Scary: Arizona smokers hit with big tax bills for buying cigs online...

In order for this 2012 federal law to have passed, Republicans in the House would have to agreed. 

About 30,000 Arizona smokers who bought cigarettes online are being hit with bills for thousands of dollars in unpaid state taxes.
The Arizona Department of Revenue says smokers owe the state more than $20 for each carton they purchased after 2006 through online companies that offered discounts by sidestepping state use and luxury taxes.
Smokers who thought they had saved more half off the retail price of cigarettes are receiving letters from the state demanding immediate payment for the unpaid taxes, plus penalties and interest.
Annette Borden of Chandler got a $4,299.20 payment demand last week for cigarettes she purchased online between 2007 and 2009.[...]
In 2012, federal law made online cigarette sales illegal. Companies were forced to give customer lists and purchase data to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which distributed it to states.

Nanny Stater Bloomberg want to make cheapest pack of smokes $10.50...

Can't New York voters make this health Nazi wannabe go away?

Via NYT:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg opened a new front in his antismoking campaign last week when he proposed new legislation that would require stores to keep tobacco products out of sight, making New York the first city in the nation to do so.

Its companion bill, however, has the potential to be just as groundbreaking, experts on tobacco control said. Along with strengthening the penalties on retailers that evade tobacco taxes, the second bill establishes a minimum price for cigarettes and cigarillos, or little cigars, of $10.50 a pack, the first time such a strategy has been used to combat smoking. The bill also prohibits retailers from redeeming coupons or offering other discounts, like two-for-one deals.

“This is kind of a landmark set of proposals here,” said Kurt Ribisl, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, whose research on tobacco control influenced Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal. “For someone like me, who’s spent 18 years studying point-of-sale issues, this is kind of big.”

Keep on reading…

Good News: Your smokes will not have scary pictures of blackened lungs and corpses

The FDA is backing down on the graphically scary pictures.

Via Ad Week:

Instead of fighting in court for the nine graphically scary pictures of blackened lungs and corpses, the FDA will try a different approach, according to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder obtained by the AP. The government will also not seek a Supreme Court review of the case.

Since the labels were proposed two years ago to persuade people to quit smoking, the nation's largest tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco lawyered up by hiring the nation's top First Amendment attorneys and managed to halt implementation of the warning labels in the lower courts.

Advertisers sided with the tobacco companies and filed a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court to hear the case to resolve rulings from two lower courts. 

Advertisers argued the labels weren't factual, and were nothing less than government propaganda turning cigarette packages into mini-billboards that took up more than half of the space on the package.

Chicagoland: $11 for a pack of smokes...

This is more likely to increase tobacco smuggling than revenue...

CHICAGO   •  Taxes on cigarettes sold in Cook County are going up by one dollar a pack.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle says the tax, which takes effect Friday, is expected to generate more than $25 million annually for the Cook County Health and Hospitals System.
She says higher taxes also will help lower smoking rates, including by discouraging people from starting.

The price of a pack of cigarettes could be near $11 in Chicago, $6.67 of which is city, county and state taxes. Only New  York City -- at $6.86 in taxes -- slaps on higher taxes.

Massive NY Cigarette Tax Hike Causes Tax Shortfall

This should have been obvious, but somehow it wasn't. New York hiked cigarette taxes a whopping 58% earlier this year. A pack of Marlboro now costs $11.60 in NYC. Suddenly cigarette sales dropped 27% in New York. They are up over 40 percent in nearby states and Indian reservations.

The NY Post reported:

Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted a staggering 27 percent statewide since the highest cigarette tax in the nation took hold in July, a Post analysis has found...

"That's what we warned would happen, and obviously it has come to fruition," said James Calvin, of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

"Every tax increase drives more smokers to that dark, shadowy, unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed side of the street. The whole policy is self-defeating."

If the trend continues, the state could fall far short of the $260 million windfall Paterson expected from the 58 percent tax hike.

Buy your smokes before midnight

The 62 cent Federal tobacco tax takes effect at midnight. Barack Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone who wasn't wealthy(less than $250 thousand a year.) Luckily for Obama, all smokers make more than $250 thousand a year.

Federal tobacco tax increase effective April 1st

Federal tobacco tax increase effective April 1st Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:02:00 EST

Update: Some misinformed individuals think Obama only promised not to raise income taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year. That is incorrect. He promised not to raise any taxes on those making less than $250,000. Watch the video and see for yourself. Obama wins the "pants on fire" award for raising cigarette taxes.