Posted on 07/23/2002 2:17:38 AM PDT by JediGirl
DENVER (Reuters) - Tax hikes on cigarettes imposed recently by states and cities across the United States is not only helping their coffers but is proving a strong deterrent to smoking, an anti-tobacco group said on Monday.
"In several states, consumption declined 20 percent or more and new revenues in the millions of dollars were still realized," the Smokeless States National Tobacco Policy Initiative said in a study to be presented at the National Conference of State Legislatures annual meeting in Denver.
New York City led the way with a $1.42 tax hike that put cigarettes at $7, but less drastic increases also produce healthy results, the groups found in its study.
An increase in the price of cigarettes of only 10 percent reduces cigarette consumption among teens by 7 percent, the study said. The anti-tobacco group argues that higher taxes will keep teens from smoking, resulting in fewer deaths from tobacco related illnesses and reductions in future healthcare costs.
Four states passed higher cigarette taxes last year, and 16 states plus Puerto Rico have increased their tax since January of this year.
The anti-tobacco group is a program established by the American Medical Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
State lawmakers will also be told that crossing a state line for a cheaper pack of cigarettes only accounts for one percent of all smuggling and that two-thirds of all cigarettes sold in the United States are sold as single packs.
What is your problem. Who said any of us wants to quit. None of us are doing anything illegal. It's like you find an automobile on the Internet cheaper then what you have in town. You order it over the Net. What's the big deal.
The states are using smokers to carry the budget burden, and if you can't see how wrong that is, I feel sorry for you.
It's been our right to smoke for a long, long time. Most of us do NOT want to quit, but we DO want big Government to butt out of our lives. And don't worry. If you hate smokers, even if they ARE conservative, we don't want to be around you anymore then you want to be around us.
Hey, I thank you for your contribution. I got tired
of doing it, myself, back when a carton was only
ten dollars. But, wrong? To the extent that all
vice taxes and lifestyle laws are wrong, I agree. But
most of my smoker conservative friends can't see
past their own butts. Pun intended.
Ah...... so thats where you're at.
In fact, Tumbleweed, the number of people (smokers and non-smokers, alike) who contract cancer is 1 in 3. Of those, 1 in 4 will die from cancer.
The number of smokers who will contract lung cancer (supposedly the most increased risk of smoking) is, at the very most, 1 in 25.
To put it another way, for every 100,000 smokers in a western country, 4,000 will contract lung cancer at some stage in their life (most very late in life).
However, for every 100,000 nico-nazis in a western country, 30,000 will contract cancer of some kind.
And, even if every smoker in a western country gave up the smokes and became nico-nazis, 30,000 of them would still get cancer.
Oh, yeah, and the other 70,000 of them will die one day. Probably in a nursing home with the other 66,000 smokers!
Nailed it in one!!
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