Posted on 10/25/2005 6:59:09 AM PDT by SheLion
How about lower cig taxes and people will buy them from the corner grocery again...
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You are kidding, right? Lower taxes? Smokers are hooked on cigarettes --- the government is hooked on your HUGE tobacco tax dollars!!!
The postal service said they cannot do this. They have to hire on more people to open every "suspected" package, etc, and they just won't do it.
The lawmakers have a fit over cigarettes passing through the mail, yet say nothing when it comes to child porno? Go figure.
"Eliot Spitzer is one scary man."
A liberal activist willing and able to use threats and police power to push his agenda is indeed scary. He will be scarier when he is the governor (which is probably inevitable).
That is why I have rolled my own for over 4 years!
I have always smoked menthol, so no, sorry.
This jerk is interferring with the interstate commerce. He is prohibiting the interstate sales and delivery of a legal product and the courts should shoot this down.
The again, I'm sure our politically charged courts will discover a penumbra floating around Saturn that allows another chunk of our freedom being subverted by a fascist attorney general.
"Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution for the United States of America, paragraph 5 states simply: No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
They will claim to be taxing articles IMPORTED into the state.
Seems to me that drug dogs could get the job done easily enough.
If Spitzer is so intent on wiping out deliveries of cigarettes to regular citizens, he should start with the state's prison system. When I retired two years ago, inmates were allowed to buy cigarettes through facility commissaries. At that time, I was under the impression that inmates paid no tax on the tobacco products they bought. Although they weren't allowed to smoke on the dorms, they were able to smoke outside the buildings. According to the departmental directive #4911 dated August 16, 2005, they were still allowed to receive up to two cartons of cigarettes a month from visitors either through the mail or on visits. Is Spitzer going to crack down on the delivery of cigarettes that arrive at facilities through the regular post office? He wants to be Governor so bad, he should start cleaning up in the prison system before he goes after John Q. Public.
While I agree with your sentiments - I don't see how the courts can do anything, this is a "voluntary agreement" between a private entity and the AG (much like the MSA)
All this from a state that expects you to pay taxes on cigarettes for the privilege of being told where and when you can smoke those cigarettes. Only in New York.
Heck, I don't even smoke, both my parents died of lung cancer, my only brother smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day when he had his first heart attack (the 2nd one killed him at age 51), yet I believe people have a right to smoke where and when they like and if they can get their cigarettes tax-free, more power to 'em.
This is the same guy who refused to step in when that downstate Mayor decided he was going to conduct same-sex marriages. It took a local DA to do the job Spitzer should have been doing. The guy's a putz.
Looks like it's fedex then.
He should change his name to Eliot Sputzer.
Agreed, but if the law passes it will make it illegal for online vendors to mail tobacco products with any carrier. Whether that law can (or will) be enforced, and whether or not tobacco vendors will attempt to use USPS anyway, is another matter. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Which just shows that they don't care about smokers quiting only punishing them through high taxes.
I'm thoroughly confused with this. It appears they are only going to do this with cigarettes, not OTP (other tobacco products).......My husband gts his cigars from Florida and they come via UPS.
I have a few words to use as descriptors for mr. Spitzer - but I will keep it clean and stick with another poster's term - PUTZ.
I always found it interesting, in light of all the taxation that goes on, that in the early days of the Republic there was a rebellion caused by the federal tax on whiskey. I guess our forebearers were made of sterner stuff than we are.
Of course, the rebels lost.
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