Our cig tax has already gone up....waaaay up. The only reason I care is because I am poor. Poor enough to not be able to afford health insurance for myself. Or much of anything else. But the almighty cig gets my money.

I have tried to quit so many times....maybe this is the one thing that will get me to do it. My health, my friends health...the health of the world family around me doesn't stop me....maybe this is it.

I am all for the tax. I already know my lungs and health are at issue because of cigs.

Hell....as far as I am concerned....tax them babies even more.


Kat

but it should be our decision to quit because of whatever reason...not because we are forced to

The way I see it...it will be my decision. It will force me to make one.

I know how it makes me smell. I know the terrible taste in my mouth even brushing my teeth all the time doesn't help. I hate the cough....the ugliness of a person smoking. It looks nasty. It smells nasty. I hate it even when I am smoking. It stinks to high heaven.

I do not smoke around my kids or grandbaby. At all. If they are with me all day and night...the cigs do not come out. And don't think I am not thinking about one the whole time...cause I am.

I wash up when I know they are coming and do not smoke a few hours before they get here. I do not want my babies remembering me as the smell of an ashtray.

I already pay for people to get welfare..which doesn't help me. I don't mind paying a tax that actually helps people who are sick from smoking. Children....programs that need funding. Why not?

It is sad to me that I can buy a pack of cigs, all the time hating it....while killing myself....but doing it anyway.

You know.....I don't drive in front of a freight train...or stand out in a tornado....but I commit sloooow suicide...knowing all the while, my children are worried about me. I am a very selfish woman.

Kat


In most countries around the world, more than 70% of the price of cigarettes is made up of taxes, and in only a few is the percentage below 50%. But in the U.S., less than 40% of the price smokers pay is the tax. Even with an increase of 55 cents a pack, taxes would make up far less than 60 percent of the U.S. total price, still lower than virtually any other country. [SEE TABLE I BELOW]

Back in the 1950's, before most people had any idea how dangerous cigarettes were, the federal excise tax made up 30-35% of their price. Today, when we know that smoking kills more than 400,000 smokers each year, the federal tax makes up less than 20% of the price.

This is manifestly unfair, because the majority of the enormous costs of smoking then must be borne primarily by nonsmokers who pay the costs in higher federal taxes (to cover smoking-related costs to Medicaid, Medicare, veterans' benefits, etc.) state taxes (various medical and welfare programs), health insurance premiums, and inflated costs for products and services to cover business-paid costs of health insurance, time lost from work, disability, etc.

Marlboro has a new brand of cigarette. They are only about 3/4 as long and sell for $3.00 a pack. I only smoke em about halfway anyway so that is fine for me

Kat...that is an outdated site


quiet....what is it called?

oh I dont even remember. I just saw them yesterday

I may start driving to New Mexico. The Apaches sell cigarettes tax free on the reservation up by Ruidoso

Yes maam....but it shows that their taxes were and still are most likely, higher than ours.

I tried to find a new one. That was as far as it would let me go.

Kat

wish they shipped too.

Now days I think it read that it is more close to 70% here. Still don't care....really. I care I cannot afford them...that is all.

Fixing to go a buy another pack because I am out....had to check to see how my acount looked. That is just wrong. I spend more to smoke than I do on gas. I drive a gas hog.


Kat

it's a federal government tax hike.....150% +
it's not a statewide hike. it comes from federal

the point of using these taxes to pay for insurance is insane....what happens when many people quit??? where would they get the money earmarked for SCHIP then

I was reading in the paper yesterday that they (the legislators) think a million people will quit smoking in Texas because of it

all i have heard here is people ready to quit

Cigarette Taxes Are the Most Anti-Poor Method of Funding S-CHIP

In July 2007, we concluded that a cigarette tax increase hurts the poor more than virtually any other way of raising money to fund SCHIP expansion.[1]
Not only are the payers of cigarette taxes poorer as a group than the payers of these other taxes, but there are fewer of them. The burden on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households from a cigarette tax is 37 times heavier than if the government raised the money with the federal income tax.


http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/24208.html


good site

Common Arguments for Cigarette Tax Increases Do Not Pan Out

What is the rationale for raising taxes on cigarettes? The following are five common arguments made by advocates of cigarette tax hikes, yet none appeal to principles of sound tax policy.

Argument 1: Higher cigarette taxes deter youth from smoking.

It is true that the law of supply and demand dictates that a higher price means a lower quantity is demanded. Groups like Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids lobby for cigarette tax hikes, arguing that they are necessary to prevent kids from smoking. But children are actually the least price-sensitive smokers. They are likely to buy the most expensive name brands, which they can afford because they only smoke a few cigarettes a day.[4]

If we are concerned about youth smoking, why not just raise the punishment for youth smoking? We could seize drivers' licenses or send them to reform school. Making adults pay higher taxes is an ineffective way to reduce youth smoking. Of course, some anti-smoking activists use the children argument merely as a cover for pushing restrictions on tobacco use for everyone, adults included.

Argument 2: Smoking is harmful and cigarette taxes reduce those harms.

For a half-century, health experts have emphasized the harms associated with smoking. To those who believe that any smoking by anyone is harmful and has no benefits, there is an obvious policy solution: prohibition. Rather than prohibition, however, anti-smoking groups seek ever higher taxes on cigarettes, year after year.

Argument 3: Smokers act irrationally in believing smoking has benefits, and the tax corrects for that mistake.

Some argue that comparing costs and benefits is problematic because smokers are irrational when they smoke, with many regretting it later in life. However, people's regrets are often exaggerated or mistaken and are not a solid basis for public policy. For example, people often regret things they have said, and yet we would not want to restrict speech to prevent other people from making the same mistake. It's well established that people usually overestimate by a substantial margin the number of years of life that smoking costs.[5]

Argument 4: Raising cigarette taxes is proper tax policy because smokers impose costs on government and society.

It is true that smokers impose costs on society; economists call these costs negative externalities. Non-smokers have to smell cigarettes on a public street, and cigarette butts contribute to litter. And there are costs to government, too, especially for government-run health care programs. But it is also true that because the government's spending on the elderly is so huge, smoking—ironically and tragically—saves the public a great deal of money. By dying earlier, smokers collect much less in Social Security and Medicare benefits than non-smokers.

Many anti-smoking advocates bring up the "economic" costs of smoking, defined as lost wages and economic activity. However, many of these costs are borne by smokers themselves, not by the rest of society. If that is the case, the benefits to those individual smokers (in their own minds, at least) exceed the costs. Everything has a cost, but not everything has a significant cost imposed on third parties.

To dramatize the cost of smoking to society, campaigners often cite the number of smoking-related deaths as if those deaths were comparable to the number of deaths by car accident or murder. But a smoking-related death is cited in academic literature as taking somewhere between three and eight years from a lifetime smoker.[6] If that same person had died as a teenager at age 16 in a car accident, that's a loss of 59 years of life. These are not comparable tragedies.

Argument 5: We need more revenue.

It is often said that cigarette taxes should be increased because government needs revenue. Such an argument is possibly the worst used by advocates of higher cigarette taxation. Why not tax coffee or spinach or impose a tax based upon the number of blades of grass in a taxpayer's yard? Just because the government needs revenue to fund some general spending program that has broad benefits doesn't mean that an arbitrarily selected group of people should pay the tax.

The cigarette tax rate should never be increased merely because government budgets are in deficit or because officials are seeking more revenues for a new spending program. It is possible for a cigarette tax rate to be too low because of the costs that smokers impose on others, but that is not a good argument for using them to raise general revenue. Popular, expensive, broadly available public programs should be paid for with broad-based taxes on income or consumption.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/24208.html

I have already read that site as well. It may speak some truth, but from what I see...most of the people who come into our store...are poor. Most come to the door with a cig in the in their hand most that work in my store smoke. We are all very poor. Most of those poor are on foodstamps and get some kind of assistance.

If I were to quit smoking...I could actually afford a car payment. Or insurance. If I quit smoking...I may actually live to see my grandkids graduate.

Smoking one hand.....live longer in the other....hmmmmmm. I have been choosing death. What a fool am I. Me lose...cigarette companies...WIN. They are getting richer...I am getting poorer.And sicker.

I don't care if people want to smoke. SMOKE. It is your choice. Not my immediate problem.

But, it hasn't been my choice at all. I am addicted to those damn death sticks for years. I quit hard core drugs easier than cigs.

Kat

kat....this tax is earmarked for SCHIP. the states don't get to decide where it goes or if the even raise the tax. with all that is going on in my life now....smoking is something to help.

if you and everyone else quits smoking....then SCHIP will be out the money and they will tax something else to make up for it

where are you getting this info from? the 2009 bill is earmarked for SCHIP

I looked it up sweet pea. I also heard it on our news.

Look, I wanna quit anyway. I hate what I am doing to myself. I mean I left an abusive relationship because it was harmful to me. I need to leave this very dangerous killer as well. I am glad they are doing this for more than one reason.

If people want to smoke...they are going to find a way. That inclued me...but what am I going to lose or have taken away just so I can keep smoking?

Kat

some states are adding to the SCHIP tax. the additional taxes would go to other places. the SCHIP tax increase is earmarked for SCHIP

Well, that was .62. The total is 1.04. Talk is it may go even higher.


Our tobacco tax pays for a lot of good things.

Kat