Cigar Tax Up 6,000% to Pay for SCHIP

Mr. McFadden: Teen smoking in NYC is down to 8%, vs 23% nationally, in part because of NYC's $3 per pack State and city tax on cigarettes.

The other two factors that have cut the teen smoking rate dramatically there are: high spending on tobacco prevention programs and NYC's strong smoking ban. NYC teens know they can't smoke in clubs, or most workplaces.

As to tobacco taxes hurting the poor, in fact they help the poor by strongly incentivizing them to quit and then lead longer, healthier lives.

The final lie in Mr. McFadden's arguement is that the direct medical costs of smoking are over $2.17 for every pack sold. Who pays that cost? We all do, in the form of higher health insurance premiums.

Tobacco taxes bring in revenue, are VERY popular with voters, and they keep kids from starting.

Perhaps Mr. Bush was thinking of the $7 million Big Tobacco gave Republicans in 2000, vs $1.6 million to Dems, when he vetoed SChip, which was to be funded by a 61 cent tobacco tax.

Lying With Numbers...

Amazing. Reynolds justifies a new tax on smokers by saying that smokers have had their taxes raised 75 times already in the past five years.

He then says that a 10% increase would cut youth smoking by 7%. By those figures, there'd barely be a single kid smoking anywhere in NYC today. Of course we've also been told that peer pressure accounts for half of youth smoking, and smoking in movies accounts for another half, and Big Tobacco ads account for another half, and the lack of bans accounts for still another half.

Meanwhile while the antismoking lobby is proud of taxing pack-buying smokers yet again, they never mention one of the nastiest aspects of this tax: an EIGHT HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN PERCENT increase in taxes upon the poorest of the poor ... smokers who can't afford to buy cigarettes and sit down to roll their own by hand instead.

This isn't just wrong. It's criminal

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"