Sorry for the continued hijack, but didn’t Cecil do a column on the origins of blue laws? ISTM I recall one, but I’m not finding anything on a search. Why exactly no beer or alcohol on Sunday? Are the laws based on religion?
And to try to drag back to the topic…I think we’re losing valuable revenue. With everyone quitting smoking because it’s cost prohibitive, the states are going to have to go back to charging the rest of us to make up the difference. 
There is Bottle King a few miles south of the Courtyard, though its on the 17N side, but you’ll have to U-Turn to get back anyway.
That and you about 8 seconds from NY (Suffern) where you can by beer at any gas station, supermarket, etc.
I couldn’t find one, either.
That’s my understanding, yes.
That’s no good. I want my money’s worth, dammit. Might have to go back to smoking, just to get what I’m paying for. Heh.
So, they haven’t been struck down yet becauuuuuuuse…?
I’m guessing it costs more to take care of smoker’s health problems than the revenue gained from cigarettes.
I’m no legal expert (I’d sure like to hear from one on this issue), but it seems to me that even though Blue Laws are based upon Christian values, they are not actually establishing a State religion, per se, nor preventing one from observing his own religious practices. Unless you wanna try to argue that your religion requires you consume large quantities of Jack Daniels every Sunday.
Good luck with that. 
Actually, your religion would have to require you to buy or sell large quantities of JD every Sunday. AFAIK, your average blue law doesn’t say a thing about when you consume.
Um, whoosh.
Q.E.D., it says right here in the Northern California Wine Snob Bible that I must have at least one glass of Pinot every night during the winter, yea, and a nice varietal during the summer evenings.
And what is UP with being able to buy hard liquor, just not beer and wine?
Way to kill a joke, McScrooge. 
People deal with dodgy Eastern European companies. They drive to different states. They dig for tax loopholes only to later get bitten in the ass when they find out the loopholes didn’t exist in the first place.
Unless you’re utterly married to your particular brand of cigarettes, the cheapest and best-tasting solution can be found right at your local tobacco shop. My nicotine fix is a ten-minute walk from my house, and it only costs me $10.75 for a carton’s worth of smokes. I could probably cut that price in half by going with a cheaper brand that has a tobacco quality equivalent to Marlboro or Camel, but I like the good stuff.
I buy cans of American Spirit tobacco, a brand which, when sold in packs, is more expensive than the regular premium brands, and I use an injector to make my own cigarettes with empty filters (the price of which is included in the $10.75 cited above.)
Canned tobacco resides in a different and far lower tax class than premade cigarettes. I wonder sometimes if people don’t realize this and equate the exceptionally low prices of the tobacco with poor quality. Perhaps others have discounted the method entirely because of one bad experience with some truly nasty tobacco like Topps. Whatever the case, buying packs means throwing a hell of a lot of money away for no good reason, IMHO.
I can make a full pack in about ten minutes with my cheap (less than $5) injector. Crank-based machines would make that process even faster, but they’re too expensive ($20-$60) for my tastes.
I have a “What the Hell?” here too - I saw that on my tax return and was wondering the same thing: “am I really supposed to have kept track of this stuff? When did they send out that memo?”
Of course I entered 0. So as some others have said, at the least it means a higher risk for audit (though still I doubt this since my income was so small the sales tax for the few hundred dollars I spent on the internet couldn’t possibly be worth their time… I hope), is this correct?
Did anyone here actually do this? (keep track of and report internet purchases that is)
Just give it time. It’s a slow, methodic approach, but the Army of Good[sup]TM[/sup] will eventually get around to saving you from yourself.
Wait a minute – I could be in real trouble here. I’ve been buying cigs online for well over a year.
Is this just sales tax, or cig tax as well? If the former, then not a problem. If the latter, then Oh Shit. Or does it vary by state?
Sweet!
And the U-Turns are the best part about driving in NJ.
Is it true that loose tobacco has fewer additives than the tobacco in cigarettes? (I get my smoking info from Pulp Fiction.)
Count me in as another frequent on-line shopper who hasn’t previously been concerned about sales tax. The accountant who did our return didn’t ask about it, and I didn’t look at the forms, so I expect there’s a Zero in that box. Now I’m worried.
It’s not the sales tax. That’s the same for everything usually. (Up here, the city of Grand Forks tacks on an extra 2% for alcohol.) :rolleyes:
It’s the excise and various other fees that get you. That’s why a pack is so much more expensive in NY than ND. The sales tax isn’t that big a difference. Hell, a closer comparison is MN with the $.75 health impact fee on each pack.
I imagine the sales tax is almost inconsequential (sp?) compared to the extortion fees collected based on the product.
AFAIK, that depends on the brand of tobacco you’re smoking rather than its distribution method. The American Spirit that I smoke is 100% tobacco - no additives in either its loose tobacco or its traditional packs.
I indeed make sure that I pay “use tax” on internet purchases. Some states (I believe in an effort to get folks to cough up some $$) have a sliding scale of ‘assumed’ internet/catalog purchases, (“If you earn between $10,001- 15,000, you probably owe $x in use tax”). Some states, (like Virginia, for example) have an amount that if you spend less that that, you don’t owe any use tax (in VA, it’s $100. I had recent reason here to do more than a little research on that )
Suck.
Here in MA, we have all sorts of “health” taxes. We pay about $6 per pack. I think I’m going to owe a fuck of a lot.
Yeah, but you must save a ton in insurance premiums considering you get the health care you’re paying for in taxes, right?
Right?
Oh, who the fuck are we kidding? The taxes are used for non-smokers as well. The problem, as I’ve seen often here, is that as soon as we complain about the unfairness of it all, we’re told we’re the reason health care costs are so high. No win situation. We just have to suck it up. And keep paying. Always keep paying.