Jump to full article: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 2009-06-16
Author: Bobby Harrison, NEMS Daily Journal Jackson Bureau
Intro: During the recently adjourned 2008 regular session, the Legislature approved and Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a 50-cent-per-pack increase on cigarettes to 68 cents. It appears budget negotiators are now considering an additional tax increase on the small cigarette-manufacturing companies.
Some call them “generic” cigarettes. House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, calls them “rabbit tobacco” companies, though, he admits that rabbit tobacco is a particular brand and might not be an accurate description of the companies that might be subject to an additional tax.
Barbour calls them the non-participating cigarette manufacturers or NPMs. They are the smaller companies that were not parties to the lawsuit filed in the 1990s by then-Attorney General Mike Moore against the big tobacco companies and they were not part of the ultimate settlement.
This year the governor has advocated that the smaller companies pay an additional 43 cents per pack.
“The purpose is to require them to pay in the same amount as those cigarette companies that pay Mississippi more than $100 million annually under the tobacco settlement reached in the ’90s,” Barbour said earlier this year.
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