Breitbart.com has a comment on President Obama’s broken promise on no tax increases on people who make less than $250,000 a year. President Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases. Somehow I suspect that many of the people who smoke make less than $250,000 a year; and their taxes just went up!
Meanwhile–the graph below shows how much money the government spends on tobacco subsidies. I copied the graph from the Farm Subsidy Database from the Environmental Working Group website. I don’t have any later figures than 2003, so I don’t know if the government has changed its policy. I do find it interesting that they are raising taxes on a product that they are subsidizing–why not just end the subsidies and save the money?
Tobacco Subsidies by year, U.S. Total
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