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Supporters of a measure that would more than quadruple Missouri's cigarette tax filed a lawsuit Monday challenging a decision by Secretary of State Matt Blunt to keep the issue off the November ballot.
Citizens for a Healthy Missouri, which filed the lawsuit in Cole County Circuit Court, alleges Blunt's office provided outdated and mislabeled copies of the state's centralized voter registration database, which the group used to verify the signatures it collected.
"The secretary of state's office is the only official source of statewide voter registration information. They are required by statute to keep it accurate and up-to-date. Therefore, we rightly believed we were working with reliable information," said Brad Ketcher, a spokesman for the group. "It would be wrong to keep this proposal from the ballot because of their error."
Ketcher said it didn't appear anything intentional was done by Blunt to mislead the group, which describes itself as a broad-based coalition made up of health professionals, public health advocates, business organizations and others.
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I have friends who live in other states who will ship as many cartons as I want without paying the Massachusetts tax.
I have lived hear for over 12 years now and this state has not gotten one cent from me on my cigarette use.
What if every State goes to higher taxes on their cigarettes - what then? Well, the Massachusetts soil when done right has given me a full winter of tobacco to use. Yes, by growing plants from seeds that I can get from Kentucky, and drying my own plants and by using the bottom, middle and upper parts of the leaves I can blend the tobacco to all most any flavor I want.
There will always be those who will smoke no matter how high the tax on a pack gets. There are just too many ways to get around the taxes.
Tobacco companies are currently facing state lawsuits and paying for one's they have already lost because they refuse to admit their products are dangerous to the consumer's health. But if the consumer has been deceived, why, then, is the state taxing them? After all, according to these lawsuits, the customer is the victim. They were misled at some point and are now suffering addiction, lung cancer, emphysema or other diseases. The state is suing on behalf of those it has singled out in this new tax.
Equally as troublesome as California's conflicting mission of both "protecting" and punishing smokers is the casual nature with which the state imposes laws governing behavior. As long as tobacco is legal, people have a right to smoke; they have a right to make decisions about their own health just as public establishments have the right to ban smoking in enclosed areas to protect others' health. Smokers have been scapegoats numerous times in the past; they often face new taxes to fund programs with no correlation whatsoever to smoking, such as early education development programs and breast cancer research.
The state shouldn't exploit one population by capitalizing on private decisions. If the state needs money, it should pick the pockets of those who have it, not a population in which almost half of its members are considered poor.
It's inherently wrong to tax a commodity that's otherwise legal with the express goal of making it so expensive that people will stop buying it, particularly something that less than 20 percent of the adult population uses. It's nannyism, treating law-abiding adults as if they were children who must be coerced to stop doing something that the politicians don't happen to like. While smoking is this season's targeted bad habit, what's to prevent others from being singled out for death-by-taxes? . .
There's already a substantial traffic in untaxed cigarettes in the state, and adding another $20-plus to the price of a carton would make the bootleg profit potential enormous. The traffic in illegal drugs already supports a criminal subculture -- both wars between rival drug dealers and crimes committed to support drug habits. Russian gangs have established a trade in hijacked and untaxed gasoline in Southern California. Are we prepared for the outbreak of bootleg cigarette wars?
Smokers are taking up the old ritual of hand-rolling cigarettes and the new practices of e-commerce to get around Pennsylvania's month-old cigarette tax increase.
State officials fear the two options — one legitimate, one questionable — could shave millions of dollars from state tobacco tax revenue.
But Jennifer Davis just wants to save a few bucks.
''I'm addicted, I can't quit, so I might as well do it cheap,'' said Davis, 23, of Lancaster County, who has been smoking for eight years.
Standing in front of a wall of rolling tobacco, papers and rolling machines in the Tobacco Shoppe in Lancaster, Davis lamented, ''I've never rolled a cigarette before in my life. But even generics cost more than $3 a pack now, and I'm not about to drive to Delaware every time I want a cigarette.''
I don't buy cigarettes because I typically smoke only about five a week. My solution to the awkward moments of "bumming" cigarettes from total strangers was to offer people money. For the last few years, I've approached smokers on the street with: "Can I buy a cigarette for 25 cents?" More often than not, the person was charmed by the offer and would happily hand me one, if not two, for free.
In recent weeks, because of the rise in cigarette prices, I've upped my offer to 35 or 50 cents. It's interesting to note that since the price increase, the number of strangers on the street who actually take my money has gone up substantially.
The cash cow in California these days smokes. More than 40 days overdue in passing a budget, members of the Assembly are chewing their cuds over the newest ploy to raise money and close a growing hole in the state spending plan.
The ploy: Raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $2.13. That will bring it to $3 a pack the highest of any state. If the tax passes the Legislature and is approved by the governor, a pack of cigarettes in California could cost about $7. . .
No matter how many mirrors you use and how much smoke you generate, to bring fiscal stability to California, Republican and Democrat lawmakers will have to work up their courage, remember they are elected to lead, cut their spending and yes raise taxes.
But political courage is a pretty rare commodity in an election season. Perhaps this year's state budget will be the turkey the Legislature serves up for Thanksgiving after the election.
What politically incorrect behavior will be the next target of Sacramento's insatiable appetite for tax dollars? Alcohol is the next obvious target, but when that dries up what perceived vice of yours will be next?
Where I part from Skelton is in his attempt to paint poor people, particularly Latinos and blacks, as the unintended disproportionately affected victims of the tax. Smoking is an option. For someone earning $20,000 a year it's a luxury. Skeleton's description of poor Latinos in old shoes buying lottery tickets and cigarettes speaks more to their poor decision-making and lack of personal responsibility than to any unfairness on the part of legislators.
Taxes from sales of tobacco products have boosted state revenues significantly in the past fiscal year.
A TINY stamp, a focused law-enforcement effort and a habit many view as offensive have brought the state a windfall of funds to bolster the state's skinny piggy bank. . .
The revenue generated goes into the state's general fund. Hawaii does not earmark the money for tobacco control or related health programs. Only New Jersey and Utah dedicate funds from higher tobacco taxes for those. Since Hawaii has raided money from its share of a federal lawsuit against tobacco companies, which was supposed to be used for health programs, state officials should consider returning some of the tax revenues for those purposes. Douglas Yee, president of the American Lung Association of Hawaii, says higher taxes work to discourage people, especially the young, from the nicotine habit. However, tobacco and health education are still necessary.
The state is always seeking new ways to generate revenues and the cigarette tax has brought in a strong infusion of cash. However, the windfall isn't all good news when you consider the funds are derived from a deadly human habit. A decrease in tobacco sales would mean smaller tax assessments, but better health and quality of life for Hawaii's citizens. Loss of revenues from cigarette taxes would be a better result.
The newest reminder of our legislators' collective shirking of their duties is this week's report by the General Accounting Office that says Internet sales of cigarettes will exceed $5 billion by 2005. And guess which states are hotbeds of this activity? To no one's surprise, states with low cigarette taxes — states like Kentucky. . . The immediate questions raised by the GAO findings are many, including:
• Once again, it's time to consider whether Kentucky's cigarette tax is too low. We believe it plainly is. . .
But at its ugliest, partisan politics paralyzes government — and that is what has happened in Kentucky. Tax policy with regard to cigarette sales is just one example. But in a tobacco state, it happens to be an awfully good example.
I could finance a new car if I wasn't a smoker. Let me rephrase that: I could finance a new car if the taxes weren't so high on cigarettes. Yes, cigarettes are terrible for me, but forcing someone to quit smoking by punishing them financially just doesn't seem right. To justify the tax by estimating health-care costs is absurd as well. I'm sure the health-care costs of millions of people filling their faces with heart-clogging fast food and cancer-causing french fries far outweighs the cost of tobacco-related expenses. Therefore, I propose a fast food tax.
A mini-campaign is afoot that hopes to encourage Virginia lawmakers to shore up state finances by raising the cigarette tax. After all, at 2.5 cents per pack Virginia's is the lowest in the nation; smoking is bad for you; and smokers are - in several senses - a dwindling minority.
But smokers, who already feel put upon in many ways, might have a secret weapon: their own dependence on nicotine.
The Americans With Disabilities Act, which forbids discrimination against the disabled, defines addiction as a disability. Raising the tax on cigarettes would have a disparate impact on nicotine addicts - and an intentional one at that. An imaginative trial lawyer (is there any other kind?) could file a class-action suit claiming discrimination. Indeed, it would not be surprising to see a case brought against New York City, whose recent tax increase has hiked the average cost of a pack of coffin nails to $7.50. . . If a suit is filed - in New York or, should Virginia raise its tax, here - and if it prevails, then it will prove Dickens' Mr. Bumble had it almost right: The law is a ash.
Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City)--himself a smoker, who vows to quit if his bill passes--is pushing the biggest cigarette tax increase in any state's history. He'd raise the levy by $2.13 per pack, pushing it to $3. It's now 87 cents, having been boosted by 50 cents in 1998 when voters approved filmmaker Rob Reiner's Proposition 10 to pay for early childhood development.
A pack of cigarettes would cost about $7 if Wesson's bill passes. And something close to it seems certain to.
Democrats are rationalizing this as do-gooder big brotherism: They're doing smokers a favor by pricing them out of the market. Encouraging them to quit. More important, they're discouraging teens from starting.
There is evidence to support their rationalization. . .
And this brings up a problem--a disconnect, a hypocrisy--with Wesson's tax hike. While professing to discourage smoking, Democrats aren't earmarking any of the new money for anti-tobacco programs. Or, for that matter, tobacco-related health care. Or to enforce the ban on sales to kids. Or to douse forest fires ignited by flipped butts.
No, this is all about bullies avoiding the powerful and mugging the weak. Political cowardice that is politically correct.
Democrats have a poll--sponsored by the California Teachers Assn.--that shows voters cheering them on. Specifically: 68% support higher tobacco taxes, 75% prefer a cigarette tax hike to higher car fees, and hardly anyone wants to cut spending for schools, police or health.
But here's the most important finding: By 3 to 1, people say they'd support an Assembly candidate who voted to raise cigarette taxes over one who refused to.
Guess that makes it OK to belt the little guy. Call it collateral damage in the Capitol budget wars.
But Democrats should feel at least a twinge of shame for backing away from the big fellas in the BMWs and Navigators.
If Speaker Wesson and the other Democrats who are pushing the cigarette tax increase truly want to cut smoking in the state, they should remove the tax increase from the budget process and look at other ways to make up the state's revenue shortfall.
Then, legislators can consider raising the cigarette tax with an eye toward truly helping people to quit smoking. That would best be done by using the revenue a cigarette tax increase would raise to fund health and antismoking programs.
Bailing out the state's revenue shortfall by increasing the state's tax on cigarettes, as New York City did, might raise needed money, but it would likely give smokers more of an incentive to circumvent the tax, as New Yorkers have, rather than quit.
Naturally, the anti-tobacco groups are grinning from ear to ear.
These misdirected zealots are spending all this time and energy thinking that these tax increases are going to stop people from smoking, or that their programs are going to get the revenue. What the tax does is drive smokers across state lines to buy their tobacco and spend their money there. . .
By the way, I'm a non-smoker just waiting for the day when the smokers have been completely bled and our Legislature can start taxing to death liquor and gasoline. Then everyone can feel what unfair taxation is.