Rick’s Blog: Cigar Tax Madness-- A Vicious Attack by Anti-tobacco Zealots

By Rick Grant rickgrant01@comcast.net

As I sit here puffing on my exquisite Bock Y Ca longsdale cigar, word reached me of a congressional campaign to tax the living crap out of cigars, effectively putting an international industry out of business. This new excise tax would kill the golden goose, since tobacco taxes bring in billions of dollars for our government to squander on an ill-conceived war in Iraq and other boondoggles. But zero times zero is zero, Senators!

Yes, our mealy-mouthed hypocrites on the Hill (Senators) are trying to pull a fast one on the tobacco industry by sneaking an excise tax on cigars attached to a bill to fund health coverage for poor children. The proposal would raise the tax on cigars by a whopping 20,413% (not a misprint) to a maximum of $10.00 a cigar. Moreover, a floor stock tax would be assessed on all products in inventory. If this is passed, it is not only the largest tax increase on any product in the entire history of the United States, but it will effectively kill the entire cigar industry in one fell swoop.

Hey stupid, you can’t tax a dead industry. Yeah, the Hill gang is adept at wasting our tax dollars. Some anti-tobacco zealot thought, hey, lets fund this health coverage for poor kids by making smokers pay through the nose. Tobacco and liquor are already taxed at ridiculous levels. Yet, these dunderheads want to bring back a new form of prohibition, when fine cigars are bought and sold on the black market. Of course, we pleasure seekers (nicotine addicts) will get our cigars one way or another. Why did our ancestors dump tea in Boston harbor? It was a tax protest against the British empire. Taxation without representation!

We cigar smokers everywhere are fighting back by writing our Senators about the unfair tax. I wrote to my Florida Senators Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson and got the typical non-committal response. These guys can write a thousand words and not say anything. God forbid if they tell their constituents the truth–they don’t give a damn! They spend their time in Washington either getting reelected, getting blown, or running for President. If this bill goes through as written, thousands of tobacco workers in other countries will lose their jobs and a viable industry will die.

If that’s what they want, then they are screwing themselves. Stupid is as stupid does.