Maryland Plans on Big Boost For Black Market Cigarettes
2nd March 2014
ElweterStrictly speaking, Maryland lawmakers aren’t overtly planning a gift to cigarette smugglers, but that’s certainly going to be the ultimate result of a proposal to massively hike taxes on all sorts of tobacco products. The share of cigarettes supplied in the state by the black market more than doubled from 2006 to 2011 under the pressure of politicians’ appetite for other people’s money. That can only continue to grow if SB 589 becomes law and gives the state the fourth highest cigarette tax rate in the country.
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According to estimates by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which tracks tobacco taxes and smuggling, 25.76 percent of Maryland’s cigarettes come from the black market, up from 10.38 percent in 2006 (the state doubled cigarette taxes in 2007).
“Politicians = Stupid people who can’t think things through” seems to be a universal physical constant, like gravity or the speed of light.