Why increasing taxes on cigarettes is a bad idea.

This week some of you experienced a massive tax increase in your cigarette purchases, a move that started at the desk of one, President Obama…the most powerful smoker in the world. The new cigarette tax tripled the amount of money the federal government collects on each pack of cigarettes from $.39 per pack to $1.01 per pack. This taxing measure should bring in around $38 billion in taxes over the next five years.

Not only was this tax increase a flagrant breaking of President Obama’s campaign promise to not raise any taxes on individuals making less than $250,000, but it is a move that will ultimately be bad for the economy.

This move also demonstrates one of two things:

1. President Obama lied about raising taxes on the not so affluent.

2. President Obama views sales taxes differently than regular, personal income taxes.

I can live with option one as many politicians lie or have to sell out some of their campaign rhetoric once they encounter the reality of the situations they face in office.

If it is option two, well then we had better hold onto our pants, as the government may begin to raise taxes, sales taxes mind you, on virtually anything and everything.

But, let’s get back to the cigarette tax that we are currently living with.

There is something that I find particularly interesting when looking at cigarette taxes. That thing is that republicans and conservatives alike, generally, do not throw up nearly the same type of rightfully, hysterical opposition to this type of taxation as they do with increases in other forms of taxation such as property taxes or income taxes.

My question is, why not?

I think many people that don’t smoke, don’t really care about this tax. They figure, “Hell, I don’t smoke, so why should I care if a bunch of people that are slowly killing themselves by smoking have to pay a little bit more to do so?”

It is this very sentiment that makes cigarette taxes so dangerous.

Any tax, whether you think it directly affects you or not, does have a negative impact on you because it has a negative overall impact on the economy as a whole.

For every extra dollar that is paid to the government in the form of a cigarette tax is one less dollar that is in the private sector…a dollar that could, theoretically, go towards a business that you either directly run or have invested in. Or in this case, $38 billion.

Additionally (and this goes back to the point I made above about President Obama’s views on sales taxes) this just makes it easier for the government to start taxing other forms of our income.

What this indifferent approach to cigarette taxes shows is that the government can tax all sorts of items and, as long as a large majority of the population doesn’t use said item, there will be little opposition to those increases as well.

This doesn’t even begin to discuss the damage these taxes do to the cigarette companies, companies, last time I checked, that employ many thousands of American workers.

All this tax is just the latest example of the liberal approach to slowly forcing their agenda on the rest of us by punishing certain rights and practices.

So the next time a cigarette law comes up, rally against it, rally against it hard…even if you don’t smoke. You will be helping yourself in the long haul.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John