadians making fat money floating smokes across Lake Ontario by the boatload...

[Maelstrom]

Next comes violence as smugglers struggle over turf, followed by a call for increased police powers...a loss of civil liberties...

Just like Prohibition

and

JUST LIKE THE WAR ON DRUGS
Do you drug warriors get it yet?

[Tacis]

You'll have a black market, all right, but you'll also have a "cottage" black market, a black market operated by amateurs. This is a great business opportunity for all those who commute from Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. They can buy a carton at the station paper stand and sell it in the office for aprox. $10 more. The same guys that operate the NYC football pools will make a market in buying smokes in the same place they sell pool sheets. NYC will be awash in cigarettes that are available at less than the "market" rate.

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.

[NeoCaveman]

Puff....Ping

[Biblebelter]

Supposedly tourism is important to NYC. If that is true, then they ought to have a smoker's advisory in all their advertisements and commercials (BYOS) Bring you own smokes.

[SheLion]

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 maks them out to be.

NO WAY! It just forces smokers to go to the NET, or across state lines, Reservations or rolling our own. And let the state pound sand!

And ole Bloomberg! heh! He smoked pot and LIKED it. He's a dumb a$$.

They have screwed themselves by taxing cigarettes to high heaven. It's stupid now, for any smoker to pay into the state coffers!!

[Great Dane]

The smugglers started their engines a long time ago, and they are ready.

[rodeocowboy]

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.

This is proof that Republicans are somewhat as "big, nanny government" as Democrats are. In Michigan, we elected a republican house, senate, and governorship; what did they do? They made the seat belt law a primary offense instead of a secondary offense that our republican governor, John Engler, had promised it would remain. "Don't worry you stupid subjects, your government will save you from yourselves."

[SheLion]

RINO Mayor Bloomberg said: "If it were totally up to me, I would raise the cigarette tax so high the revenues from it would go to zero," said the mayor, who has said he hopes that the higher taxes will persuade smokers to quit and will prevent children from becoming smokers.

(Seems the mayor, has a double standard, when it comes to smoking. This is the same Mayor, which advocated, the hike in the city cigarette tax, to "discourage smoking".)

Bloomberg must still be smoking dope if he thinks anyone buys his nonsense that hiking the cigarette tax is a public health measure. The theory that people, especially "the children", stop smoking because of price increases has been discredited for quite some time. When California raised taxes a few years ago its smoking rate supposedly went down. For reasons never explained by anti-tobacco, but obvious to even a casual observer of human nature, the smoking rates in neighboring -- and low tax -- Nevada miraculously rose at just the same time. No one will quit in New York City but many will buy out of state or off the internet.

Even the bozos running New York don't believe people will quit. They estimate the new tax will bring in $111-million in the coming fiscal year. For the next fiscal year they estimate the tax will enrich the city coffers by $116-million. If masses of people are going to quit, as the mayor pretends, why would the taxes collected continue to grow?

[Calvin Locke]

I was going for an MBA and took a pricing course, and cigarettes came up, because the professor had just been contacted by somebody looking to hire a pricing expert for cigarettes. The prof said he declined but gave leads to the guy.

I'm not a smoker, ergo, I never paid attention until then. So Phillip Morris a short while later lowered the price of Marlboros. Ding-ding.

I was on vacation in Maine in 93 give or take, and the price of Marlboros that stuck in my mind was $1.55/pk.

[Timesink]

bump for bump list

[Jesse]

Yet Bloomberg, who equates zero tax revenue with zero smoking, apparently thinks smokers will not be resourceful enough to avoid his tax.

How does someone so stupid make so much money?

Anyway, now we know what some of next season's Sopranos episodes will be about.

[Vince Ferrer]

The Oneida Nation, the nearest reservation to NYC, is going to be richer than the Saudis in a few years.

[Clive]

"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."

It actually got to the point wherein the tobacco companies were participating in a tax evasion conspiracy involving shipping Canadian cigarettes to the US to be smuggled back into Canada through the Akwasasne - St. Regis Mohawk reserves.

That is another nice thing about New York from a smuggling perspective - an aboriginal reserve straddling the international boundary.

It got quite hairy for a while involving firefights in the reserve and on the river. At one point the municipal offices at Cornwall took some rounds.

[Jhoffa_]

Smuggling cigs had been going on for as long as Cigarette taxes have existed.

One notorious mob turncoat described how he got into the mafia with this gig. The plan was simple, drive across state lines.. buy as much as you can carry.. drive back.. drive around to factories & construction sites when they were on break.

He said when he first got into it and sold all he had after a couple of stops they started renting trucks to go make the buys.