Tobacco Taxes

Post Reply New Topic

Let’s talk about cigarettes. I live in Maryland, the Free State. We have one of the highest tax rates per pack in the Mid Atlantic region. I am not opposing taxing a person to offset a genuine cost to the state. Earlier this year, Annapolis voted on raising the tax per pack of cigarettes to $3. Per year, that means that the taxes that a smoker who smokes a pack a day pays to the state totals $1095. Added to this is the federal tax of $1.01, and President Obama has called to increase it by $0.94. Without that increase, a pack a day smoker, paying $4.01 per pack, pays $1463.65 per year. Assuming that that smoker starts at the legal age of 18, and begins to accrue health costs at 60, over that 42 year span he or she will pay $61473.30. This pack of Camel lights in my pocket was $6.80. That means that at the current rate, 60% of that was taxes. And they're already talking about raising it again.

The argument used most often to support this is that a smoker will invariably get sick, and cost the state money. Yet, according to the American Lung Association, an individual smoker will incur about $4,260 in health -related expenditures. This means that I am paying $57213.30 more than I should if the purpose was to offset the cost of my health care. If that was the reason, then that tax rate should be about $.28 per pack, going from an upper limit of age sixty. That's less than the cost of an individual cigarette. As I said before, I'm not opposed to paying a just tax, but that seems just a little bit excessive. That's also without figuring how much more smokers pay in health insurance.

The second stated purpose of these taxes is to discourage smokers from smoking. If this is a reason, it's failed miserably. Whether it's jumping over state lines to Pennsylvania, Virginia, or West Virginia, or bumming, or rolling, or growing, people find ways to smoke on their budget. Even if the borders were closed, and personal growing was banned, people would still buy. I've seen it time and time again. I spent years managing a gas station. The taxes went up, people still bought their pack or two of Marlboros every day. Meanwhile, a kind of black market has sprung up. Neighbor's headed over the state line? Give him $100 and tell him to bring back four or five cartons. Given the number of people around here who go to other states for work, people stay in cigarettes at a cheaper price, and stimulate the surrounding states' economies.

Also, at what point do we stop legislating health? A man's health is his own responsibility. When the government can decide that something is bad for you, and that it has the right to force you to stop it, where does it end. It's a tad melodramatic, but I'm reminded of the whole "They came for the Jews" thing. Other groups, such as fat people, drinkers, and drivers are just as high-risk, given the statistics. At what point do you pay $10 in taxes on a $10 steak because some guy in the state capital decided that it was bad for you? At what point do we lose authority over our own bodies? All this considering that the single most high risk group, drug users, is not taxed at all.

The state gets away with this because smokers are unpopular. Let's face it. We smell funny, we cough noisily, we've got bad teeth and skin, and we're almost certain to die young. And what's more, smoking, for whatever reason, looks cool. Why else is it in every movie or video game in a scene where someone is trying to look suave or badass? There's also secondhand smoke. Honestly, I think that the regulation that you can only smoke outside or in your own home is a great idea. I'm happy to make that concession, even if I still have people coming up to me when I'm having a private smoke in an out of the way place outside, and tell me I'm giving them cancer after approaching me from some distance. I can live with that. But I have to ask a question. What happens when some other group gets added to the "unpopular health risk" category.

I already see it happening for fat people.

I think that the price of cigarettes should be slashed by 50%.

I agree that cigarettes - like alcohol - should be taxed, but the current tax take on cigarettes is obscene.

I don't think tobacco should be taxed any more than any other agricultural product.
The only pitfall I've heard about tobacco from a farmer's standpoint is that it's very draining on the solid it grows in.

If we don't tax "lesser evils", like alcohol and cigarettes, then we'd have to find the money from somewhere else, or cut vital services.

You have to be careful that you don't tax people that much that they simply start making their own arrangements. We can see that this happens in places like Norway - homebrewing is extremely popular there, largely because of the ruinous cost of alcohol in that country. Why pay £10 a pint in a bar when you can have a beer with your friends for £1 at home?

This has been happening for a long time in places like Ireland I believe. People buy their fags either from dodgy sources or from immigrant workers who bring cigarettes back illegally from countries where cigarettes are much cheaper.

Last edited by Tequila on 21 Apr 2013, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, that is an issue, and why a tax on shop-bought pornography would probably be doomed to failure.

I'm amazed that sex shops - under the excessively restrictive licensing and 'R18' system in this country - are actually are able to keep themselves in business selling DVDs.

Last time I went in one, they were asking £25 for a new-release DVD. I walked out.

And what vital services would those be?

Excise taxes are politically acceptable, and tobacco is subject to a fairly tight regulation scheme. It's easy to tax.

Maryland's in a weak spot, as these things go. West Virginia to the West for gaming, Delaware to the East for 0% sales tax and corporate income tax shifting, Virginia to the south with it's historical lower excises on liqour and tobacco, and Pennsylvania to the north with 0% Sales Tax on clothing.

The state's layout really is a problem when it comes to taxation.

To compare, New York's tax is the highest at $5.36 a pack and Missouri's is the lowest at $1.18 a pack. Connecticut where I live the tax is $4.41 per pack

Taxes include the federal tax of $1.01 per pack

See http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research ... f/0097.pdf

Which is basically why things like enormous taxes on a specific product don't work. We've already begun to legalize gaming here, with a new casino at Arundel Mills (our central-Maryland supermall, for those who aren't from around here). I remember reading about an Indian tribe from somewhere around here successfully suing for the right to run a casino, and we've got Preakness for racing.

As for the other problems, the traditional answer has always been to tax more. Folks over on the Shore hop over to Delaware like it's nothing. So raise the sales tax so that the rest of state makes up for it! That won't breed animosity to the Eastern Shore freeloaders at all! Mostly it just makes us pissed at Annapolis. Instead, honestly, we should be cutting or rethinking services. For example, a huge amount of crimes in Maryland are related to drugs. The traditional answer is to provide the state police with a huge budget ($290 Mil for 2013). In Baltimore, the City Police budgeted $410M this year. Why not rethink the drug laws, like the Western states and DC have? Get a lot of otherwise decent kids out of Jessup in the process, cutting the Department of Corrections costs. Not to mention taxation and regulation leads to a new source of revenue.

I wouldn't have a problem with excise taxes if there was no income tax. Our government was almost completely funded by tariffs and excise taxes before the 20th century. Now we have both. What, they want a national sales tax now too?

I can't talk about the USA, but in this country since smokers contribute a hefty price to the NHS by giving themselves smoking related serious illnesses I think its only right they pay the associated tax to reimburse the public purse.

Smoking is an idiotic habit. It defies my reasoning abilities why people pursue it.

The problem is that the taxman isn't particularly interest in the public's health but their money. If you need proof to this, watch at what they do with e-cigarettes. They're by all accounts a much healthier alternative to real cigarettes so why are those in power so concerned about them? Because Big Government isn't getting her cut, Big Tobacco isn't so happy about these little upstarts either. It's all money.

Another thing they're freaking about if what they're going to do with more fuel efficient cars since gas is taxed by the gallon here. They're already coming up with schemes to tax you by the miles you drive.

They do. Smokers actually contribute double in revenue from the NHS than what they actually take out. Smokers are actually subsidising the healthcare of other people.

Yet you still want to persecute them.

Last edited by Tequila on 21 Apr 2013, 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's why organisations like ASH (paid for by the big pharmaceutical companies) wants to see e-cigarettes banned. They're doing the pharmaceutical companies out of business because those actually trying to stop smoking have found a much cheaper and more effective way of doing so.