Back in the ‘60’s Florida had a cigarette tax. It couldn’t have been much. I had a neighbor whose dad would regularly take the family beat-to-death LTD to Virginia and fill it with cigarettes bought over the counter. He resold them in Tampa. Apparently, it doesn’t take much tax to make this a profitable thing to do.
What probably isn’t in the article is the projected tax revenue drop because of the added tax. Liberals always take the amount collected now and plus-it-up with the new percentage but that never works in real dollars as people find ways around the tax. Whatever the tax is, the optimum tax income is always when the tax amount is low enough that it is not worth the effort to find ways around the tax.
But the worst, most corrupting element of the tax is forcing addicted people who generally obey the law to find ways around it. Prohibition, for example, made millions of Americans into criminals. For many of those people, now that they have crossed the line and not gotten caught, they look around with contempt at the other laws and start to choose which ones they want to obey.
Had? I quit when FL doubled the tax..$2.50/pk > $5 over-night. Smoked the rest of the pack and never picked another up since.
Politicians aren’t stupid enough to try prohibition of another sort. They’d rather make criminals of once lawful Citizens. Much faster way to strip Rights away when that ‘felony’ charge kicks in...no more voting, 2nd, etc.
The Civil War (War Between the States was NOT a ‘civil war’, by definition) can’t come fast enough; but, I suspect, it will take more boots on throats before it happens.
Wonder if the cig machines in the halls of the elected are financed by taxpayer $$?? I suspect our alleged ‘betters’ are tax exempt.