Ohio increases tax on smokes by 70 cents a pack.

[Arwin]

@Rick

I can name two. My mother and father. both of my parents were heavy smokers. My dad was about 3 packs a day of unfiltered Camels, my mom about 2 packs a day of Kools. They were so hard core they smoked at the dinner table. As a little kid with asthma dinner was not fun. In 1956 there was a one penny tax increase in the cost of cigs. Both of my parents, independent of each other, decided that it was too expensive and quit cold turkey. Neither one of them ever had another cig for the rest of their lives.
This is why when people tell me that cigs are so adictive that it is impossible to quit, I do a :dubious: .

My god, 1956??? Isn’t that like one year before the Tobacco industry themselves learned what nicotine was and it might be a good idea to increase it?

[DoctorJ]

I’m not nuts about taxing cigarettes excessively; I think it’s taking advantage of an unfortunate addiction to bolster tax revenue. I also don’t think it’s an effective deterrent–you’d probably have to double or triple the price of a pack before you’d see any significant drop in the number of smokers.

That said, I would personally be happy to pay extra money in taxes as a result of smokers giving it up. It would probably hurt my income otherwise, too, since a lot of the conditions I see are partially caused or at least made worse by cigarette smoking, but it would still be worth it.

[Typo_Negative]

I cannot get behind the idea of taxing people into quitting.

Either make the damn things illegal or leave the smokers alone.

[Driver8]

@Airman Doors

So yeah, what I want to see is for people to quit en masse, and make you non-smokers eat shit when there’s a massive shortfall in the budget because eveybody quit.

While I would otherwise agree with most of your post, your seemingly irrational hatred of people who have chosen not to smoke makes you come across like an asshole. It’s kinda like having your car broken into and instead of cursing the guy’s that did it cursing everyone who hasn’t had their car broken into.

I would be in favor of setting the additional tax rates on cigarettes to the exact rate that would cover the estimated additional burden smoking causes to the public health service. Anything over that is just taking advantage.

[Driver8]

Also, what percentage of the state budget is this cigarette tax? Is it really significant? You seem to be getting all excited about a horrible shortfall descending on the entire state’s population. Is it really that bad?

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@Driver8

While I would otherwise agree with most of your post, your seemingly irrational hatred of people who have chosen not to smoke makes you come across like an asshole. It’s kinda like having your car broken into and instead of cursing the guy’s that did it cursing everyone who hasn’t had their car broken into.

I would be in favor of setting the additional tax rates on cigarettes to the exact rate that would cover the estimated additional burden smoking causes to the public health service. Anything over that is just taking advantage.

My alleged irrational hatred stems from the fact that this is being driven by nonsmokers with full knowledge of the repercussions of what they’re doing. They’re trying to tax people into submission, and barring that they’ll just benefit off them for the indefinite future.

That’s a real scumbag thing to do.

[John_Mace]

@spooje

I cannot get behind the idea of taxing people into quitting.

Either make the damn things illegal or leave the smokers alone.

The problem is the addiction.

Legislators addicted to the tax revenues, that is.

[Jackmannii]

I am in essential agreement with DoctorJ.

@DoctorJ

That said, I would personally be happy to pay extra money in taxes as a result of smokers giving it up. It would probably hurt my income otherwise, too, since a lot of the conditions I see are partially caused or at least made worse by cigarette smoking, but it would still be worth it.

In fact, I agree with every word of that quote, except in my specialty (pathology) it would be more accurate if the word “partially” was omitted.

If smokers get pissed off enough to quit their habit in order to teach the state of Ohio and other tax authorities a lesson, good.

And if name brand cigarettes are running $5 a pack, Ohio taxes amount to only one-fourth of that. Better save some venom for your good friends in the tobacco industry. And consider growing your own. Some varieties are actually fairly ornamental.

[Moirai]

But isn’t processing it a hassle? Or would you just dry it, shred it, roll it & smoke it, like pot?

Not that I smoke pot, but that’s what I’ve heard…

[Good_Egg]

So…what would happen if everyone in America quit smoking?

[Binarydrone]

@Good Egg

So…what would happen if everyone in America quit smoking?

Well, for one thing people would have to think of something different to do after sex.

[Czarcasm]

Airman Doors, USAF, I totally sympathize with your predicament and I think I have a solution:

The Great Tobacco Boycott

Let’s say all people who smoke and/or chew get together and sign a pledge saying they will stop using all tobacco products until the government backs down and lowers the tax rate. Now, this might take a little time. Hell, it might even take years, but I think that, in the long run, things will work out for the better.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@Czarcasm

Airman Doors, USAF, I totally sympathize with your predicament and I think I have a solution:

The Great Tobacco Boycott

Let’s say all people who smoke and/or chew get together and sign a pledge saying they will stop using all tobacco products until the government backs down and lowers the tax rate. Now, this might take a little time. Hell, it might even take years, but I think that, in the long run, things will work out for the better.

I agree, as long as I don’t hear a single bitch, not even a peep, about how your taxes are going up. Otherwise, you can get stuffed.

[TheLoadedDog]

@Airman Doors

Otherwise, you can get stuffed.

Then they’d just tax that activity.

[Czarcasm]

@Airman Doors

I agree, as long as I don’t hear a single bitch, not even a peep, about how your taxes are going up. Otherwise, you can get stuffed.

Sorry, I totally forgot about Rule #1: Never joke about the smokes.
:rolleyes:

[Mtgman]

RJ Reynolds(a major tobacco company) maintains a page on tax revenues from tobacco taxes.

In 2004, U.S. smokers paid the following amounts in tobacco taxes and MSA payments:

$982.33 per second
$58,939.84 per minute
$3,536,390.60 per hour
$84,873,374.40 per day
$596,153,846.15 per week
$2,583,333,333.33 per month
$31,000,000,000.00 for the year

31 Billion per year in combined state, local, and federal taxes a well as payments under the Master Settlement Agreement(the multi-state lawsuit against the tobacco industry). RJ Reynolds also maintains a [.According to the [url=“http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxFacts/Tfdb/TFTemplate.cfm?DocID=328&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=21”]Revenue by Government Level table](http://www.rjrt.com/legal/taxStateTable.asp"page breaking this figure down by state and locality[/url) at the Tax Policy Center the total state, local, and federal revenues in 2002 was $2,758,144,370,000 Or two and three-quarter Trillion dollars. Those figures have probably gone up a bit due to inflation and down a bit due to tax cuts, so we’ll call it a wash and use the current figures for tax revenue from tobacco according to RJ Reynolds and the older figures from the Tax Policy Center(which gets its data from the Census Bureau and the Office of Management and Budget).

$31,000,000,000 / $2,758,144,370,000 = 0.01124 = 1.124% of revenues.

So a little over 1 percent of government tax revenue comes from the combined tobacco revenue and the multi-billion dollar tobacco settlement. I’m including the settlement payments in the “taxes” number because the tobacco industry is undoubtedly simply passing on those costs in the price of packs.

I doubt most people would even notice a 1.124% tax increase if it were spread across all the levels(state, federal, and local). This is even less likely when you consider that about some of the 31 Billion is the settlement payments. RJ Reynolds Quick Facts table has

Total annual federal, state and municipal excise taxes on cigarettes (excluding MSA/settlement payments) - $20,110,820,422
annually(fiscal year ending June 30, 2004)

So if every smoker magically quit tommorrow it would cost the government about $20,110,820,422 / $2,758,144,370,000 = 0.00729 = 0.729 % of their tax revenues.

So it would seem, given some fairly solid sources for the numbers, tobacco revenues just aren’t that big a fraction of government revenues.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Mtgman]

@Airman Doors

I agree, as long as I don’t hear a single bitch, not even a peep, about how your taxes are going up. Otherwise, you can get stuffed.

I promise I won’t bitch if my taxes go up 0.73% in exchange for a smoke free US. Not one peep.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Mtgman]

Damnit! Screwed up my coding and broke two links and my paragraph break. Here is the corrected version of the bit between the quotes in my first post above as follows.

@Mtgman

RJ Reynolds also maintains a page breaking this figure down by state and locality.

According to the Revenue by Government Level table at the Tax Policy Center the total state, local, and federal revenues in 2002 was $2,758,144,370,000 Or two and three-quarter Trillion dollars.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Ok, so cig taxes make up a fairly small share of total tax revenue.

Next question: Do higher taxes discourage smoking? How much?

From here we learn that increasing the price of cigarettes by 10% causes a 4-7% drop in smoking.

Interestingly though, the price effect is more pronounced for teens: for them a 10% rise in prices leads to a 12-14% reduction in smoking.
Summary:

$5/pack -> $5.50/pack ====> 13% reduction in smoking by teens, 5.5% overall.

[fluiddruid]

You know, I hate smoking, I hate cigarettes, I hate the jackasses that hover outside my building’s doors even when there is a perfectly serviceable smoking patio built especially for the purpose, I hate the butts lying around, but I also hate this tax. I object to ‘sin taxes’ where we’re trying to change people’s behavior by making it expensive to have a vice. Next, it’ll be alcohol.