Oppose Federal Tax Increase on Premium Cigars & Pipe Tobacco

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sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
20,416
47,749
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
my two cents is this is part of thee ole bait and switch. Go big then scale back to what you wanted and the opposition thinks they made you move. Propose a bigger tax then you want then the tax you actually wanted to impose doesn't look so bad. Just my guy feeling on this.
Which reminds me of a story...
When I was working on Total Recall there was a scene were Arnold Schwartzenegger was running up some stairs, shielding himself from bullets with the corpse of some poor schmuck who caught a bullet. The studio was very nervous about the level of violence and was contesting shooting the scene. The original verson went a LOT farther than what ended up in the film, with the schmuck being turned into hamburger, pieces of bloody flesh flying all over the place from the squibs, before being thrown at the shooters. Of course, the studio freaked out, but agreed to a toned down cut, and Verhoven got what he wanted in the first place.
 

Chasing Embers

Captain of the Black Frigate
Nov 12, 2014
44,398
114,189
Which reminds me of a story...
When I was working on Total Recall there was a scene were Arnold Schwartzenegger was running up some stairs, shielding himself from bullets with the corpse of some poor schmuck who caught a bullet. The studio was very nervous about the level of violence and was contesting shooting the scene. The original verson went a LOT farther than what ended up in the film, with the schmuck being turned into hamburger, pieces of bloody flesh flying all over the place from the squibs, before being thrown at the shooters. Of course, the studio freaked out, but agreed to a toned down cut, and Verhoven got what he wanted in the first place.
Rococop narrowly escaped an X rating for the same thing.
 

datascalabash

Lurker
Aug 6, 2009
30
5
Things have changed TOO much (since 2009) - to allow anything this harebrained to succeed...

Dear Fellow Pipes Magazine Forum Members:

Data's Calabash here again - not so long ago, I'd posted about the very likely "limitations" to the 2020-passed-on-Beacon-Hill; Bay State "sledgehammer" on any and all types of "flavored tobacco" controls, and a good many of these are both in the culture of New England, and even its very geography within the northeastern "lower 48"...

...I've also seen, on this forum and elsewhere on the Internet; a number of attempts to "hypertax" the pipe tobacco market at the Federal level, ever since the initial signing of the so-named "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act" from a dozen years ago (2009) - these attempts to "hypertax" pipe mixtures to the same levels as "those danged butts" - which for pipe mixtures, equates to something around just under $50.00/pound of mixture - never amounted to anything, and with the dozen years that have passed - and with certain minority ethnicities now involved in the Federal government we have in place since this year's start - may face legal challenges, and indeed ethnic civil rights issues, that will likely block them permanently, beyond what the U.S. Senate could likely, and very easily, do to block them.

Firstly, with many forms of the enhanced social awareness concerning ethnic minorities in the United States in 2021 being at the front of many legislative minds, when compared to what it was just that "dozen years ago", certain issues concerning those of the very ethnicity - Indigenous Peoples of the United States, who have used tobacco in its natural/organic forms for millennia - now have, for the first time ever, an Indigenous person in Mr. Biden's cabinet - Laguna Peublo ethnicity legislator Deb Haaland - as Secretary of the Interior, the Cabinet-level position most responsible for Indigenous American tribal societies within our borders - who would NOT easily tolerate anything that would further disturb, or disrupt, indigenous traditions of the plurality of Indigenous tribal societies involved with a sacred place for tobacco in their culture, that have treaties with the Federal government.

Secondly, it's all too likely, beyond my own strong belief that what follows could have at least a small degree of "truth" to it; that the entire set of 2009 Federal "tobacco control" laws specified in my second paragraph, is far too likely to have been "forced" by the FDA - by none other than the cigarette companies - to echo their quite-likely corporate desire to displace all other forms of tobacco-market competition, through any "legislatable" means necessary.

And thirdly - if the Federal government really wanted to "seriously and effectively, place a temporal distance between America's youth and 'premature nicotine addiction' ", the single best way to do it would be for the Department of Defense to simply cut ALL "purchase contracts" with the aforementioned cigarette companies, once and for all, and begin the end of cigarette addiction within the uniformed United States Armed Forces, while leaving our troops free to enjoy, whenever the situation allows it, legal and fully natural-leaf pipe mixtures (as they've done since the Colonial beginnings of the US) and handmade, natural-leaf cigars (which had caught on with the uniformed services, some time before the American Civil War). from the current age of 21 onwards.

There is a very good chance that the nonsense mentioned in this thread's initial post may again. never come to pass; especially when the U.S. Senate takes a close look at it...and with minority ethnicity issues now emerging as serious things to be thought "long and hard" on; as natural/organic tobacco-related issues are for a plurality of Indigenous tribal societies, that Illinois US Senator named by the initial poster could be "foolishly playing" with a set of Indigenous rights to something that the mentioned "plurality of tribal societies" has a serious degree of sacredness for as a medicinal plant - and for which, any "hypertaxing" could be a serious violation of Federal tribal treaty rights for any of the involved Indigenous societies, which could be considered of potential felony level by any aggrieved Indigenous societies that could potentially be victmized by such "hypertaxation".
 
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