State-Funded Study: Cigarette Tax Hurts New York's Poor The Most

The Daily Caller has;
State-Funded Study: Cigarette Tax Hurts New York's Poor The Most

By Jessica Stanton

Archive | Email Jessica Stanton

 Follow Jessica Stanton Get Jessica Stanton Feed

A study conducted on behalf of the New York State Department of Health has revealed that cigarette taxes hurt the poorest New Yorkers the most.

Low-income smokers, defined as individuals in households making less than $30,000 a year, spent an average of 23.6 percent of the annual household income on cigarettes. That number is up from 11.6 percent in 2003-2004 and in spite of increasing cigarette taxes imposed by the state and city governments.

By comparison, smokers in households making over $60,000 a year, spent an average of 2.2 percent of their household income on cigarettes.

At $4.35 per pack of 20, New York has the highest state cigarette tax in the country. But the tax on a pack can cost up to $6.46 in the state, when combined with the $0.61 state sales tax and additional city excise tax. New York City, for instance, tacks on $1.50 per pack.

The prevalence of smoking is directly correlated with income level, the study found. 24.3 percent of low-income New Yorkers smoke some days or most days. The study shows no decline in smoking among low-income smokers, despite tax increases since 2003, meaning that the poor bear a disproportionate tax burden.

“This is such a shockingly high proportionate of their income,” said Dr. Matthew Farrelly, the study’s author, in a phone interview with The Daily Caller. “And yet at the same time, New York has cut funding for tobacco control programs by half.”

Farrelly firmly believes that tobacco control programs are effective in helping smokers quit, and he reiterated the study’s conclusion that more revenue from excise taxes should be used to fund these programs.

But Farrelly conceded, “It may be that raising [cigarette] taxes does not work well for low-income smokers.”

And while he also believes the state should continue to look at efforts to curve tax evasion, it is notable that Farrelly believes study findings “support that they [individuals surveyed] were not evading the tax.”

Conducted by the independent, nonprofit RTI International, researchers surveyed more than 13,000 individuals to demonstrate the effect of high cigarette excise taxes on income levels.

Thank You Daily Caller and Ms Stanton.

Right. And both Smoking cigarettes and Quitting cigarettes are incurable, Life Long "Mental Illnesses'.

DSM-IV-TR Billing Code: 305.10: Nicotine Dependence

DSM-IV-TR Billing Code: 292.0: Nicotine Withdrawal

It's not just the Economic hammer that the Social Engineers pound the Poorest with. Any contact with a cigarette, coming or going, Psychiatrically relieves the Poorest among us of their Civil Rights too. But then who needs Civil Rights anyway, when an addiction to brain eating, suicide and murder inducing, completely defective pharmaceuticals is available from your nearest, junk medicine, prescription scribbling Quack. 

Mr Patrick Fleenor - via the CATO Institute - has an eye-opening analysis of just how much More these money grubbing, "Let's Punish the Poor Some More" cigarette taxers are costing New Yorkers, and have been for years.

Cigarette Taxes, Black Markets and Crime: Lessons From New York's 50 Year Losing Battle

2003. 9 years, and the Taxocrats have learned What? Aren't they the people who are always tearing at their hair and droning on about "Helping the Poor"? Isn't all that Wonderful Revenue they're forever Gouging everyone for going to birth the Utopia of every man's dreams, ..... someday, ...... if we'll just stop being so selfish and let them Spend even more?

Hmmm. Experience slays yet Another Lie. But then, the Betterment of Society has never been what Socialist/Behaviorist Engineering is all about Anyway.

Have you read this expose on John Maynard Keynes?

http://www.keynesatharvard.org/

The Guru of the Taxocracy sucking up 23.6% of the annual income of New Yorkers making $30K a year?

Keynes is the economic junk scientist behind the Taxocracy disseminated misapprehension that we can Tax, Borrow, and Fed Reserve Counterfeit our way to Utopia.

Get a good look at who and what Keynes actually was, ...... . 

And remember that he Remains the Deity/Excuse of those who've Engineered the economic Disaster we're mired in.

$9.00 and more for a pack of cigarettes. 23.6% of household income under $30K.

If 23.6% of every dollar in hasn't broken the poor of their cigarette habit, what makes Anyone think that 23.7% is going to break them?


BECAUSE, it's not about Health. It's about Theft, and Control.