Amendment to highway bill sideswipes Little Tobacco

[alp227]

Source: Wash. Post

Nobody mentioned tobacco last week when the U.S. Senate adopted an amendment to the $109 billion federal highway bill.

But tucked into the 5,600-word amendment to provide aid for rural schools was a single paragraph that would settle a two-year-old fight between Big Tobacco and a small Ohio company that builds a do-it-yourself machine that allows smokers to get their cigarettes a lot cheaper.

The amendment would reclassify tobacco shops that offer the machines as “tobacco manufacturers,” imposing on them new regulations and higher taxes, and it opens a window into the ways of Washington, where the powerful and the connected can sometimes win even before the opposition knows the game is underway.

“This is catastrophic,” was the response of Phil Accordino, whose tiny company builds the roll-your-own cigarette machines in Girard, Ohio, when he heard of the Senate action. Word arrived in Ohio after the amendment had already been approved on a bipartisan vote.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/03/14/gIQAKoCBJS_singlePage.html

[tridim]

1. I expect if cannabis is ever legalized this kind of crap will become the norm

Do ANYTHING to make sure the profits go to the big corporations.

[nolabels]

2. Yea, if they could only figure out a way to stop the home grown stuff

The big Corporations would have killed the internet if they could have only figured a way to keep PC's out of the hands out of the common Joe. The internet still may be the fish they let get away that comes back to eat them alive later. One can only wonder and wait to see if it does.

[Trillo]

26. Home Grown Tobacco?

I guess the finesse is in curing it, then having the right equipment to shred it uniformly.

Perhaps there should be a new War on Drugs. Marijuana = fully Legal for adults, Tobacco = Schedule 4 drug, severe abuse potential.

When I was a kid, all the movies and TV showed doctors smoking. Now our controllers want us to stop. It's insanity, until you follow the money.

[eyewall]

3. This is the kind of bad idea that fuels the right's

criticism of the left — big gov, anti small-business, over regulating, etc.

Too bad it wasn't sponsored by a republican.

[indivisibleman]

4. see if there is a way to make this bite them back.

Examine how the law changes the situation for small tobacco and see if this can be presented to the public as a way to take away more business from big tobacco. Perhaps now that they are considered manufacturers they can now produce large quantities of home rolled cigarettes that can be sold in competition against big tobacco. I know very little about this issue but it still makes me stinkin' mad.

[Bozvotros]

5. Big tobacco and big government joined hands for this one....

Because smokers actually cost society less than non smokers. They die about 10 years sooner. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoking-cos_n_184554.html/

That represents a big savings in social security and medicare no matter how you cut it. So arguing that smokers should pay more because they cost more is just another big lie. Gets tiresome doesn't it? By making smokers pariahs, no one minds if they are forced to pay a huge dishonest "health" tax on each pack, a burden that fast food afficionados bypass....pardon the pun. Smoking is a huge cash cow for both state and federal government. If people are growing and rolling their own that is a huge chunk of change they will be missing.

Big Pharma, Big Tobacco and Big Gummint will be coming after e-cigarettes soon too. Count on it. E-cigarettes are catching on and represent the fastest, easiest way to get off the cancer sticks. Too bad Big Pharma didn't think of them first because then they could have jacked the price through the roof and put them under patents and sold them as health care devices and had the FDA protect their profits on them. But they didn't. Screw them. The government is worried that e-cigs will cut into their tax revenue and the pharmaceutical companies are afraid they won't keep making billions on their cessation drugs that are dangerous and ineffective and nicotine replacement methods that don't work. And tobacco companies just want people to keep smoking because it is so damn cheap to make and the profits are so good.

[CreekDog]

10. Secondhand smoke harms nonsmokers

Also thank you for reviving the discreditedRepublican argument that smokers cost less. I just wish you had properly given credit to the Republican who thought of that.

Finally offer you bonus pounts for saying "big government".

[ElboRuum]

19. Oh please.

Smoking taxation as it stands today is a regressive taxation scheme meant specifically to punish the behavior of a specific group of people while at the same time allowing government to profit off of the behavior.

Pretending that it is otherwise is ludicrous. What is, is. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

[CreekDog]

20. why are you writing this to me? your message has nothing to do with mine

and nothing to do with what i was responding to.

the argument i was responding to was that smokers save the government money because they die earlier.

but they affect nonsmokers by contributing to their health problems via secondhand smoke.

[ElboRuum]

24. The point you were making...

was in response to this paragraph... correct?

"That represents a big savings in social security and medicare no matter how you cut it. So arguing that smokers should pay more because they cost more is just another big lie. Gets tiresome doesn't it? By making smokers pariahs, no one minds if they are forced to pay a huge dishonest "health" tax on each pack, a burden that fast food afficionados bypass....pardon the pun. Smoking is a huge cash cow for both state and federal government. If people are growing and rolling their own that is a huge chunk of change they will be missing."

And since in most areas of the country, laws are in place to keep smoking away from non-smokers, is your assertion of smoker's contributions to non-smoker's health problems even vaguely true insofar as they once were?

[CreekDog]

25. the law doesn't keep smokers away from nonsmokers --it keeps them apart in a few places

but not all.

i'm not suggesting that the law keep them apart always, i'm suggesting that people be couraged to quit smoking, encouraged to not expose others to their smoke and a health care and social security system that cares for all people.

[ElboRuum]

27. Wait a minute

They already are encouraged to quit. Encouraged by onerous regressive taxation. Taxation which is a total cash cow for the governments which implement them and, like all regressive taxation, harms the poorest of us the most. So how's that for a mixed message? Out of one side of their mouths they say we should quit, and out the other, they pray we don't lest all that money goes away.

I understand (and support) making law which protects the health of non-smokers, however, I do not and never will support any form of taxation whose intent is punitive against a legal act, whose method is regressive, and whose implementation is so onerous as to be burdensome. You say "encouraged", I say "coerced".

P.S. the health care system is paid for, as it stands now, entirely by the people who use it, whether entirely by themselves or in the form of benefits (which is usually in lieu of greater wages). So until we get that single-payer thing going, well, smokers are no burden on THAT system either.

[CreekDog]

30. what are you disagreeing with me on?

i have no problem with taxing smokers more heavily than other things.

and i have no problem if health care is funded completely outside those taxes or if it is funded with them.

[ElboRuum]

31. Uh.. that first part.

If you read my post a bit more carefully, I believe I stated that while I have no problems with the making of law protecting non-smokers from smokers, such as the indoor bans on smoking, et. al., I DO have a problem with burdensome taxation on any legal act. You say you have no problem with this. I sense disagreement there.

[2banon]

6. this kind of underhanded, slimy, "earmark" legislation should be a felony

Bills that are passed in congress should be single issue, anything else slipped in ought to be considered null and void, if not a felony itself.

[socialindependocrat]

8. I'm with you - vote by issue

Why hasn't anyone done anything about this yet?

Now I need to write another letter to a bunch of congresspeople. We present these issues and they don't make a move till people get really pissed!

We need line-item veto and we need the majority leaders
to be assigned the job of getting rid of any parts of a bill that are unrelated.

This is so straight forward and stupid! Let's get a congress that does it's job!

[CreekDog]

11. Line item veto?

Last edited Mon Mar 19, 2012, 12:27 AM - Edit history (1)

I guess this is obvious t---- season.

[Historic NY]

7. It has more to do about lost revenues in NY State RYO is on the radar soon..

Loose tobacco is taxed by the federal government at $2.80 per pound, compared with $25 per pound for tobacco made exclusively for cigarettes, as CSNews Online reported.

As part of the new budget, released yesterday, Cuomo has proposed taxing loose tobacco at the same rate as cigarettes, which in New York State is $4.35 per pack. In the case of loose tobacco, the levy would be $4.35 per ounce, according to the Associated Press.

http://www.csnews.com/top-story-new_york_governor_takes_aim_at_loose_tobacco-60302.html

[dorksied]

9. Corruption. Call it what it is. Our country is BOUGHT.

[link:http://ironboltbruce.com/2010/11/19/i-pledge-no-allegiance-to-the-flag-of-the-corporate-states-of-america-or-to-the-kleptocracy-which-stole-the-land/|

[Major Nikon]

12. I have mixed feelings about this

The problem I have with the roll-yer-own right handed cigarette market is they were bundling large quantities of cheap cigarette tobacco as "pipe tobacco" in order to avoid higher cigarette tobacco taxes. In response congress hiked the taxes on pipe tobacco and they have been trying to raise it more. So while this market had developed into a cottage industry of it's own, it was killing the real pipe tobacco market and the stores that catered to that market due to the higher resultant taxes.

[nanabugg]

13. We need an Occupy the Amendment process

Major bills should be clean, single issue bills, with only amendments dealing directly to the bill subject matter. A candidate who runs on cleaning up the amendment process would get my vote. Only Congress can make this change.

[ChunderingTruth]

14. When You have a Fascist Government

these things happen.

Fascism the new Norm in america!

[dipsydoodle]

15. Are they talking about one of these ?

I found one in one of my old fishing tackle boxes which had been there since about 1966 - still works.

The one in the picture is now £3 in the UK.

[IDemo]

16. The ones I used back in the day only cost a buck:

[dipsydoodle]

17. Back in the 70's

in Spain they used to sell cigar papers which were printed as dollar bills. I never thought of doing that your picture shows - cute.

[tridim]

18. The plastic rolling machines they sell today only cost $1.49

And yes they work better than a dollar bill, same principle though.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. No, one of these:

And injector machine, you put a tube with a filter tip on the nozzle, put in tobacco, turn the handle and it stuffs the tube with tobacco.

[rucky]

22. Nope. One of these...

They can do a carton in 5 minutes. It costs about 20 bucks to use the machines - which are at a few tobacco shops in my area.

[cstanleytech]

23. Wait, I thought we were supposed to be against tobacco in general or is that only when it

involves a corporation that we are supposed to gnash our teeth and rail against the harm it causes people that smoke?

[ElboRuum]

28. Who told you that?

I always thought we were supposed to do our own thinking about things and come to our own conclusions.

[cstanleytech]

29. "I always thought we were supposed to do our own thinking..."

As did I.........maybe we are unique?