No more cigarette Taxes!

Austin-Post Headline read : 

Lawmakers seek cigarette tax hike to aid schools, cut smoking

I don't smoke , and won't light up to pay for more taxes that seem always to be used in a fraudulent manner . In the last two decades in California and across  the nation taxes are being levied to pay for Education and Cancer research . Money in the past has been raised to pay for Education funding using Tobacco Tax. It seems disgusting to me that a vile and addictive habit of  the sick and miserable pays for your child's education .All that said, Proposition 29 is not an easy call — at least at first blush.The initiative on the June 5 state ballot would tax tobacco to fund research on cancer and other tobacco-related ailments, such as emphysema and heart disease.The state cigarette tax would be raised $1 per pack, from 87 cents to $1.87. The feds tack on an additional $1 tax. The current average retail price for a pack in California is $5-plus, the legislative analyst reports. One needs only look at New York City, where they placed such prohibitive taxes on smokes that a pack costs up to $14.50 thanks to the new tax they imposed. Of that $14.50, $6.46 is tax! Of course, little did the greedy Democrat politicians realize that there's always a bull market somewhere. You see, as the tax increased to an onerous level, smokers, the most reviled human beings known to man, began using other avenues of acquisition.The Indian smoke shops in upstate New York have enjoyed a windfall profit from their business. And of course organized crime saw a need, and met it, by going back into trafficking cigarettes. Those are real business people. The loser in all of this was the New York City health department, whose funding came largely by taxation on tobacco. Net tax revenues dropped, precipitously, thanks to the onerous new tax scheme.When you put the average American up against the government, the Average Joe will outsmart the government every single time.

NOTES & COMMENTS:


1.  I don't smoke and never have.
2.  I don't own any tobacco securities.
3.  I know that smoking causes cancer, emphysema and a whole host of issues, directly related to health.
If people haven't figured this out yet, there is something called stupidity and ignorance.  You can't change that.
The only thing that will result in a new tax, is an infusion of a narcotic, known as money, to the State and there will be an increase in the bootlegging of cigarettes and other tobacco products, from other parts of the nation, where the tax rate is lower.  Do the math.  I can ship a case of smokes, which has 50 cartons of cigarettes, each carton containing 10 packs each, for about $50 and make $450 on a case, not including the money I'd save in taxes.
So let's say I pick-up a load in Missouri, where the tax is 17 cents a pack and in California, it's 87 cents a pack.  Add another $300, not including sales tax.  Add another dollar for this new tax and your looking at a net loss to the state of at least $800 a case.
Then there is the avoidance of sales and income taxes.
No more taxes.  If a special interest group wants money for research, let them get off their collective azzes and ask for donations, not tax revenue.  Canada found out all about it, the hard way.

 20% (approximately $156 million annually) would go to tobacco prevention and cessation to the state’s existing tobacco control program. These funds would be divided between the California Department of Public Health (80%) and the California Department of Education (20%) for their existing programs to prevent and reduce the use of tobacco.