Chad Cooper wrote:
> I am sure that it was as far as some people are concerned. They fail to
> address the black market they helped stimulate. There was a great article in
> the Oregonian at the beginning of the year that discussed the hopelessness
> of catching the cigarette bootleggers. The cost differential between a pack
> in Seattle, and one from an Indian reseveration less than 100 miles away are
> close to 60 cents - or $6.00 per carton. Aparently there are millions of
> dollars being spent in the communities around these reseverations and other
> state border towns - in some towns, as many as 20,000 packs per person are
> being sold in these small border towns. Of course, the townsfolk are not
> heavy smokers.
That sounds like a good reason to convince other areas to increase their taxes
not a good reason for us to lower ours.
>
> For many years, and still today, organized crime makes a lot of money from
> illegal cigarette sales, which includes sophisticated tax stamp
> counterfeiting. The total number of enforcement officers in the state
> dedicated to policing illegal cigarettes sales in the state with the highest
> state tax (Washington)? 16.
That's a small price to pay for the revenue generated.
> While I can see that there is a significant reduction in smoking recently,
> it cannot be attributed to an increase in taxes.
This article suggests otherwise:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1068000/1068984.stm
"Stanton Glantz, UCSF professor of medicine who led the research, said: "Our
results show that large-scale, aggressive tobacco control programmes save lives.
"They also show there is a real human price to be paid when the tobacco industry
succeeds in convincing politicians to cut back and water down these programs."
The researchers also compared how many cigarettes were smoked in California
compared with the rest of the US, and estimated 2.9 billion fewer packs were
smoked between 1989 and 1997 than would have been the case."
> While California has taken draconian measures to get people to stop smoking
> in public, they are headed toward regulation vs prevention.
Draconian? We've told smokers that they can't kill the rest of us with their
habit. There are very few people _even among smokers_ that find our regulations
draconian. As far as prevention, the ad campaign is touted as the most
successful of its kind in getting people to quit and preventing others from
starting.
> I tend to believe that most smokers have an easier time quitting the longer
> they have been smoking. The zyban product works great, but it won't do it
> all. Good Luck to her. I would be happy to support her (or your son) offlist,online.
Not Zyban, something else, but I don't remember the name. And she is already
off of it.
I appreciate your offer to help. 8^)
--
Doug
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.zo.com/~brighto
"Now people stand themselves next to the righteous
And they believe the things they say are true
They speak in terms of what divides us
To justify the violence they do"
Jackson Browne, It Is One
