Starting July 1st the people of New York State will have to pay an extra $1.60 per pack of cigarettes, bringing the average price of a pack of cigarettes to $9.20. In the city of New York, additional city taxes will bring it up to $10.80. The main point of this increase to is give the state some emergency cash to keep the state going, along with a little push to stop people from smoking.
As someone who does enjoy his tobacco, I have this to say: God damn it stop picking on us fucking smokers!
I really hate it when some state needs some emergency spending money and they think “Oh hey, smokers don’t pay enough money into the state… let’s see if we can squeeze them harder!”
Not that single states are alone in this kind of extortion. The Federal government has also taken part by using taxes to fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as SCHIP. The 1997 bill and its 2008 re-authorization were both funded by additional taxes on cigarettes. The two things that came to mind my with the 2008 re-up were that the government apparently doesn’t care about you after you turn 18 (except to send you off to war), and they couldn’t think of anything better to tax to get the funds.
Like alcohol.
I bet quite a few readers froze up in horror at that last line and cuddled a bottle of their favorite spirit telling it sweetly, “Don’t listen to the angry man, he didn’t mean what he said.”
Yes I did.
According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the federal tax for a pack of cigarettes ranges from $1.01 to $2.11 depending on size. On a can of beer the tax comes out to five cents a can. The tax on a bottle of wine runs from 21 to 62 cents depending on alcohol content. The state of New York adds 1.3 cents per can of beer, and almost six cents per bottle of wine.
For a product that they’re not trying to keep us from consuming, I would think alcohol would provide a far better source of revenue. The last time New York increased the taxes on booze, it netted them a fair chunk of change.
The use of health issues to justify the increase of tobacco taxes is pretty fucking hypocritical on a number of levels. There’s very, very few places you can advertise smokes, but yet I get some suave motherfucker on prime time TV telling me to stay thirsty? While I will not deny that smoking can cause health issues, where’s the uproar from various group yelling at the networks to pull these ads off the air? If the it’s the health risks they’re so concerned about, how come I never see commercials about people picketing the offices of InBev?
Societal and economic effects of alcohol use can be further reaching than cigarettes could ever imagine. If someone were to periodically take a break at work to have a couple of shots of whiskey, most likely after a while they would be fired. Smokers just get bitched at because they took an extra five minutes on their break.
And the possible criminal ramifications should be apparent. People get court orders to go to rehab because they beat the shit out of their significant other after downing a case of Natty Light. No one gets sent to Smokers Anonymous for what happened during a nicotine fit.
If the health of its constituents were truly its concern, then the government of New York should tax everything that has been shown to be bad for you. Tobacco, alcohol, soda, and fast food. There’s no sense in being half assed when it comes to our well being.
If it’s just the money they’re worried about, how about they they do what their citizens are currently doing in this economy: spending within their means.
How should the government of New York be fucked in the ass: with the smoke from a carton of Marlboro Reds, because that is what they are doing to the fine people of New York.
