Taxes on Cigarettes :: Essays Papers

Taxes on Cigarettes The article â€Å"Smoke Signals†, by the New York Times and the New Jersey Sunday edition, presented an overview of for the state of New Jersey’s recent decline in cigarettes bought in the last year. The article starts off by explaining to the reader how smokers took a financial beating at the cash register every time they went to a convenience store to buy cigarettes. In a smokers reduction movement the state of New Jersey doubled the sales tax on cigarettes forcing smokers to spend an extra forty cents on every pack they bought. Len Fishman, the state commissioner of Health and Senior services, stated that the tax increase was meant to drive down the consumption entirely. As Mr. Fishman traveled around the state he discovered that many people were already trying to quite smoking, they just never had the right physical motivation to pursue their goal. These people explained that the dramatic increase on tax was the finale straw that broke the camels back, and provided the right motivation for them to quite smoking. The tax increase put New Jersey behind only Hawaii and Alaska at $1 a pack, and Washington state at 82.5 cents a pack. Over a six month period the revenue collected from cigarette sales had dropped by 12 percent. For 1998 the revenue earned by cigarette sales should have been roughly 54.2 million cartons, but with the tax increase that number had been dropped to 47.4 million cartons. This gap represents a 6.8 million carton difference, an outstanding decrease in cigarette sales. To all smokers the tax increase means a substantial amount of money will be necessary to maintain their habits. Some smokers will go through great lengths to save as much money as possible, even if it means traveling to other states to buy their smokes. Both Pennsylvania and Delaware reported a significant increase in cigarette sales over the next six months after the tax took affect. Over a one year period Delaware even had a ten percent increase, manly due to the tax increase in New Jersey. The state of Massachusetts raised their tax 25 cents a pack in 1992 and reported a 12.5 percent decrease in sales the following year. Certainly a more alarming statistic is not necessarily how much the tax has decreased the sales of cigarettes, although very impressive and healthy, but rather the percent of under aged children and high school students who already smoke and who are beginning to smoke.