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I am sympathetic to smokers, who seem to be ruthlessly persecuted these days. But I do wonder whether this tax isn't a better way to fund state programmes than income tax and death taxes. So long as other taxes drop, I am open-minded on this one.

You're not a true conservative then.

It's not, because it isn't going to work.

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.

So long as other taxes drop, I am open-minded on this one.

Hope your not OBESE! They will be coming after YOU next!