California Dreamin. LOL!
Posted on 08/10/2002 8:51:32 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:41:33 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
California cigarette smokers may have to cough up more money to help balance the state budget, but recent history indicates most of them won't resort to desperate measures to avoid a tax increase on their habit.
"There will be some who will look to buy their cigarettes out of state or online or at the Indian reservations," said Dave Hayes, research manager for the state Board of Equalization, which oversees cigarette taxes. "But the majority of them will shrug their shoulders and pay the tax."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
State legislators crossed the proverbial "Rubycon" (sp?) this summer with cigarette taxes. There are two many other options out there...and the price is simply too high for most smokers (in a lower economic bracket than average) to bear.
That means, most smokers will make the once-a-month, hour-long trip to a nearby state with lower taxes to pick a few cartons, if possible, or order from the Internet. Indian reservations,as noted, aren't that much of a bargain these days. And cigarette smuggling is only going to increase.
Dumb.Dumb.Dumb. We didn't learn our lesson in the 1920's, so we're going to have re-learn it again now. From this story, published last May.
"Next week, the alleged ringleader of an organized-crime cell based in Charlotte, N.C., will go on trial for providing cash and military-style technology to Hezbollah. This is the Lebanese-based guerrilla group designated a terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997. It has been tied to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and to the 1983 Marine barracks truck bombing in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen.
Federal prosecutors say that Mohammad Youssef Hammoud, his brothers and more than a dozen others collaborated in a major cigarette smuggling, money laundering and immigration fraud business to support Hezbollah activities abroad. The ring members purchased cheap cigarettes in Charlotte, where the tobacco tax is just five cents a pack, then hauled them to high-tax Michigan, which raised tobacco taxes from 25 cents a pack to 75 cents in 1994. Hammoud's operation is believed to have reaped millions of dollars of profit over a four-year period.
It's the same story in Canada and Sweden, where even the socialists have finally figured out that they should give up on their quasi-prohibitionist experiment and cut tobacco tax rates to put smugglers out of business. In New York, which recently imposed the highest tobacco tax in the nation ($1.50 a pack), police are bracing for an inevitable bootlegging bonanza. Yet, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants to tack on another $1.50 tax to cigarettes. That's sure to win him brownie points with the men and women in blue -- many of them smokers themselves -- who will now have to shoulder the added burden of chasing down droves of organized smuggling rings from low-taxing neighbor states, military bases, Indian reservations, Internet retailers and Mexican operatives. And possibly more Middle East terrorists."
"Greed is good." Right.
HaHa! That’s funny!
The hike is part of lawmakers' efforts to find a politically palatable solution to close a looming $23.6 billion gap in the state budget for the fiscal year that started July 1.
Aren’t the California smokers just a little tired of carrying the whole state on their backs?
and the increases are expected to cost smokers an additional $2.2 billion a year.
Wanna bet? If the California smoker is smart, he won’t HAVE to pay into the state coffers anymore!
Or they can quit smoking
LOL! Oh! Really!
California Dreamin. LOL!
Addicts my arse. People enjoy a legal product and they are NOT bending over anymore, my friend!
Hope your not OBESE! They will be coming after YOU next!
Amen! You tell em!
REALLY, MADAME? I didn't hear about that one. No kidding!
Just like polls, they can twist them anyway they want to look good on paper. More junk science?
And that is a MAJOR part of the problem.
Let them come, as a libertarian I am as clean of vice as the driven snow. Conservatives on this forum, however, have long been clamoring for more police powers to crack down on "druggies". The logical progression is for police powers against evil tobacco users, alcohol imbibers, and twinkieholics.
I am just quite bemused that Conservatives will soon become "libertines" as these vices are outlawed, yet they have no one to blame but themselves. I just hope the lash is applied with vigor to these scum Conservatives who will be wantonly defying the rule of law everytime they gorge themselves on Big Macs. They had a chance to speak up against the WOD, but now the same rigid liberty robbing mindset will be applied to them.
But I am not sure what this man says is factual.
All druggies use the same darned argument, cigs are LEGAL.
Personally I think the WoD is an utterly ridiculaous waste of time and money.
I've got nothing against folks seeking to have certain substances legalized - go for it. My battle right now is to keep the things I consume legal.
If that makes me a 'scum Conservative" in your opinion, so be it. In my opinion it shows common sense.
Your entire attitude is out of line and your comments uncalled for.
I've yet to see "stats" done by anyone other than those to whose benefit it is to make it seem so. I know I've talked with smoke shops who say they can't keep loose tobacco in stock and that up to a third of their customers have begun making their own. Also remember not long ago Bill Lockyer whining that Kookiefornia is losing more than $400 million a year by folks "evading" the taxes. In my own circle of smoker friends, far more than half either buy online or make their own; the others drive Jaguars and Beemers and couldn't care less, even though I nag every time I see them. Dang traitors.
I am certainly not the one who is most abusive with this word. Actually I learned the effectiveness of using it repetitively from Conservatives on the forum who call every individual with libertarian leanings a "libertine". If you find the use of this tactic offensive, perhaps you should look to changing a well established Conservative playbook. Besides, the tables are turning and I think it appropriate to point this out.
Conservatives have shown contempt for following the Constitution and now they are about to pay the price for it.
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