There are so many things that are funny about this Red State rant about detergent in the state of Washington (I know), notwithstanding the fact that “federalism” really has nothing to do this, as this was a state and local issue. But what is really funny is that they seem to think this will be an issue, while they are ignoring a much larger issue that really could fuel populist outrage:
One of President Barack Obama’s campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
I was getting kitty litter today and I swear to God a man almost had a stroke when he went to purchase a pack of Marlboros. He dropped more f-bombs than a Dennis Leary routine as he ranted about the cost of the smokes.
Then he pulled out his wallet and paid for them. As a general rule, I can not stand sin taxes, but since I seem to have lost that debate long ago and our entire tax code is designed around placing incentives on desirable behavior, I am hard pressed to get upset about raising the tax on a product that kills you.
va
I suspect that like most smokers (myself included), Obama has a conflicted relationship with the smoking, and probably realizes that he won’t quit unless the government makes him do it. This is the position of many smokers I know. And the thing is, they want to be made to quit! So now that Obama is the government, he probably thinks this is his big chance.
jg
I heard something last night about people paying $8 a pack for smokes. Glad I quit when they were $2.50.
What’s worse sin taxes or Estate and Gift taxes? I hate them both but I don’t know which I hate more.
Ed Marshall
Yeah, that sucks. They are about to break the system and make a black market for tobacco to. I’ve been thinking about finding an international hookup, but non-American cigarettes suck. Even the American branded stuff outside the country is no good.
steve s
I don’t like sin taxes either, but come on, that was a bit of an exaggeration.
imasmart
I gave up when they topped $5 a pack. At the time I was smoking two packs a day. I just couldn’t justify $300 a month on killing myself.
MikeJ
Two weeks away from two years without. Yeah me!
djork
I’m in the process of tapering off of smoking. Years ago, I smoked about a pack a day. About two years ago, I cut down to a half pack a day, mostly because of the cost. About a month ago, I decided to quit for good. Having tried cold turkey a few unsuccessful times in the past, I decided to taper my smoking this time. I’m currently down to 3 smokes a day and will go down to 2 a day next week. As there are 20 smokes in a pack, I smoke roughly a pack a week. I bought my weekly pack yesterday and about shit myself when I saw the price. I live in the South, where cigarettes are usually cheap. They have now broken the 5 dollar a pack mark for Camel Lights.
I’m not pissed at Obama for raising the tax. It’s a tax that can easily be avoided. In fact, I will soon be avoiding it myself. (Hopefully….everyone send me good vibes.)
John Cole
Tax breaks for the kind of car you drive, tax breaks for buying a house instead of renting, incentives for saving for retirement, tax breaks for…
Do I need to go on? Nearly every damned thing in the tax code is trying to get you to do some sort of desirable behavior over another.
steve s
I just switched from smoking to Skoal about 11 days ago, but if i were to keep smoking, i’d look into getting one of those little cig-rolling devices and buy a big can of american spirit shredded tobacco. Much cheaper than buying packs.
gwangung
This is a rational argument.
Therefore, it will never be used by right wing commentators…
steve s
There are a million little carve-outs for behavioral things, true, but in absolute dollars your taxes are mostly determined by how much you make and spend, not how virtuous you are.
demkat620
I quit 18 months ago. That money is financing another very nice vaction this year. And I feel much better.
I get really bad sinus headaches and I can’t imagine now how I used to smoke with one of those headaches.
The thought of that turns my stomach.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
My sarcasm meter must be broken (read: I’m dense) because I can’t tell if John is kidding or not when he says:
Is he trying to illustrate the trivialness of the issue by with this anecdote?
On a semi-related note, there’s gotta be a good Tunch joke in there somewhere.
djork
Question for the quitters:
Did you have to stop drinking while you were quitting? Or did you find a way to balance quitting with drinking? If so, how?
Leelee for Obama
I’ve always wondered about "sin taxes" being practical; what if everybody stopped smoking, drinking, etc. It’s never happened though, so it’s a way to provide health care for kids, encourage 8-10% of smokers to quit, and make smokes too expensive for kids to buy (hopefully-if they don’t start they won’t need to quit!). As a smoker, I already started cutting back a few weeks ago, ala djork. Down to 1/2 pack or less per day and not feeling like a maniac!
My surprise at the cig Companies is that they raised their prices 3 weeks ago, to defray what they’ll lose when people cut back or quit! I find that a bit counterintuitive, non?
demkat620
@djork: Yeah, I really don’t drink. I may have something at a party or maybe every few months so that wasn’t an issue. I took Chantix and while it nearly drove me insane, it worked.
But, I also had to realize for me it was an addiction and I can’t have one occasionally because I will be back at a pack a day right quick.
Ash
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: I assume he was saying that since people are gonna pay despite how much they bitch about it, might as well tax the hell out of it.
John Cole
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: That was just what happened while I was in the convenience store. People are pissed about it.
QDC
Isn’t this the SCHIP thing? Wasn’t this tax passed into law before Obama became president?
shera
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: I’m waiting for John to post about how he dropped a bunch of f-bombs about the syrocketing price of kitty litter. Although, how can a 28-pound bucket of Scoop Away at PetCo cost the same as the 40-pounder from PetSmart?
As for the smoking, I love my cloves, and I can’t chain smoke those, so a pack lasts long enough for me not to feel the price increases too deeply.
MikeJ
I didn’t quit drinking, either alcohol or coffee.
Coffee was tougher though. Nicotine seems to moderate caffeine, and getting my body to react in a predictable way to its standard amounts of coffee (and I live in Seattle) was tough.
and unrelated:
That’s why the cap gains tax is lower than the income tax. They want to discourage working.
blogreeder
That’s intersting. So it’s the evil cig companies raising the prices, no?
Snark aside, I do have a problem with the sin tax. It’s intended to raise revenue. Think about it. They want to keep people smoking to generate the tax money. They are counting on this revenue as they add another program. They are taking advantage of people with a bad addiction. They know smokers will pay anything for the next puff.
Shygetz
Doesn’t just kill you, but kills you very slowly and VERY expensively. I have no idea what the net gain/loss in revenue would be if everyone stopped smoking, but I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be as big a blow to the government as some would expect.
Scott Supak
My wife points out that it’s not a person (or family) being taxed, it’s a cigarette. You can easily avoid the tax…
According to the Freakonomics guys, the actual price to society of a pack of cigs is about $222. A pack.
And this
seems a little off. With sin taxes, we’re actually placing disincentives on undesirable behavior, and playing a game of diminishing returns, which is why I don’t like them. If we started with say a 50% tax on all income, then we could reward desirable behavior with a tax cut (also the basis of deductions, kind of).
For example, since the GOP likes to say that rich uncles are the driving force behind small business growth, then why not give those rich uncles tax credits for funding small business start ups. That tax credit would only make sense if the base tax on that rich uncle were high enough to really encourage investment.
Not that I want to give them any good ideas.
khead
Since you’re cool with sin taxes now, I suggest a nice video poker or slot machine in the convenience store too. It will give the bitching guy a place to smoke and not hold up the Lotto line.
Karmakin
Ironically enough, those tax breaks probably have a great deal to do with the current economic mess, or at the very least, limit greatly the options for dealing with it. (The Obama administration has as a primary goal not wiping out housing values/retirement funds)
If we could just say fuck you to Wall Street, it would be a lot easier. But as long as they have us hostage…
jg
@djork:
I quit in ’94. Since then I’ve had maybe 20 cigarettes but only when i’ve been drinking. The last time I did that was in a strip club in Mexico in ’06.
John O
As a general rule, I can not stand sin taxes, but since I seem to have lost that debate long ago and our entire tax code is designed around placing incentives on desirable behavior, I am hard pressed to get upset about raising the tax on a product that kills you.
Interesting. I find myself strongly agreeing with you and strongly disagreeing with you at the same time.
I can’t stand the idea of collecting money as a means of influencing personal behavior, it is absurd and ridiculous, so I suppose it is my native fatalism, in the form of "out of my control," along with my general view that stuff is just so distorted and weird w/r/t rationality that I generally support sin taxes.
In the end, I’ll pay for my "sins," I guess. It’s probably not good for me to smoke in terms of the greater good, I think our WoID is EPIC fail in as literal a sense as is conceivable, I just feel stuck with the Morons in Charge, and completely powerless to change it.
So I read your blog.
blogreeder
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But then what would happen to those kids without health insurance? So they’ve got smokers in a vice. Smoke and we’ll tax you but quit and you’re uncaring. Especially to those kids.
AhabTDefenestrator
This.
I only ended up taking it for six weeks, instead of the full three months. While I did, I was narcoleptic and I had wicked vivid dreams like I never do, but I managed to hold out long enough to quit.
Dreggas
For those who are looking to quit check out the following site:
Here
It’s a great quit aid with a lot of goof info, articles, resources and a forum to help you quit. I myself quit again on the 19th.
I had quit once before for 3 months and screwed up, that was a year and a half ago. Now I am on the patch since cold-turkey was driving me nuts. The majority of the battle to quit is mental since smokes become such an integrated part of the smokers day/life.
I still have a drink, still drink my coffee etc. It only took a few times of breaking the "trigger" each represented in order to not get a bit antsy.
As for the sin-tax thing. I hate it too. Especially when the money is being used for something that makes sense (S-Chip) and the result will be fewer people smoking leading to a lack of funding for it.
Here in Cal the cost per pack was, last i checked with my roommate, 6.65 and we just got hit with a sales tax increase and the tobacco tax increase.
While I do not want to deny anyone their right to suck down arsenic, cyanide and all the other chemicals in a cigarette and basically asphyxiate themselves day in and day out, this tax increase was my incentive to quit again.
Litlebritdifrnt
To begin with I smoke, so I can hardly complain. I choose to do it, to allow the addiction to control me, so I can’t bitch when they try to make it more difficult to kill myself. Having said that here’s a bit you might not know about. I smoke Benson and Hedges, which are horribly expensive (compared to the generics etc) a carton usually costs me $55.00 with tax. On Monday I went to my local Piggly Wiggly (the only place I can get B&H) and at the ciggy check out place there was a big orange sign B&H $22.50 per carton! I was gobsmacked. I asked the girl why they were so cheap and she said because they had so many cartons and they were trying to get rid of them. I bought two cartons, having every intention to buy more the following day (once my DH had been paid), while I was paying I noticed a sign stating "Apologies for our lack of tobacco inventory" Basically explaining that RETAILERS were required to pay the additional tax on all of their inventory as of April 1, a cost that THEY WERE NOT ALLOWED BY LAW TO PASS ON TO THE CONSUMER! So they were trying to clear out all their stocks before April 1. I went back last night and bought their last 5 cartons (and basically I got 5 cartons for the price of 2). This evening they were restocking the shelves to replenish everything they had to get rid of before today, but obviously at the new prices, with the new tax, which of course they now can pass on to the consumer. I thought that was interesting to say the least.
Dreggas
@blogreeder:
I was thinking the same thing, a real dilemma for a liberal smoker *wry grin*. I support S-Chip, don’t get me wrong, but my lungs can’t do it forever, nor can my heart, my arteries, my throat, and pretty much my entire body.
Dreggas
@Litlebritdifrnt:
That’s how it has always worked. The taxes on tobacco are paid by retailers/tobacco companies then passed on to the consumer.
demkat620
@AhabTDefenestrator: Yeah, I had those dreams too. The paranoia and panic attacks were what drove me off Chantix after 6 weeks. But I am still smoke free.
JL
@djork: Buy nicotene gum or patches to use if you are out drinking with friends who smoke. A physician gave me that advice a few years back.
Dreggas
I have heard nothing but horror stories about Chantix. Sounds like another pill rushed to market before it was refined. My last quit was cold-turkey, this time it’s the patch since I need to step down vs. just jumping off the cliff and quitting.
Dreggas
@JL:
Not sure that is such a good idea. Nicotine is not good for the body in many ways, some of which we’re just finding out about like the fact it is can cause the arteries to harden and messes with sugar levels as well as cholesterol.
One thing I learned is that once you make it through a situation where you used to smoke it tends to be easier and easier to face that situation again. One thing that was recommended to me is to not drink during the first few weeks, or at least not around other smokers since you’re still "early in your quit".
phillygirl
Sorry, but the freakonomics guys are wrong. When smokers die early, and they do, they spare everybody else Social Security and Medicare outlays. The government’s resulting savings and the taxes it has already collected from them exceed the medical costs of their deaths. You think dying of lymphoma or a brain tumor or kidney failure from diabetes is cheaper than lung cancer? It ain’t. It’s just more socially acceptable.
Martin
Take up a sin that doesn’t hammer Medicare costs and the argument is much stronger. Case in point, how much is the porn tax?
Leelee for Obama
We can always send the $6.20 a carton we WOULD have smoked to the SCHIP fund??????
Hee hee!
wasabi gasp
@steve s:
While still cheaper than packs, bulk tobacco is also getting hit hard by this tax. Prior to this tax, the bulk price came out to about $1.50 a pack (including tubes), now it’s closer to $2.50.
I stocked up on 5 cans, when they’re done I’m going cold turkey.
Silver Owl
I’m cool with the tax. They tied it to help insure kids, they get to spank adults and then screw the kids when more adults quit. After that they will find another tax to apply to something else in order address again the need to keep kids insured. The same old cycle will repeat until they stop thinking short term and being idiots.
I pulled the money out of money I would normally allot for political contributions. If they can not address such an important issue properly then it would indeed be a waste of money to help them keep jobs they are not good at.
guest omen
@Dreggas:
The taxes on tobacco are paid by retailers/tobacco companies then passed on to the consumer.
but firms commonly dodge their tax obligations.
Comrade Darkness
The real addiction comes when the government gets addicted to the tax revenues and starts not acting in the best interest of the public health.
On the other hand, price is the number one deterrent to kids starting the habit. They should just smoke weed anyway.
Emma Anne
@jg:
Oh. My. God. That is stunning. I started when they were 55¢ a pack and quit when they were under $2. There has been some inflation since then, but still, wow.
All you kids who got to use patches and bupropion and chantrix can get off of my lawn. Cold turkey, no aids of any sort, grumble grumble.
I am apparently the only person here who actively likes sin taxes on cigarettes. I like it because it keeps kids from taking up smoking. I started when I was twelve and quit when I was 19. If you can keep kids from starting when they are at the irrational age, they mostly never will start.
As far as paying for SCHIP and such, meh. Cross that bridge when we come to it. It won’t happen overnight in any case.
Tsulagi
Yeah, they’ve been bringing super-industrial grade stupid in multiple posts about this game-changer in America. Involving phosphate-free detergent. Never misunderstimate their capacity for stupid.
Not only is federalism absent, it’s only one county (Spokane) in Washington, not the entire state. Not only that, if they spent ten seconds with the Google they’d find the county they’re railing about as an eco-soc ialistic beachhead is in the conservative part of the state. They might even stumble upon this graphic showing Spokane County going for McCain and Palin.
So yeah, Commander EE of RSSF glory may be correct they’re really dumb in Spokane County. Unlike the brilliance in his detergent posts of course.
@Ed Marshall:
Of course could be a matter of taste, but a friend of mine orders his Marlboros from Switzerland. He thinks the Swiss made Marlboros taste better than American. Says they use less chemical additives. Then again, maybe the $12 or so cost per carton influences his taste.
Dreggas
In some places they’ll be paying 10-12 a PACK. My folks smoke, they order theirs from the indian reservations to avoid the state taxes on em.
blogreeder
Is there anyway to follow the money that is going to these kids? You know what I mean? They use to say lottery money was going to be used for edjumication, but the money just went into the general fund. The kids got nothing.
Bill Teefy
Long time ago but when I quit I just dropped out of all of the habits that went with my smoking and made excuses to avoid my smoking friends. It was about six months before I went back to a night club or a bar.
I had tried to quit the year before and made it pretty well until I went out partying. It didn’t take much booze before I was needing to take a drag.
Sex is what made me quit. I was young she was beautiful and mid-way I am thinking, "When this is over I can have a cig…" right then I knew either I needed to end it all or I needed to quit.
Delicious and clean.
.
I wonder how many people who work for wages have ever thought about what they would get paid per hour if there were Republican Magic and we suddenly had zero taxes but all of the amenities and programs we want.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Formerly [delurk]…[/delurk], now going by my Unitarian Jihadi name:
The reason the GOoPers are so down on "sin" taxes is as clear as a bell. They want to take us back to the 1865-1890 fiscal paradise that they created. The Federal government was only allowed to print enough money to cover what they took in. Their only sources of revenue were:
1) Selling off the country to the robber barons for pennies a square mile, which is why you have so many of these deserted square states with 2 unearned electoral votes where everybody thinks it’s a constitutional right to own "ranches" that cover entire counties.
2)Customs duties, and
3) Taxes on liquor and tobacco (Internal Revenue.)
The first is no longer an option, the second has been eliminated by all these "Free Trade" agreements they’ve gotten passed, and if you eliminate the third, then you could really drown government in the bathtub.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I quit smoking nearly 3 months ago – I’ll believe I’ve really quit when I haven’t smoked for a decade, but a year will be a very good sign.
I used the patches – stockpiled extras just in case I relapse, because for some reason all the stores around here (Salt Lake City) seem to have stopped carrying them. The ones I found were the last few boxes at a little pharmacy. Did they stop making them or something?
Paul L.
@Shygetz:
So all people who smoke die of Lung Cancer?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
Oops, lemme guess – "qu1t sm0k1ng" is a spamfilter trigger, amirite?
Dreggas
@Paul L.:
Or other smoking related illnesses. Or hell for that matter die younger than they should have. There’s more than lung cancer to worry about and often times it’s not the lung cancer that kills you it’s where it spreads to. These days Heart disease and sudden, fatal heart attacks are the bigger culprit in smoking related deaths.
Napoleon
@QDC:
It was SCHIP, but I am not sure if it passed after he became Pres or before.
Dreggas
@Napoleon:
It had passed, bush vetoed it.
Arun
Maybe some of us don’t want to live forever. Maybe for some of us smoking is a form of solace. And yes, we’re addicts.
As noted above, poor people smoke disproportionately more than the rest of the populace. In NYC now cigarettes are $10.50 pack.
If you’re an addict, you will pay that.
I applied online for the NYS smoking-cessation program- they send you some patches, which are expensive- and after truthfully reporting I’ve smoked a pack a day for 22 years, it told me i didn’t qualify -no explanation.
Yes, it’s self-destructive, but it’s one small bit of pleasure in life. The rest of life in our great free country seems to be about putting the screws to someone like me. I’m college educated, but my life has been wracked by depression. I’m 40 and I made about 7 thousand dollars last year, doing meaningless cruddy work in a seasonal job.
Cigarettes are bad for me I know. But life doesn’t seem so grand either.
I have no health insurance, so all you saying my eventual illness will cost you saintly people money someday- well, I haven’t seen a doctor in over a decade, nor a dentist in two. By the time I get a diagnosis in some public hospital 2 hours from where I live , I’m sure it will be quite advanced. I’ll try to die quickly for you. But far more likely, I’ll do the right thing, settling my meagre affairs beforehand, and taking care to cause minimim angst to the people I’ll leave behind- including you, you virtuous taxpayers.
How great for you all, smiling and jogging, to sneer at someone like me, such a loser, and decide that yes, I should pay even more for smoking. Because I’m a sinner too, not just poor, I deserve to be punished for a legal activity that gives me some small moments of solace. I don’t have much else in life that gives me that.
Surabaya Stew
This is a tax increase that will be good for all Americans! However, all these price increases on tobacco are tempting me to pick up a few cartons next time I’m in Indonesia. Over there, the average pack of 16 tobacco cigs runs about 60 cents. (A pack of 12 clove cigs is about 80 cents.) From what I’ve heard, the regular cigs are ok, but the cloves are super potent!
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
Hey, guess what? Since the Pajamas Media ads are gone, this site doesn’t give Safari indigestion any more!
Dreggas
@Arun:
You can get patches now, generic ones, for less than a carton of cigs for a two week supply. That’s here in Cal, not sure what they are elsewhere.
I haven’t seen a single person here get smug over the price increase and very few defending it with any hint of smugness or looking down their noses at anyone.
If you want to smoke, then smoke up. It’s your choice. The gov’t raised the taxes on smokes so you have the choice of paying the tax or quitting, or finding another way to get the smokes cheaper (you can buy them online and get them mailed to you).
Honestly though, I don’t feel bad for the tax going up. Like I said it gave me another reason to quit and there are a lot more pleasures in life (aside from the extra money in my pocket) than smoking a cigarette.
Napoleon
@Dreggas:
But they repassed it and funded it with the tobacco tax. That must have been right after Obama took office.
Dreggas
@Napoleon:
It was, but that was the original plan for funding it in the first place, they would hike the federal tax on tobacco. It passed both the house and senate. There was no change, Obama just signed it into law instead of vetoing like bush did.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Dreggas: I haven’t seen a single person here get smug over the price increase and very few defending it with any hint of smugness or looking down their noses at anyone.
Nor I, but I can hardly blame Arun for bringing it up. It’s so pervasive among ex- and non-smokers that you get seeing it even when it’s not there.
Dreggas
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
Oh I know. I can’t stand smug ex-smokers. Or worse, smug non-smokers who have no clue how hard it is to beat addiction.
It’s one of the reasons why I say live and let live on the smoking thing. If someone wants to do it, who am I to stop em. That’s their choice.
binzinerator
Shit. Reading this stuff in this thread and between the expense and the patches and the cancer I am just damned glad I never got addicted. I smoked for about 3 months in college, I started because the guys I hung around with at that time smoked. I had been runner too, used to running 4-6 miles a day but I had stopped running when I started smoking.
Then I caught myself being short of breath after walking up a hill. It was same hill I used run up as a finish to my usual workout.
That was the day of my last cig.
Dreggas
@binzinerator:
Yeah It’s one thing I regret ever doing was starting smoking and it’s a PITA to quit especially after doing it for so long.
Jess
Based on these comments, it does seem that the tax works as an incentive to quite–that’s great! All the more reason to increase the "death" tax so more people will choose immortality…maybe we can get some "culture of life" folks behind it.
Jess
(That should be "quit," not "quite.")
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Dreggas: It’s one of the reasons why I say live and let live on the smoking thing. If someone wants to do it, who am I to stop em. That’s their choice.
Agreed.
terry chay
Extra information:
http://tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0099.pdf
Note the two columns: cigarette tax/pack sold and CDC estimated costs/pack sold. Cigarette smoking is an externality on our public health system, so this isn’t just about taxing behavior, it’s an alternate way of trying to capture this problem.
As you can see, we’re a long way of even doing that.
gil mann
I’m with Arun—hell, if I allowed myself to be more reflective I’d be Arun—but I don’t think you have to be a smoker to find Democrats’ habit of treating smokers like ATMs to be pretty obnoxious. There’s no political downside to taxing us back to the stone age (because even we can’t defend it), but it rankles, man. I mean, it’s not like we’re a cross-section of the populace; we’re the working poor and the lower-middle class, we break our backs doing hideous jobs, and people in the upper echelons of society have so much shit to look forward to they can’t understand that for some, a smelly little burning cylinder with murder in its heart is it.
But hey, it’s easier than getting into a fight with the opposition over a tax on yacht cozies, so I get why we’re always the first to eat shit. Which would be a less revolting habit, admittedly.
Mike in NC
I quit 10+ years ago after failing another Navy PT test, as do most smokers. I’d also recently had the flu and was coughing up gobs of black crud that would have impressed a coal miner. Quit cold turkey and never regretted it. Gave up preaching to the wife, however.
chuck
Gosh, aren’t these folks such caring compassionate individuals?
Seriously Calvin, go slice another Lipton bag, you puddle of anal leakage. I can’t even summon the proper words to describe my disdain for you whining pusboils anymore.
Gus
Cold fucking turkey. The only way. Going on 7 years now, and I don’t miss it at all, at least not more than once or twice a year, and that’s fleeting. I quit when they were $4 a pack, and I just couldn’t justify that expense any more.
Dreggas
@gil mann:
Republicans love taxing cigs too. They can do that and still claim they aren’t taxing people
Church Lady
The market that I usually buy my smokes at raised their prices about two weeks ago. They had a HUGE banner behind the register that said "IT’S NOT OUR FAULT", with information about the new federal tax below that. Other stores around here didn’t raise their prices until today.
I don’t understand the reasoning behind funding SCHIP with the new tax, while hoping the new tax will encourage smokers to quit and discourage others from taking up the habit. What happens as more and more people quit due to the cost, others don’t start for the same reason, and funding for SCHIP starts to decline? What will they find to tax at that point in order to pay for the insurance program?
wasabi gasp
@Church Lady: The kids need to stop mooching and start lighting up.
SLKRR
I should start up an import-export "business." Cigs here in Brazil are $1.50 a pack, and those are the expensive ones.
kay
The payroll tax cut kicks in this month, $13 a week, so for smoker/workers, it’s a wash, right?
Depending on packs per day, I guess.
mgordon
I had to laugh at the local news the other day. They were interviewing customers at a local tobacco shop and the news about the tax seemed to be mixed. The funniest reaction had to be from a young hipster with a neck tattoo buying his American Spirits. He got really serious and told the interviewer that "he would not give a dime to this socialist government. I’m gonna quit".
I guess he showed us.
spot check billy
My first day of paid work (at least non-lawn mowing paid work) in 1974 was the day cigarettes went to $.48 (yes, cents) a pack at a regional chain drug store in Lemoyne, PA. In other words, four hours of a series of that guy having a stroke (no f-bombs, it was a more genteel time). Interesting way to meet the people whose daily fix I would supply for the next couple of years until I moved to the post-high job. Good times. Oh, and get off my lawn.
Brian J
Sin taxes don’t bother me as much as others because they seem to accomplish what they intend: to raise revenue and to discourage bad behavior. If it’s a choice between a more widely used tax like a sales tax on all items or a sin tax, it’ll probably be the sin tax every time.
Yes, cigarette taxes can probably stop some from smoking, but can similar sin taxes have other positive effects? Probably. I remember reading a Mark Kleiman post where he said the following:
That’s about as strong an argument in favor of sin taxes as I can imagine.
wasabi gasp
I’m not so much against sin taxes, I just wish the menu was longer.
Earl
Cold turkey. Both. Eighty-four days ago.
I will miss some things about smoking until the day that I die, but due to the stroke I have to consider it a permanent quitting.
Chuck Butcher
Sin taxes, hmmm, tax alcohol at exactly the same rate then. It is a much bigger problem, but…
Three weeks ago I lit a Camel straight, a fresh pack and the next to last one in a carton and I suddenly realized that I didn’t like it. Thirty eight years of Camel straights and I suddenly didn’t like them. I used the last pack as a taper method, Nick’s death prompted a 6 smoke relapse, and I’ve since managed with a couple puffs a couple times a day from my wife’s cigarettes. Coffee had to go, that was just too intimately acquainted with smoking. I hadn’t like the cost but I liked my Camels and I’d said for years that the way to get me to stop would be to quit making them, but this will do.
I’d pay the price for something I enjoyed but I’ll be damned if I’ll pay hostage fees for an addiction I no longer like. I hope the coffee doesn’t cost me too many friends, it is my Ritalin and I’m seriously over wound without it, hopefully another week or so and the physical withdrawal will be gone and I can have coffee back. I’ll tell you one thing, I ain’t doing this again, no sir, no way – because this sucks eggs in a big way. No kidding, this will work because I’m not doing it again.
Oh, fuck you tax advocates, the kids aren’t smokers’ kids, they’re everybody’s. You want to discourage behavior, 36% capital gains and 91% on anything over 100x median income and any executive pay over 20x avg wage in your company on all income – including exec washroom.
Chup
Yikes! Good luck on the recovery, Earl.
Me? I’m all for sin taxes and the estate tax. With the former, no one is forcing us to indulge and with the latter, we keep dopey sons and daughters of the rich from some of the rungs of power.
TenguPhule
Then wear a fucking sealed helmet to keep the smoke in your lungs.
Otherwise, pick a form a suicide that doesn’t involve poisoning the rest of us.
sus
John Cole, I have been trying to quit for years. And, I might be successful at some point. Though, not yet.
When did it happen that smokers became the pariah? It’s O.K. to be a drug abuser. We cheer for the celebrities as they leave the rehab as it is documented on the t.v. and in the magazines. And, every time they relapse.
Alcoholics… same thing.
Smokers. Not so much for them.
Michael
Well, I’m not a smoker, but I’ve quit other addictions and now how difficult that can be. To those who say "sin taxes, great, tax other sins too", I say: PLEASE do. I’m waiting tables and leave work wound up, late at night, with a bunch of cash in my pocket. It’s way too easy to go spend a bunch of that cash on one drink that turns into 3 drinks that turns into 5 drinks and a late night run for cheese fries.
I would love a heavy tax on alcohol that served as a strong disincentive to drink out. I would: a) drink less overall, a net benefit for my body (calories) and mind, as alcohol is not great for emotional stability, and I have type II bipolar AND b) spend less money overall, as I’d be drinking less and when I did drink, I’d be apt to buy a bottle at a store and bring it home and have a glass of wine with a home-cooked meal or what not, rather than going to a bar to get a mixed drink.
On the flipside, for a waiter/bar tender, I might make less money, so there’s that consideration for me. Heh.
BruceK
Here’s the thing about smoking, from the perspective of a non-smoker. The smoker isn’t simply making a choice for himself, he’s making the same choice for everyone around him, whether they like it or not. I’m in Greece right now, and smoking is pervasive here. Had to do a short stint in the army, and pack-a-day, two-pack-a-day habits were common. Non-smokers were probably only five percent of the conscript regiment, if that much. There’s talk about mandating non-smoking areas in bars and restaurants, and there’s a bit of an uproar about that.
Now I’m not saying I’m morally superior for being a non-smoker; I developed respiratory problems before I was old enough to legally buy a cigarette, and every time I breathed in secondhand smoke, I had to ask why would someone willingly do THAT to themselves? Oh, and just as a bonus, I found out this year that I’ve got a ten-year-old trauma-induced aneurism, so no smoking for sure and certain for me. But if someone else lights up in my face, am I supposed to sit there and breathe it in?
ThresherK
@Church Lady
Was the increase exactly as the tax increase and not a penny more?
I suspect the tobacco cos raise their prices at this time because any increase in cost out-of-pocket will be blamed by the pissed-off consumer on the damn gummint and their tax increase. Sounds like a no-lose.
(As always, subject to correction.)
djork
I have made progress in breaking certain associations I have with smoking. I no longer smoke within an hour eating. Likewise, I wait at least three hours after waking up to smoke my first one.
I don’t really have a coffee / cigarette link, because I really only drink coffee at work and thus I associate coffee more with working than with smoking.
Perhaps my next task should be breaking the link between booze and cigarettes or as I like to call them, chocolate and peanut butter. I guess I’ll have to find a non-smoking bar.
dsc
BUT IT’s WORKING!
My sis’s "boyfriend" quit the day before the tax increase.
My sister is saying she WILL quit as soon as the "signs" move back to the "feet and legs" (her claim is the two people at work quit during the last journey though Aquarius-Pisces and they have succeeded without the usual patches, pills, etc).
And my brother, the unrepentant asshole Fox-watching, liberal hating, damn them all for trying to tell me how to live, is CONSIDERING quitting.
Way down into the thread, but I say, "whatever works."
CodpieceWatch
I’d like to see Twinkies, potato chips, Big Macs, and all junk food taxed at the same rate as cigarettes, as it causes obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and all sorts of other health problems. Or, perhaps there should just be a scale that people have to get on before they purchase their Ding Dongs. If they weigh too much, they don’t get to buy it.
AkaDad
I’ve been smoking for 30 years. I used to smoke a pack and a half a day, but I’ve been able to cut down to only a half a pack a day by playing video games, specifically GTA4 on Xbox Live.
someguy
I’m against sin taxes unless they affect a sin I’m into, in which case I’m utterly opposed because you just can’t legislate morality.
In this case I don’t care because if you look at the demographics of smoking, it’s mainly poor people who smoke, and we need to stick it to those bastards for not pulling their weight in fiscal policy matters, right?
ironranger
I notice this is widely being called "a sin tax". It would be more accurate to call it "an addiction tax".
Paul L.
I would guess that smoking related deaths are calculated in the same way as obesity related deaths which caused the CDC to change the number from 365,000 to 112,000.
Can you name the people who died due to second hand smoke.
YellowJournalism
My husband was paying a little more than ten bucks a pack up here in Canada. That was about a year and a half ago. He quit just before our son was born.
Now a lot of the grocery stores don’t sell cigarrettes except in their convenience stores at the gas bars. In all locations that do sell them, cigarrettes are sold only from behind a metal case that doesn’t have any logos or listings of the brands. The thinking must be that if kids don’t know what brands are out there, they won’t smoke. (Ha.)
I had an uncle die from lung cancer, although it’s still under debate if it was caused by smoking or the massive amounts of pollution dumped near his home. Either way, it’s a terrible way to die, and I couldn’t stand the way that some family members (who were former smokers) were constantly preaching about the evils of smoking to him, even up to the end. The man smoked until the day he died, and that was his decision. Smoking is a shitty, dangerous habit, but it’s their choice. As long as I don’t have to smell it, I say leave the smokers alone.
Florida Cynic
Florida is talking about jacking up the cigarette tax another $1 this year, which is fascinating to me. A few years ago, when the price per pack went over $3 for premium brands, there was an immediate influx of untaxed, re-imported cigarettes from overseas. I cannot imagine the level of smuggling that will happen with both the federal and state increases in place. You jack up sin taxes high enough, or outright ban personal behavior, all that happens is that you create a shadow market and and increase in criminality.
I’m all for people quitting. I still have to many people I care about with the habit, and I only managed to kick it 18 months or so ago, but as a behavioral incentive I suspect that increasing sin taxes is not going to be a net winner.
Duros62
12 days smoke-free! After 25 years.
And I don’t say I quit smoking. Too negative. I started not smoking.
My wife is doing chantix, I’m on the patch. We’ll see who wins.
From what I understand, rolling papers will wet you back about $6 these days.
Cigarettes are the only product on the market that will kill you if you use them correctly.
LostAirman
External behavioral incentives seldom work. Addiction is a much more powerful incentive than cost. In fact, I’d make the case that if someone quits smoking (or drinking, or heroin, for that matter) because of price, they’re not really addicted.
I quit smoking in July after 33 years. (Cigarettes were couldn’t afford it than when I could.
So, if you buy the idea that financial considerations seldom provide behavioral incentives for breaking addictions, this really is just a bald-faced means to capitalize on a habit that’s increasingly limited to a class of people. Far and away, the largest smoking percentage of the population is in the mid-lower and lower income groups. The large percentage of those smokers who are truly addicted will find a way to keep feeding the addiction, undoubtedly at the expense of other items. And, the government will continue to collect the additional revenue from that addiction.
If this really is a tax intended to modify behavior, @CodpieceWatch has it exactly right. We should also be taxing junk food, alcoholic beverages, sodas loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, etc, at equivalent rates. In fact, let’s tax skydiving, motorcycles and cars capable of exceeding survivable speeds while we’re at it, because of the risks involved. Aside from providing "incentives" for people to give up these risky behaviors, the reduction in costs for treatment for diet-related heart disease, automobile and other risk-related injuries and death will surely decrease my health insurance premiums, as well.
Cloaking this in anything other than revenue generation – in any altruistic notion of behavior modification – is just disingenuous. We only impose these types of taxes on a group of people who are unlikely to vote out those who imposed them.
Dreggas
@Chuck Butcher:
Chuck,
If you quit cold turkey the physical symptoms of withdrawal, for the most part, are over in 72 hours once the nicotine is out of the system. In 3 weeks it’s all mental associations. The brain can repair and go back to normal functioning pretty quickly but the funny thing is once it’s wired to use nicotine it can switch back over to using nicotine pretty quickly which sucks because if you smoke again you are almost back to square one dealing with the withdrawals.
Granted I am using the patch this time, cold turkey just was not going to happen since I need to be able to concentrate while at work.
When I quit the last time (and stayed that way for 3 months) I was pretty much over it within 3 weeks. No real cravings or urges and that was cold turkey.
For those who want to quit I highly recommend the quit smoking site on about.com it’s free and a great resource/support center.
Texs Reader
The increase in cig tax should be given to states to pay for hospitalizations of low income smokers who have heart and/or lung diseases. I know this tax is a bigger burden on the poor, but the poor are more likely to be uninsured and thus the taxpayers are more likely to end up paying their medical bills, one way or another.
If you’re too poor to buy insurance (as i was for 2 years) or pay all you medical costs out of pocket, you shouldn’t be buying cigs. From that perspective I’m okay with the increase in taxes.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
My fukkin’ lord! I refused to buy any more ciggies when they raised the price to 27c a pack. Then I quit again when the price exceeded 50c a pack. I started buying cartons when generics were $10/carton. Lately, my "generics" were costing me $22/carton, and I quit again. Then last week they went up to $32/carton. OK, Florida, this time I quit for good! With the new Federal increase, they are pushing $40/carton. At this rate, I will no longer be able to afford my Nicoret supplement.
satby
@Paul L.: Can you name the people who died due to second hand smoke.
Some day one of them will be me, because I have COPD from the second hand smoke of my parents when I was a child, compounded by my years as a bartender back when smoking in bars was the norm.
And I used to be "live and let live" about the smoking too. I just didn’t realize at the time that was a one way street, and it wasn’t going my way.
Mac G
Cigarettes are almost 8 bucks a pack in VIRGINIA!
Dreggas
@LostAirman:
No two ways about it. There’s a book I read by Allen Carr called "the easy way to stop smoking" and it helped me in quitting. One of the things he points out is that the gov’t really has little interest in stopping smoking, the taxes on cigarettes and tobacco are merely revenue generating tools.
Jamey
Someone probably already beat me to it, but the reduction in costs for treating smoking-related illnesses likely will far more than offset the cost of providing health coverage under SCHIP. Dubner and Leavitt (F’o’nomix) may be wrong about the $222/pack external-cost of cigarettes, but not by much.
Phillygirl: Ever watch someone take fifteen years to die from emphysema? Not pretty, and definitely NOT cheap. I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen people survive, too. e.g:My M-i-L quit smoking in ’87, when she was 47; was diagnosed with emphysema when she was 54; and was saved in 2/’07, when, at age 66, she received a double lung transplant (usually, recipients get only one, but the second lung available that day wasn’t a match for the other person present that day at Columbia Hospital–lucky she; it increases her chance of survival exponentially).
I love my M-i-L. But her nearly twenty years with emphysema–most likely contracted from her long-time smoking addiction–probably has cost upwards of $600k in treatment and related care (oxygen delivery at $1300/month; steroid nebulizers at approx. $375/monthm etc.) If part of that cost is borne by smokers, so much the better.
Your reduced costs through attrition/lifestyle-induced-onset scenario kinda makes sense in a bar-argument sorta way. But it really doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny. Point is, smokers don’t all die young and NONE die healthy…
Jamey
— #90
Alcohol already is taxed pretty heavily.
Eric
If you tax smokers more to get them to quit smoking or pay for kids health care etc.
People will Quit smoking = no tax revenue.
Who do you think they will tax next?
non-smokers?
Smokers should get a medal of Honor for all the things they pay for with the smoking Tax.
I Don’t smoke.
john
hi i am trying to quit smoking..first went from a pack and a half to 1 pack in 2002 the 1st hike..april 1 went from 20 cigs to 10..its now april 5 and its been 3 a day ..and wonting more ! but knowing i can have one up to 5 makes me not wont one….thats how i quit smoking pot too.. having one made me not wont one…but if you know you ant got one …WOW !
point is…the best music was made from drug user’s and smokers….jimi hendrix alman bros lynyrd skynyrd fletwoodmac etc….i played in a band in a bar… the bar is gone… and i wont play again ! they let this rap crap take over…and let the real music die
yall dont deserve real music !! have your plastic toy’s ! the real stuff was invented and crafted by smokers… point to point wiring in tube amps…carpenter’s etc on and on…since this new order …dig it all crap came about…digital more crimes vililance etc came to be…
i’ll quit smoking…cause i ant no druggie….i smoked to help with anxity depression and stress ! from this new rap sh– and the senseless violance on tv….but now im looked at as a addict ! fu– u all