Tobacco Tax

[Skip]

For those of you that have not heard the senate is voting this week on a new tobacco tax to end all taxes. They say that it is to provide health care for kids that have none. No one should have a problem with this, or should we?
Here is what will happen for sure. A cigar that we pay 4.00 for will jump to 14.00. In our store we discount the price by 10% when the customer buys a full box. A box of these cigars at this time costs the consumer 90.00. When the new tax hits us the same box will cost 315.00. The majority of customers will simply stop buying cigars. The results are far reaching. Consider the effect on the Dominican Republic, Nicaruga and the Honduras. These countries sell more cigars to the USA than any other country. What about their children? Don`t they need help as well?
What does this have to do with our Pipe Makers Forum? Plenty. Pipe tobacco is included in the new tax plan. If people can not afford tobacco they will have little need for pipes. Are we going to continue to make them if the only application they have is a art form? I don`t know about you guys but I have a substantial investment made into briar, stem material, special tooling and equipment.
You might say that the government must understand that if people stop buying tobacco products other than on the black market, they will have no revenue at all. My theory is that they fully expect that to happen. The anti smoking zealots have been after us for years. They don`t care about the kids they want to make a smoke free USA.

Our government brought us the Iraq war, border security, Katrina relief and on and on. We can sit back and hope that they do the right thing or we can do some thing. They will vote on it this week. Please go to www.rtda.org and click on legislation. Send e-mails to your senators and tell them what you think. After that call them. All of the contact info is on the site.
My wife and I called and got a real person. What a surprise!

Do nothing and you will have nothing to do.
Please help!

Thank you,
Skip Elliott
www.thebriary.com

[pierredekat]

Thanks for the update. I sent emails to Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn, and What's-his-name Culbertson, stating something to the effect that "SCHIP is a wonderful program that needs to be paid for by recouping money from turncoat Halliburton, rather than by sticking it to consumers."

Thank God I don't plan on living in this dysfunctional country very much longer, though. This is the kind of crap that drives me nuts.

[KurtHuhn]

Thanks for the link, Skip. That's a nice tool at the RTDA site. I composed an original email, as I figured that might carry more weight than a cut-n-paste.

[KurtHuhn]

So, I heard back from one of my representatives...

Dear Mr. Huhn:

Thank you for contacting me about proposed increases to the federal excise tax on cigarettes. I appreciate hearing from you.

Cigarettes are currently subject to a federal excise tax of $0.39 per pack. In addition to raising billions of dollars in revenue to help offset the health-related costs of smoking to the government, this tax serves as an economic disincentive to smoking. There is a large body of scientific literature that suggests that increasing the cost of cigarettes discourages smoking to a powerful degree.

I believe that we must take measures to discourage young people from beginning the dangerous habit of smoking and to encourage adult smokers to quit. To the extent cigarette taxes do that, it is reasonable to consider them. That being said, I will examine any proposed increases carefully, keeping your comments in mind.

Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue. If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let me know.


Sincerely,

Sheldon

My translation?

Yes, I know you don't like it, and I know it will impact you financially. I also know that the tax legislation has nothing to do with paying for health care and is solely meant to get people to stop smoking. I'm ignoring your points about pipes and cigars and the impact losing that revenue stream will mean to America. I am an anti-smoker, and my goal is to get people to quit using tobacco. Bite me.

I will now placate you by saying that I will consider your comments when voting, when in fact, I will not."

Hooray. Time for me to plant the back half acre with tobacco.

[Frank]

So, I heard back from one of my representatives...

My translation?

Yes, I know you don't like it, and I know it will impact you financially. I also know that the tax legislation has nothing to do with paying for health care and is solely meant to get people to stop smoking. I'm ignoring your points about pipes and cigars and the impact losing that revenue stream will mean to America. I am an anti-smoker, and my goal is to get people to quit using tobacco. Bite me.

I will now placate you by saying that I will consider your comments when voting, when in fact, I will not."

SOB, that's exactly what he's saying.

F**K, it steams me no end when they use smokers as whipping boys to gouge more money from a small minority of people. We know damn well, little or none of that money will go where they say it will. Using "poor little children" as a reason? They sure as shit wouldn't get it passed if they touted it as being for the benefit of lung cancer victims.

Perhaps we can get a good Civil Rights lawyer to take those bastards to court for minority discrimination! After all, we are a minority, aren't we?

[pierredekat]

On the bright side: the federal government is going to have a hard time trying to figure out how they can tax my "homegrown vegetables".

I need to post another update to that thread, because several of my "vegetables" are now over six-feet tall, with leaves close to a foot-wide and 30-inches long.

I suppose we tobacco/pipe enthusiasts need to start thinking in terms of developing "co-ops" to grow tobacco and split whatever is harvested between the members of the co-op.

There's a real synergy between pipes and homegrown tobacco, if you ask me. Hell, we pipemakers should be on the forefront of this thing, really.

And if worse comes to worse, and the government decides it wants to come to our gardens, count our plants, and assess a tax on them, we can all start bootlegging for the big bucks.

[KurtHuhn]

I didn't get mine in the ground this year. Too much going on this spring, and I just barely got the edible stuff planted. Next year, however, I will have a dirty great bed of tobacco plants.

[Ray Cover]

Very interesting comment form Pierredekat

I will predict that the same thing will happen with this as happened during the prohibition era.

They made alcohol illegal and I think they probably did it for morally right reasons. Alcohol abuse is not a pretty thing. But the effect was not the one they wanted. Alcohol became the taboo thing that many many people were not willing to give up. This gave a foot in the door to organized crime to make a buck off the sale of illegal alcohol. Booze was the bread and butter of Al Capone's Mafia.

If they try to in effect create another prohibition by making tobacco so expensive none can afford it. Tobacco will become that same type of illegal commodity and it will be bootlegged, organized crime will have its hand in it, and the Gov will spend a whole lot more resources and revenues chasing down the bootleggers and dealers than they will ever make from the increased tax.

I am sure that there are many who support this legislation because they feel it will keep kids from smoking. It may keep some from smoking and honestly if it worked and kept cigarettes out of teen hands I would be all for it and I would be willing to pay a bit more. But I do not think it will work. Marijuana is already illegal and a lot more expensive than cigarettes. How many teen age kids do you know of who draw down a joint on a regular occasion. Probably several.

Another problem I have is it targets more than just teenagers. A tax increase will also affect adults who should have the right to choose the level of safety they want in their lives.

We all make such choices. Waking up in the morning and going to work assumes a certain amount of risk that you may not survive the day. A friend who found out that I started smoking a pipe looked at me with genuine concern and said,"You know that smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer?" My reply," You know the number one cause of hwy fatalities is driving?" He got it immediately. Even though there is a risk involved with driving an automobile (every time you pass another car you are three feet from being seriously hurt or killed) no one gives it a second thought because the risk is considered tolerable in trade for the convenience of not having to walk or ride a horse. To me the risk of mouth cancer from smoking a pipe is tolerable compared to the enjoyment I get out of it.

Being a 40 year old adult I should be mature enough at this stage in my life to make that decision on my own. The government should not be trying to make it for me.

Furthermore, .................... Until this country has a government funded universal health care system they have no right belly aching about the cost of smoker's health care. Until they are paying for it they should not have a say in it.

My 2 cents,

Ray

[Ray Cover]

P.S.

Just how hard is it to grow tobacco and how hard is it to process it after the fact?

For those of you who like pure tobaccos I can see this being a great benefit but what about those of us who like aromatics with a bit of added external flavor?

Ray

[pierredekat]

Just how hard is it to grow tobacco and how hard is it to process it after the fact?

Not hard. Kurt developed the tobacco section to include a "Grow Your Own" forum and a "Processing" forum.

We've got a thread going on "Growing Your Own Tobacco (updated)" where I've documented my own gardening experiences, thus far.

And I kicked off the Processing forum with this thread on "Curing".

For those of you who like pure tobaccos I can see this being a great benefit but what about those of us who like aromatics with a bit of added external flavor?

Well, hopefully, that's where the "Blending" forum will come in handy. I've got some of my own ideas on how I'm going to develop a decent aromatic or two.

But this is just my first year for growing tobacco, so I have a lot of trial-and-error ahead of me.

I do plan on posting any and all recipes I come up with that seem to have a little merit, though. And hopefully others will too.

[magruder]

Folks, I refer you to this thread on Smoker's Forum:
http://www.smokersforums.org/showthread.php?t=37838

All of us here have a large stake in this.
Please contribute ideas and suggestions and, if so inclined,
time and money down the road.

Best to all,
Steve Morrisette