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it struck me as funny when then-Speaker of the House Marco Rubio said, back when the tax bill was coming up for a vote, that though he was a staunchly anti-tax guy, he leaned toward voting for this one.
"I'm not against it if it's designed to get people to stop smoking," he explained.
Heck, that leaves me worried about the rich. Those who can't feel the pain of a little dollar-a-pack tax increase won't get the benefits of this tax-enforced social engineering. And why should the wealthy be left behind as state lawmakers save thousands of not-so-affluent Floridians from an early death?
Actually, the experts agree that most smokers who haven't already quit despite previous tax increases and decades of health warnings are mostly the solidly addicted who will not stop now, either. . . .
Florida, despite its stated anti-smoking efforts, is just becoming a bigger stakeholder in the tobacco industry. More than ever, state government will now share the industry's profit-hungry motive to keep cigarette sales legal and profitable.
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Thousands of South Dakota establishments were to have gone smoke free July 1st but didn't because of a petition filed to block it.
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South Dakota's Secretary of State's office tells Action News this is the first time the validity of a state-certified public petition has been challenged. . . .
Today anti-tobacco groups, including the American Heart Association, say nearly 10,000 petition signatures are not valid and they are challenging its validity.
This afternoon, we spoke with the American Heart Association's Darrin Smith. He tells us the challenge was filed with the Secretary of State's office in Pierre at 4 o'clock Thursday afternoon. He said, "Several thousand people who signed the petition sheet are not registered voters. That was a very common mistake, in fact, the most common mistake made. Next, would probably be notary irregularities. There were several thousand signatures that we feel are invalid as a result of that." . . .
We asked Deputy Secretary of State Teresa Bray this afternoon how they will validate the 10,000 signatures in question. "It is quite involved. Just doing the random sampling took us about 3 days to check and that was about 1,300 signatures so you can imagine how long it will take to do 10,000 signatures."
Although the battery-powered cigs don't produce tobacco smoke, should users be banned from "vaping" in restaurants and airplanes? Just where can you vape, as the lingo calls vapor inhaling?
That's a sticky point, and the etiquette is far from settled.
For anyone buying e-cigs, consider yourself a bit illicit. E-cigarettes inhabit a legal gray area. The Food and Drug Administration recently blocked some e-cig imports, and officials want to halt sales. At least three makers sell them online, and one maker sells in Tampa malls. . . .
Jason Healy, president of the e-cigarette company Blu, said he regularly uses his product on airlines, including Quantas, American Airlines and Southwest.
"I just show it to the flight attendants, explain it, and they're usually fine," Healy said.
Since launching online sales in April, Blu, based in Charlotte, N.C., has sold more than 22,000 starter kits.
That kind of success bothers anti-smoking advocates.
"They're just another way the tobacco industry has found to target addicts for a profit," said Gary Stein, tobacco programs coordinator for the Hillsborough County Health Department. . . .
Southwest Airlines officials toyed with allowing e-cigarettes on planes and listened to presentations two years ago by at least one e-cigarette maker hoping the airline would allow them.
Southwest decided on a policy against them, said spokeswoman Marlee McInnis.
"We have made it clear we do not accept them," she said. "We definitely don't want people concerned about them."
Florida's $1-a-pack cigarette tax kicked in Wednesday, the first such hike in two decades.
Smokers are fuming.
Diane Mulvey, of Gulf Stream, wrote the governor arguing the tax would only "cause more grief and aggravation to the household budget."
"If you believe that strongly in stopping people from smoking, then just ban it altogether," she wrote. "Taxing is about money. Banning it supports your belief that it is something that should not be happening."
At one point this spring, as legislators were passing the tobacco tax, the governor's office tallied 1,730 e-mails objecting to the idea. The American Cancer Society turned in 30,000 petitions arguing the opposite: the higher tax will lower smoking rates and save lives.
Many smokers who wrote to Gov. Charlie Crist wondered why other vices, such as alcohol or fatty foods, weren't targeted. One proposed new taxes on expensive cars, boats over 20 feet and maid services - taxes that wouldn't be "directly aimed" at the poor and middle class.
Alfred Fernandes had a typically blunt message. The Cape Coral resident said it's easy to pass such a tax when the 80 percent of Floridians who don't smoke get a "free ride."
The state's new cigarette tax kicked in Wednesday which increases Florida's cigarette tax from .34 cents a pack to a $1.34 a pack. State legislators passed the law during the recent legislative session.
Henry Robles, who was buying a couple of extra packs Tuesday night at a Shell gas station on Sunrise Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale, said he planed to keeping up his two-pack-per-day habit knowing that the new tax was going to burn a hole in his pocket.
"I really don't want to think about it but I think it's gonna be a lot (of money)," Robles told CBS 4's Carey Codd.
The clerk at the gas station said cigarette sales were brisk Tuesday, as smokers stocked up in advance of the new tax.
Today, the Florida state tobacco tax will increase by $1.00, the biggest of its kind in Florida history, to a total of $1.34 per pack, as part of the Protecting Florida's Health Act. The pressures of a higher price tag on cigarettes may prompt Florida smokers to try and quit spontaneously.
New data published in the journal, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, shows that many U.S. quit attempts are unplanned and these types of attempts can be a successful route to cessation. In the study, almost 40 percent of subjects reported that their most recent quit attempt started without any advance planning, suggesting that for some smokers, setting an advance quit date may not be as necessary as once thought.
Coupled with the 62-cents-a-pack increase in the federal cigarette tax that took effect April 1, cigarette prices in the state have shot up $1.62 a pack in three months. State and federal taxes now account for approximately $2.35 of the cost of each pack of cigarettes.
The increase has some retailers somewhere between nervousness and anger, some smokers pledging to quit, others feeling unfairly singled out and a government watchdog group talking of bad tax policy.
When Gov. Charlie Crist signed the cigarette tax bill into law in late May, he said it was, to him, a pro-health issue, not a tax issue, because taxing cigarettes might encourage people to quit an unhealthy addiction
Quitting smoking is tough.
Even President Barack Obama admits he's spent his adult life trying to kick the habit.
He's not alone. About 46 million adults in the United States smoke, according to the American Heart Association.
The unsteady economy is making it tougher on smokers who want to quit. About 25 percent of smokers are lighting up more often and 13 percent delayed quitting because of increasing anxiety, according to the heart association.
But area health providers don't want quitters to quit trying. Smokers can steer their health in the right direction.
"You can reverse some of the damage that smoking has caused," said Danielle Broderick, spokeswoman for the local American Heart Association.
She encourages smokers to get moving.
Clearly, as Gov. Charlie Crist said recently in considering the tobacco tax, the health benefits of hiking the cigarette tax by $1 a pack outweigh the political disadvantages of raising taxes. Indeed, the political advantages of this tax might be duly noted by employers who pay a share of the cost in not only health-insurance benefits but also the loss of productivity and absenteeism due to smoking-related illnesses of their work forces.
However, while enacting the new cigarette tax makes sense as a way of encouraging Floridians to stop smoking, it is not a broad-based tax. It falls mostly on the 2 million smokers and not the other 16 million residents.
The state should continue to look for ways to grow our tax base . . .
But while Kelley and countless other smokers are sick of paying more for cigarettes, health groups are celebrating.
Those groups helped convince state lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Crist this spring to boost taxes on cigarettes and smokeless tobacco -- thanks, in large part, to the expectation that the increased taxes will bring in about $946 million during the coming year for the cash-strapped state.
Brenda Olsen, an American Lung Association official who has long worked on tobacco issues in Florida, said the tax increases particularly will help prevent smoking by teens, who are sensitive to higher prices.
"What we've seen in other states around the country, historically, is it's the biggest deterrent to youths ever starting to smoke," Olsen said.
Maria Charlton took a drag on a Kool cigarette just outside the Broward County Courthouse Tuesday, savoring one of her last smokes ever. When the state tax on cigarettes jumps a buck to $1.34 a pack Wednesday, Charlton is going cold turkey.
''I'm not paying a whole more dollar for cigarettes,'' snapped Charlton, 45, of Pembroke Pines. ``It's not worth it to me.''
Smokers like Charlton are feeling picked on lately. The 294 percent increase in the state excise tax follows a 159 percent increase in the federal cigarette tax, from about 39 cents to $1.01 a pack, on April 1. That's in addition to some Big Tobacco companies raising prices by more than 40 cents a pack earlier this year. Now, with the latest hike, smokers will see some of their favorite name-brand smokes costing $5 to $6 or more a pack.
Smokers can no longer dodge the tax by buying cigarettes on an Indian reservation, either. Under the new law, nontribe members buying smokes on an Indian reservation have to pay the full tax.
Starting Wednesday smokers in Florida will be paying one dollar more for a pack of cigarettes. The price hike is aimed at making Floridians healthier, but there could be a side effect in Alabama. As NBC 15's Andrea Ramey tells us, Alabama may become a refuge for Florida smokers.
Simple math explains why. If you pay $5 for a pack in Alabama and $6 in Florida, over the course of a year if you smoke a pack a day you'd save more than $350. Local gas stations are banking on that savings.
Selling tobacco is big business for Wilcox Chevron owner Mike Foropoulos, a business that will likely grow as nearby Florida raises its prices on cigarettes.
"I think my business be better here," said Foropoulos. "The difference in price $1 per pack is a lot of money."
Customers will say they didn't know, but really they did.
Manager Alex Odeh at the Stop & Shop on Westgate Avenue in West Palm Beach warned his customers a few weeks in advance. But Odeh said most of them shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn't afford to stock up on their favorite brands.
But this morning, Odeh said, "people will be upset."
Florida's previous 34-cents-a-pack cigarette tax was among the nation's lowest, but starting Wednesday, that tax increased to $1.34. That's on top of higher federal tobacco taxes consumers began paying April 1, when cigarettes went up by 62 cents a pack.
Customers were warned about the recent increase at gas stations, too. For the past two weeks, signs have been posted at the pumps at Murphy USA
"I'm not paying a whole more dollar for cigarettes," snapped Charlton, 45, of Pembroke Pines. "It's not worth it to me."
Of all the impediments thrown at smokers over the years, the one that arrives today could have one of the biggest impacts.
Florida's cigarette tax, long among the nation's lowest, in keeping with its Southern neighbors, is rising by $1 per pack.
Combined with a 62-cent-per-pack federal increase that took effect just 12 weeks ago, cigarettes in Florida are now pushing $6 per pack -- a price that is proving persuasive even to longtime smokers.
"I think the government is putting a real burden on the backs of smokers," Gerry Nodeen, who started smoking in the 1970s, said Tuesday outside a Sarasota smoke shop. "I'll probably think about quitting instead of paying the extra money."