Related: Coughing Fit
"Smoke break gets more expensive with tobacco tax boost" by Associated Press | March 30, 2009
WASHINGTON - However they satisfy their nicotine cravings, tobacco users are facing a big hit as the single largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday.
Tobacco companies and public health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are trying to turn the situation to their advantage. The major cigarette makers raised prices a couple of weeks ago, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01.
(Aagh, aagh, aagh, aagh, what?)
Medical groups see a tax increase right in the middle of a recession as a great incentive to help persuade smokers to quit.
Then who is going to pay the taxes (not me, I don't smoke)?
Tobacco taxes are soaring to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children.
And if everybody stops smoking because the taxes are too high or for health reasons, whose gonna pay? Kinda short-sighted, 'er, winded, wouldn't you say, pfft?
President Obama signed that health initiative soon after taking office. Other tobacco products, from cigars to pipes and smokeless, will see similarly large tax increases, too. For example, the tax on chewing tobacco will go up from 19.5 cents per pound to 50 cents.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gum and then pull the switch....
The total expected to be raised over the 4 1/2-year-long health insurance expansion is nearly $33 billion. The tax increase is only the first move in a recharged antismoking campaign.
Yup, it's the same on every agenda-pushing piece of freedom-limiting garbage. The tyranny was to catch "terrorists," and now it is just for crime.
Congress also is considering legislation to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco.
Yeah, they've done such a great job on everything else!!!
That could lead to reformulated cigarettes. Obama, who has agonized over his own cigarette habit, said he would sign such a bill. About 1 in 5 adults in the United States smokes cigarettes.
But won't be for much longer.
That's a gradually dwindling share, though it isn't shrinking fast enough for public health advocates.
You gonna pick up the tax tab when they all dead and no one smoking? How long tobacco been around? Centuries? Gonna stop that like you stopped sex.
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