The deadly butt-leg war
3 slain as cig street trade booms

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/144380p-127730c.html

With city and state taxes boosting the price of cigarettes, hundreds of streetwise hustlers are selling cheap tax-free smokes - an illegal but lucrative trade that is becoming nearly as cutthroat as dealing drugs.

Fucking coward politicians: If you want to make smoking illegal, why don’t you just ban it?  This fantasy of being able to slowly tax it out of existence just hurts the little people (and reinforces the perceived need for more Government intervention).  

Go on - just make tobacco illegal.  Of course, don’t be surprised when some righteously pissed off citizen puts a bullet in your head.

They don't want to tax it out of existence.  Can you imagine the fiscal tragedy if gov't didn't have its sin-tax?

Holy cow.  

Scott

They closed down one of the candy stores in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago for selling illegal cigarrettes.  I say good riddens, I didn't like them arabs anyway!

There's no fantasy about it - increasing the price reduces demand.  It's very effective, although it gives rise to a black market and is very regressive in its effects.  Still, it's a valid demand management tool, and I'm not sure anyone is going to argue that on balance more rather than less cigarette smoking is good for society.

No, but I'd certainly argue that "demand management" is not on the short list of legitimate government objectives.

Seems to me that both on the federal and state levels, cigarettes are the latest, greatest scapegoat.  I understand the need to raise a few bucks whether or not I agree, but I think they could spread it around the "sin" field a little more evenly.. Prices of cigarettes in my neck of the woods have almost tripled in 10 years.  Prices of booze have barely budged.  Guess it's no surprise that the likelihood of a politician being a drunk is higher than his being a smoker.

Good point Phil - It’s their gutless approach that offends me.  You want to make something popular in America?  [b]Make it illegal.[/b]

Personally, I think most smokers are idiots and hate it just about as much as anybody.  However, I’d still prefer to see smokers get a chance to get old and roll the dice battling emphysema rather than have them end up littering the streets with wounds received off of the business end of a Lorcin .25 courtesy of the [Your City’s Largest Gang Name Here].

Just because I don’t care for smokers doesn’t mean that their presence on the earth is any less valuable to society than your average political “up-lifter”.  Some guy standing on a corner smoking a butt frightens me a lot less than some politician with money oozing out his pockets braying about how he wants to “help” me.

They have to keep raising the taxes on smokes because our govt subsidizes the tobacco farmers while at the same time telling us how bad cigarettes are![whacko]

Just a thought on this but since it's a "sin" tax and the only way to "sin" is to believe in a certain type of religion, shouldn't sin taxes be unconstitutional since it would be an official government sanctioning of a religion(christianity). Idea of sinning is Christian and as such the government is taxing based on a spesific religions beliefs.

Just playing [}:)] advocate on this.

Tell the truth - what you really don't like is the smell of a burning cigarette.

Don't worry about the safety of smokers - once it's illegal, the organized crime syndicates will make it easy and safe to acquire tobacco products (including cigarettes, cigars, and chew).

Yes, that, and also I generally don’t like smokers.  

I used to not mind female smokers.  That was due to the fact that back in my Navy days there was a widely strewn belief that chicks that smoked usually also swallowed.  Science (and the fact that smoking has for the most part become less prevalent) has since proven the little gem to be incorrect.