I understand the time element for you. But you found a great source in which to buy your cigarettes. That works good for you! And not paying into the state coffers is mind blowing. That alone helps me TAKE the time to roll my own. You can bet on it!
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.
That's a crock! How about neighbors burning grease! That sure is a good whiff!
Fortunately for me, I have one neighbor next door, who could care less, and the rest I am surrounded by potato fields out here in the country.
Yes, three places downtown, who had to invest in very expensive liquor licenses in order to provide the smoking areas.
We also burn with wood heat in huge wood furnaces up here. And you talk about smoke rolling out of everyone's chimneys! Kind of hard to peg second hand smoke from a cigarette up HERE. hehe!
I understand the time element for you. But you found a great source in which to buy your cigarettes. That works good for you! And not paying into the state coffers is mind blowing. That alone helps me TAKE the time to roll my own. You can bet on it!
OH YOU!
HELL YES, JOE! Let all smokers know that they do NOT have to line the pockets of the state lawmakers. Let them pull the money out of some other poor guy's butt. It's about time, I say!
ROTFLMAO!
Mr. FATMAN himself. Ain't HE the picture of health!
Yes they have. Believe it. They're just saving them for a rainy day.
B-a-a-a-a-a-a-h-h-h-h-h-h.
I do not smoke cigarettes, only an occasional cigar. I don't like to smell smoke when I'm dining, but most establishments have non-smoking areas that work fairly well. The line the councils are buying/selling is that it's the employees who are subjected to "second-hand" smoke and it's detrimental to their health. One State of Alabama employee was on local TV last week claiming her cancer was due to "second-hand" smoke in her State office environment.
And I thought I was living in Alabama, not some liberal bastion. But then again, Montgomery is the State Capital and it seems that liberals do gravitate to public troughs.
Or nerdyness, for that matter.
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