I would prefer that there were NO TAX ON CIGS... but let those addicts who opt to smoke pay their own way instead of asking the taxpayers to subsidize their addiction.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I would prefer that there were NO TAX ON CIGS... but let those addicts who opt to smoke pay their own way instead of asking the taxpayers to subsidize their addiction.
I agree!!
How do you know those stimulus food stamps aren't buying addictive chocolates?
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud supposedly said, but when is a cigarette a cigarette? Enlarge This Image
Benjamin Norman for The New York Times A customer put newly bought tobacco into a cigarette maker at Island Smokes in Chinatown, avoiding several dollars in taxes. Connect with NYTMetro
Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for news and conversation. The city filed suit last week against a “roll your own” cigarette shop in Chinatown and a related one on Staten Island, where a pack of cigarettes can cost less than $5, because the stores are not collecting cigarette taxes. The stores, both called Island Smokes, do not sell packs of Marlboros and Newports. Instead, they sell loose tobacco and cigarette papers, and have machines that let customers fabricate their own cigarettes.
Such stores operate in a legal gray area, arguing that because they do not sell prepackaged cigarettes, they are subject only to taxes on loose tobacco, which are far less. But according to the city, the shops are effectively selling cigarettes and should be forced to charge the full state and city taxes — currently $5.85 per pack, which has pushed the cost of most packs in New York City to more than $10.
“By selling illegally low-priced cigarettes,” said the city’s lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, “defendants not only interfere with the collection of city cigarette taxes, they also impair the city’s smoking cessation programs and impair individual efforts at smoking reduction, thereby imposing higher health care costs on the city and injuring public health.”
Jonathan Behrins, a lawyer for the companies that own the shops, said Monday that the stores were not obligated to charge cigarette taxes because “we are not producing cigarettes for resale.”
“We are selling the contents that produce the cigarette,” he said, “and it’s up to the user to make them.”
Mr. Behrins acknowledged that employees sometimes assist customers by “demonstrating” the equipment, but likened the whole process to “making your own beer.”
The city offered a much different analogy.
“When you go to a salad bar, they sell you a salad, not a salad assembly process,” said Eric Proshansky, deputy chief of the corporation counsel’s affirmative litigation division. “When customers walk out of these stores, they have finished cigarettes and they bought them in those stores. The stores also have signage that calls them a discount cigarettes shop.”
Inside the Island Smokes on Eldridge Street in Chinatown, plastic bins contain different styles of loose tobacco — menthol, double menthol, ultra light and more. More than a dozen machines are spread out in two rooms.
On Monday an employee showed a first-time buyer how the machines work. The customer attaches an empty paper tube to the machine and punches a “load” button; after the cigarette is full, it must be placed in another machine resembling an electric pencil sharpener that seals the ends. The pack cost $6, including the small tin box that holds the finished cigarettes; a refill is $4.50.
One man entered and asked if he could buy a pack of Newports. When told that Island Smokes sold only its own tobacco and that customers had to roll their own cigarettes, the man promptly left.
Customers who were rolling cigarettes swore by the shop’s products, which are advertised as “all natural.”
“It’s such a better, cheaper alternative,” said Veronica Raccuia, 20. The store says its tobacco does not contain additives found in premade cigarettes. “You don’t taste all the chemicals,” she said.
Customers were frustrated to learn of the city’s lawsuit against the shop, saying it was simply another measure intended to regulate people’s lives.
“The government is so money-hungry they’ll do anything to get rid of whoever they’re not getting money from,” Ms. Raccuia said.
“Just leave people alone,” she added. “In this economy, no one can barely afford food, let alone a pack of $15 cigarettes.”
The jackboot of government will step on your throat and tell you what is good and what is bad. What should make you happy and what should makes you sad. What is healthy and what is unhealthy.
You give me a human behavior, and I can find some sort of negative effect and formulate fancy statistics to prove my point. Some day we will wake up and realize living free is worth a hell of a lot more than some preceived monetary savings promised by the technocrats in government.
The jackboot of government will step on your throat and tell you what is good and what is bad. What should make you happy and what should makes you sad. What is healthy and what is unhealthy.
You give me a human behavior, and I can find some sort of negative effect and formulate fancy statistics to prove my point. Some day we will wake up and realize living free is worth a hell of a lot more than some preceived monetary savings promised by the technocrats in government.
440,000 Americans die every year from Smoking... That's like 7 or 8 times the total number of American service men killed in the Vietnam war over the 10 years of that war.
Bad enough Americans are killing themselves for nicotine, but even worse, the american taxpayer is subsidizing that addiction.
Go die if that's what you want, just don't take anyone else with you and if you're going to smoke yourself to death, at least don't make anyone else pay for your suicide.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
440,000 Americans die every year from Smoking... That's like 7 or 8 times the total number of American service men killed in the Vietnam war over the 10 years of that war.
Bad enough Americans are killing themselves for nicotine, but even worse, the american taxpayer is subsidizing that addiction.
Go die if that's what you want, just don't take anyone else with you and if you're going to smoke yourself to death, at least don't make anyone else pay for your suicide.
Hmm. Why is this still legal? Why haven't legislators outlawed tobacco? Why do they just fine them and pocket the proceeds?
I'd think if it was that deadly, some legislator, somewhere, would want to outlaw it and make it more illegal than marijuana or cocaine.
Heck, it's a good thing alcohol never killed anyone.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
And we all remember the Marlboro Man... The one who eventually died from Lung Cancer.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
440,000 Americans die every year from Smoking... That's like 7 or 8 times the total number of American service men killed in the Vietnam war over the 10 years of that war.
The 440,000 died doing something they enjoyed. Can you say that about the dead in Vietnam? If you take the North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese civilian and military deaths, that is well over 1 million. We send our young men and women into slaughter people in the middle east to "liberate" them from tyranny, and we have a government that prices tobacco to keep it away from the poor. As if the impoverished didn't have it bad enough, now let's take the choice of cigarettes away.
I don't know what would be worse, the Theocracy America makes into a boogieman, or the Fascist Technocracy we currently live under. Getting back the Constitutional Republic would be nice.
Go die if that's what you want, just don't take anyone else with you and if you're going to smoke yourself to death, at least don't make anyone else pay for your suicide.
Wow we agree, now if you would only put that reasoning behind all of our choices and allow people take responsibility for all their actions. I smoke and I know the consequences of my habit, if I get sick from it nobody should have to pay for my bad decisions in life, on the other hand I shouldn't have to pay for other peoples bad choices.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
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