SEATTLE, WA – So I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, I’m a smoker. I don’t even know how or why this habit of mine started… Was it because I have a smoking parent? Or was it cause of the fishing/hunting trips I took with friends at a younger age that introduced me to tobacco? Maybe it was the non-stop “Drug Free/Smoke Free” class of 2000 propaganda that was drilled into my head at a young age? In any case, at the end of the day I can’t place my finger on exactly what ‘triggered’ me to become a smoker. What I do know is this: I know smoking will kill me (and anyone else who does so) eventually. To be more honest, I rarely enjoy having a smoke and have battled quitting several times.
I mention all this to give you an idea where I’m coming from concerning the taxation of cigarettes and War Against Smokers. I have been traveling the country as a member of The Motorhome Diaries and have experienced first-hand the differences in cigarette prices. The brand I smoke (Newports) have ranged from $4.25 per pack (Texas) to almost $8 dollars per pack (Washington, NYC, etc). I have a hard time grasping the fact that when I cross an arbitrary line, the price of a good can rise so much – in some cases $2.57 cents per pack!
That’s just outrageous.
So lets look at why the government taxes smokers. First there was several lawsuits made against big tabacco and was later settled (see this video) Government claims to use that money for a number of public heath programs including youth prevention programs, anti-smoking advertising and health care. Here are some numbers from NoCigTax.com:
- Federal, state and local governments collect more money from the sale of cigarettes than retailers, wholesalers, farmers and manufacturers combined.
In FY2007, alone, between federal tax, state and local taxes, and tobacco settlement payments, the government raked in more than $30 BILLION:
- $7.3 billion in federal excise taxes
- $14.5 billion in state excise taxes
- $7.2 billion is state settlement payments
You can’t help but ask yourself “Why?”
Why allow this institution known as government to tax cigarettes (or anything for that matter). In most cases they don’t even use the money for what they claim and even if they did – would that be just? To refer to NoCigTax.com again here is what the tax on tobacco has gone to:
- Dump trucks, golf carts and a course irrigation system and a new county jail in New York
- Broadband-cable networks in Virginia
- Psychiatric care for prisoners in New Jersey
- Boot camps for juvenile delinquents, alternative schools, and metal detectors and surveillance cameras for schools in Alabama
- Upgrading public television stations with DVD technology in Nevada
- Harbor renovation and museum expansion in Alaska
- Water and sewer improvements in South Carolina
- Pasture and weather monitoring for a thoroughbred association in Kentucky College scholarships in Michigan
- New schools in Alaska and Ohio
- City parks and the purchase of undeveloped land in California
- A senior citizen prescription-drug program and property-tax rebates in Illinois
- Medicaid dental services in Maine
- Water Resources Trust Fund and flood-control projects in North Dakota
- Operating expenses for the Carolina Horse Park, truck-driver training, pine-straw farming research and equipment upgrades at a knitting plant in North Carolina
- A People’s Trust Fund, which will generate interest income that can be spent at the legislature’s discretion, in South Dakota
- Help in balancing the budget, which used four years of MSA money, in Tennessee
- Rural economic development in Georgia
- Tax rebates in several states
- Offsetting a revenue shortfall in Wisconsin by selling municipal bonds backed by future MSA payments
I think you get the idea. So I ask: Does it make sense to eliminate the taxes levied on cigarettes all together? The money that smokers would save could be spent more directly in their lives, where they choose, whether on health care or in the community or any number of other things. Let the advertising for Anti-Smoking campaigns be done in the home or community by parents/friends. Stop punishing people for something they choose to do.
Oh, and if you want to create some jobs as government claims to do all the time, then lift smoking bans. Allow the property or business owner to decided what consumers want. If the demand is there for a smoking and non-smoking establishment great. It amazes me that people would want to use the force of the state to get a bar owner, or anyone, to remove smoking from a location. Go somewhere else, start a non-smoking business but leave others alone.
Adam M. Mueller blogs at Up and Adam. He's an activist at heart and enjoys using social networks to spread the ideals of liberty. We are in the mist of a evolution, one of the mind. 
Today I learned that I need to quit smoking or else everyone is going to think I’m a lesbian. I think you need to hear the cold, hard truth.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/new_anti_smoking_ads_warn_teens
Oh I have seen this, now I question every glace I get from men when I’m smoking. It’s flattering to be hit on.. LOL
Did you know that a pack of marlboro cigarettes costs a little over a dollar in China???? And that’s a communist country!
Don’t pay the outrageous per pack cigarette taxes by rolling your own. I don’t smoke anymore, but I’d highly recommend Bali Shag or Drum rolling tobacco. I think American Spirit is also all-natural and worth a try. Rolling tobacco is much milder and easier to smoke than filterless commercially produced cigs. If you must have a filter; for ~$20 you can buy filter-tip tubes and a machine to fill them.
Watch How to Roll Cigarettes : Using Tube Machines to Roll Tobacco”. This is how I rolled when I smoked cigarettes. These taste so much better than anything with a pack tax stamp on the bottom.
in many states (at least ny) over the summer they started levying taxes on rolling tobacco at an equivalent rate as cigs…
I quit just before the laws in Nevada got just as draconian as everywhere else. Before that smoking was illegal only in gunverment buildings. So what I would do is take partialy smoked butts into the bathroom at the courthouse when I went to pay speeding tickets and fire the up and leave them someplace were they’d get the building nice and smokey without burning the place down. Good times!!
Great article Adam.
Do you know of any study that found whether or not teenagers smoke less in states where tobacco taxes are higher? Hey, by my blog posts you must know by now how anti taxes and excessive regulations I am. Yet, I cannot help but play the Devil’s advocate in this case when doctors all over the country are discouraging teen smoking. I know, I know. It’s not the govt.’s job to do this and I am against tobacco tax. But still, I’m curious about the statistics. I also read a recent story in Time magazine about the increase in melanoma among teens who frequent tanning salons more than twice a week. How can we, as a society, address such health issues among kids?
@Sujata – by being more involved parents, frankly. It’s not the government’s job to raise my kids for me, and any parent who relies on government propaganda campaigns (regardless of whether there is truth in those campaigns or not) is just not taking full responsibility as a parent. I smoke, and have been struggling to quit so that I don’t offer a bad example for my daughter or son as they get older. I never smoke around them, but I don’t want them to even understand that I’m a smoker (both very young now, which is why I’m trying to quit before they are any older). It’s MY job, and my wife’s, to lead by example — not the government or anyone else’s job or right to teach my kids.
iirc, the secondhand smoke study from which all the bans are based has a very specific methodology. It only looked at people that were exposed to high concentrations of smoke for long durations. It specifically cites people that working the same office as a smoker or people that live with smokers. So we are talking about heavy concentrations for eight or more hours a day. How anyone ever was able to convince people that a stray whiff of smoke while walking down the street is tantamount to murder is beyond me.
I used to be a pack a day smoker for about 10 years, but when the initial smoking bans started cropping up about 10 years ago (I live in L.A.)I quit. If you want to quit, I recommend Wellbutrin as that is what helped me. Basically you substitute one anti-depressant, nicotine, for another, wellbutrin also known as zyban.
Thanks Matt. True, it’s up to parents to raise their kids. Yet, when it comes to children’s health, I’m not sure if we should do away with all regulations cart blanche altogether. I guess I’ve been speaking to too many doctor friends. What are your thoughts on the increase in melanoma among teens who frequent tanning salons? Does it make sense to let people decide for themselves when they are “adults”? Granted, the arbitrary age of 18 is absurd. All I’m trying to say, is when it comes to children, it’s not always easy. The notion of “It takes a village to raise a child” is pretty much non-existent in the West. Not that it’s a bad thing. Good luck with giving up smoking. You can do it.
@skr, one smoker may expel a stray whiff of smoke. But there are more than one person who smoke. Add them all up and ….. People should have the right to smoke if they want to. But people also have the right to not ruin their lungs with second-hand smoke. The effects of passive smoking (and there have been several well-documented studies) can be damaging. It’s not an easy decision. Both sides in this debate have a point.
Listening to Montana Public Radio on the way home from Missoula tonight, I learned something interesting about the war on “smoking”. Apparently the campus of UM in Missoula is moving toward banning all tobacco products by 2011.
The campus official (don’t recall who she was) being interviewed went on and on about how terrible secondhand smoking is and how when it’s cold in the winter smokers don’t stand the required 25 feet away from the doors and it’s not fair to non-smokers blah blah blah. But then the real agenda was laid out when she started talking about how chew would also be banned because they didn’t want to encourage smokers to switch over when flaming forms of tobacco use were banned. Obviously, banning chew has nothing to do with protecting people from secondhand spit.
So there it is out in the open- the agenda is not about equal rights for non-smokers but rather about stamping people’s choices.
That should be stamping OUT people’s choices.