ok...I make my own cigarettes. I currently can make them for under $1 a pack. I went to both more tobacco (1 lb for $10) and noticed a sign at the store about the tax hike. my same tobacco will go up to $25 from $10

what I found ironic is....the taxes (according to the sign) will go to State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)

so they are relying on smokers to smoke for this program. if they raise it too much...then they will lose some smokers to help pay for this program

the sales lady and I thought it was interesting. she said a lady come in not too long ago and bought 40 lbs worth of tobacco

Rose,

Remember that I had to pay an extra $6.00 tax on a cartoon this week?
Well, I know someone that smokes generic cigs and they didn't have to pay it. They said that name brand cigs are being taxed already but generic cigs receive the increased tax on April 1.

i think alot of it has to do with the store. the little store near me hasn't gone up and is raking it in right now where the bigger stores went up already.

still...making them is still cheaper. but it is ironic that something unhealthy is going for health insurance.

schip is a good cause but still ironic

It illogical to rely on a sin-tax like somking to pay for something like children's health care while making efforts to get people to stop smoking. How will you pay for it if your program to stop smoking succeeds and everyone stops smoking? If you must put a tax on cigarettes and tobacco you that money to pay for programs to get smokers to stop, then if you succeed your not out anything.

Boy, am I glad I stopped smoking in 1998!! I was going to TJ and getting mine tax free at 6.50 per carton for viceroys or I could get marlboros for 11.00 at that time. When I see the prices these days it amazes me that more don't quit.

yepper pepper

I'm payin $6.02 a pack for my Camels now...crazy!!! I think the States and the Federal Gov. need to figure out a way to better manage the ********** money they have...instead of making us citizens pay (tax hikes) for thier mistakes.

the tax (from the sign i saw) is going for children's health insurance.

That's all fine and dandy, but take me and millions of others for instance. I'm almost 30 and I haven't been able to afford health insurance at all since I turned 18. So what about the rest of us?! So when I get sick or I need a doctor, I get denied most of the time because I have no insurance, so I just go sick...bunch of bull****

The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, was established by the federal government ten years ago to provide health insurance to children in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

The Democratic leadership of Congress in 2007 proposed a massive expansion of SCHIP that would have extended federal health insurance coverage to children in families making as much as $82,600 per year, which ultimately would have made 71 percent of America's children eligible for federal health insurance assistance, a form of welfare.

The Congressional leadership proposed funding this dramatic expansion with an increase in the tobacco tax. There was a practical problem with this: As the number of smokers dwindles, so would the funding for SCHIP. In fact, the Heritage Foundation estimated that to pay for this proposed expansion, Congress would need to encourage 22 million more Americans to take up smoking by 2017.

There was another problem with funding SCHIP with tobacco taxes: About half of all smokers earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line. The Congressional leadership thus was advocating a plan to help lower income people by taxing the poor.

http://www.schip-info.org/

that isn't the whole article. i posted the link to look up

After reading that short article, I think they are going about this the wrong way. Us smokers always get screwed over!

Wouldn't be nice, though, if people stopped smoking because of it?

winx.....i wanted to uit before the tax hike. but i wonder what they would tax if the sales of smokes went down too much

Gasoline

the price of gas went up before too....maybe we will all ride horses and be annoyed because we can't afford our nicotine

I bet they'd tax the hell out of gasoline if smokers went down. The price we pay for gas is hella cheap compared to the rest of the world.

i'm sure alcohol is next.

Dallas put a smoking ban on a lot of things there. the resturants here that went smokeless have lost business. next they will try to make all bars smokeless too

Tobacco is an easy target to tax. Politicians could care less about the loss of tax revenue, they will simply find something else to tax, like our elderly for living to long.

isn't taxing smokers (which isn't healthy anyway) a bit hypocritical when they want the tax for health care?

Kinda like our government as a whole, tax Group A, claim it helps Group B, who really knows where the taxpayer moneys are applied, no one. One big giant smoke screen (jmo)