Posted on 02/09/2003 7:21:54 AM PST by SheLion
CHICAGO, Feb 7 (Reuters) - They're pariahs in restaurants, outcasts in offices, and taxed to the max on their cigarette habit, but smokers are coming to the rescue of state budgets.
Governors coming off election battles with promises of no major tax increases are proposing that smokers pay higher cigarette excise taxes as a way to help fill gaping holes in state budgets.
They are also counting on smokers to keep buying cigarettes despite the higher taxes so states can generate an estimated $246 billion they are expecting to receive over 25 years from settlements with U.S. tobacco companies.
Meanwhile, the number of places where smoking is permitted are shrinking in several cities, where bans -- particularly in restaurants -- have been proposed or enacted.
"It's almost like a new apartheid. Instead of being race it's habit," said Neil McGregor, owner of Port Royal, a tobacco shop in Toledo, Ohio, who was part of a group that successfully battled a county health department-imposed smoking ban last year. "And it's being demonized with the huge amount of money that came from the tobacco settlement."
He estimated that up to 35 percent of Ohio tobacco sales have migrated to the Internet as the state's budget woes led to a cigarette tax hike last year and another proposed tax increase this year.
PRESSURE TO QUIT
"I think if you continue to increase cigarette prices at the same rate and make it difficult for people to smoke, there will be an increase in the decline of smoking," said Wesley Moultrie, a tobacco company analyst at Fitch Ratings.
A decrease in smoking would translate into a decline in tobacco sales, which in turn would mean less money going to states under the settlement agreements, although that was a long way off, he said.
"Firms so far have been able to manage through it," Moultrie said, adding however, "that threat is real and is still out there."
A recent Fitch report showed that 21 states increased their cigarette taxes last year to help fill budget shortfalls or to encourage smokers to quit. Smokers in New York City pay $1.50 in a state tax, which last year was raised 39 cents per pack, and another $1.50 in a city tax. As a result, Fitch said cigarette sales in the nation's most populous city have fallen significantly.
Tobacco companies contend that imposing higher taxes on smokers drives them to buy from untaxed sources such as Indian reservations and the Internet, encourages the overseas production of counterfeit cigarettes and promotes interstate smuggling -- factors that eventually cut into states' tax collections.
"It just doesn't seem to make sense in the long run," said John Singleton, public affairs director at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR), pointing out that governments need a more reliable source of revenue.
Many states are revisiting cigarette taxes this year as a way to help fill budget gaps made wider by the national economic slowdown. Facing a whopping budget deficit estimated between $26 billion and $34.8 billion over 18 months, California Gov. Gray Davis has proposed a $1.97 per pack cigarette tax, which would be the highest among the states.
Governors in states such as New Jersey, Delaware, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia have also included cigarette tax hikes in their proposed budget fixes.
"They need the money and they go where they think they can get away with it," said Andy Ludlow, treasurer of FORCES (Fight Ordinances & Restrictions to Control & Eliminate Smoking), a nonprofit group started in 1995 that opposes smoking bans and campaigns for smokers' rights.
He said his organization, with around 2,000 dues-paying members, faces an uphill battle against other well-funded anti-smoking groups such as the American Lung Association.
"We're fighting against people who rake in hundreds of millions of dollars," Ludlow said. "There's no way we can go against them."
Indeed, some tobacco settlement money is being used to fund anti-smoking efforts, although states have increasingly siphoned off those funds to patch their budgets.
Unlike the anti-smoking faction, smokers, who make up roughly 23 percent of the adult population, lack a united front and receive no monetary support from tobacco companies to battle taxes or bans, according to Ludlow and others.
SMOKING BANS ENACTED
Dallas was one of the most recent cities to tighten restrictions on smoking. The city council last month passed an ordinance banning smoking in public places such as restaurants, bingo parlors, bowling alleys and beauty shops, effective March 1. March will also bring a sweeping smoking ban to New York City, in virtually all workplaces, including restaurants, bars and nightclubs.
Chicago is even considering ordinances that could stop people from lighting up on golf courses and in sports stadiums.
The smoking ban movement makes sense as people have an increased understanding of the harm of second-hand smoke, said Bronson Frick, associate director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, a nonprofit organization that promotes smoke-free environments.
"Elected officials are responding to that increased public concern," he said.
"We need your money to balance the budget, BUT, you can't smoke here and you can't smoke there! We want a SMOKE FREE STATE, but GIVE US YOUR MONEY!"
Sound familiar?
Well, Gov Pataki (RINO, NY) signed a bill recently that there will be NO discrimination against gays. So......if your gay today, that's great. BUT MY GAWD, YOU CAN'T SMOKE!
Everyone is getting the red carpet treatment today, except people who smoke. Think about it!
Hey, maybe they should legalize heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. And how about prostitution? Have they thought of those cashcows?
Basis?
Hi SheLion!
dep
LOL! Your so right. But think of the lawmakers that are involved with all that stuff. Do you really think they want to have their names on tax revenues? heh!
Second hand smoke: when the anti's saw their war on the smokers didn't work, then they started on the non-smokers telling them that OUR smoke was KILLING them. And the stupid general public believes that garbage. ~gag.......
Thank God for Free Republic where we can get this truth out there. But it must have something to do with the Tobacco Settlement Money that Big Tobacco has to keep bending over for the Attorney Generals. So, of COURSE they can't print the truth. It's up to us to point this out to everyone.
Who're the fools in that picture?
I'm sure you have already heard that the white hetrosexual male is OUT! And my Gawd! He will be shot at day break if he's a smoker.
There is always some group out there that has it in for another group. Notice that?
Smokers are such slaves to their terrible, deadly addiction that they are powerless to abandon it. When they are so enslaved, there is no price too high for their drug delivery system of choice.
The drug not only enslaves, it also destroys ALL rational thoughts processes. Thus, we see blind rejection of any study suggesting that secondary smoke is bad, hallucinations about equating smoking with freedom, and ad hominem attacks of those trying to help.
Those who question the wisdom of politicians placing so much reliance on the future income stream from oppressing a decreasing number of smokers (they die off at a much quicker rate), need not worry, the money will be there. They are too stupid and addicted to stop. And, it is part of the job of non-smokers who don't want higher taxes, either, to keep them adgitated and, therefore, smoking.
In fact, we can pay for the extra police we need to keep bars smoke free by raising the cigarette tax. Smoking in back, by the dumpsters will still be OK, at least for a while.
To to mention a few "fools" in Free Republic, the fools in THIS picture are the poor souls who haven't found out yet about rolling their owns, or buying tax free over the Net.
Also, the "poor fools" haven't learned yet that they can jut boycott those places and refuse to spend their money where they aren't wanted. Take New York ie: New Jersey is screaming to the smokers COME SMOKE WITH US! And many New Yorkers are taking the boat. Get it?
So! What's YOUR "addiction" of choice? Booze or prescription drugs!
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