Posted
2/12/2007 05:15:00 PM
by Douglas
Smokers pay taxes. Governments raise taxes on smokes. People quit smoking. Governments make less
money.Across the country, states are putting their own treasuries under pressure with anti-smoking policies and higher cigarette taxes. The better these measures work, the fewer smokers are left to pay; in 2005, states levied taxes on 2.8 billion fewer packs than just five years earlier.
Smoker taxes have been a small but critical source of cash in recent years, as all but a handful of states jacked up their tobacco taxes. Minnesota, for example, slapped an extra 75-cent charge on a pack of cigarettes to solve a budget problem two years ago; the state expects to collect about $451 million from smokers this year.
Ok, so even if EVERYONE quit smoking and there were no smoking related costs to the public health system, there would still be a huge shortage. The per pack INCOME has nothing to do with the guy the state's treating for emphysema. All this does for the State is a loss of income. Pretty soon they'll be $100 a pack, and some state legislator will think that's a great idea. Not to mention what it does to the
pirating efforts from states with less than Draconian statutes.