SCHIP: Good News for Black Marketeers

US Democrats have inevitably passed the sort of SCHIP legislation which President Bush had vetoed. Shame-faced cigarette smoker Barack Obama signed off on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program legislation in a flash. The hit on cigarette smokers, a sixty-two cent per pack raising of the federal tax, is much less than had been proposed in the Bush years but no less an insult for that. Other tobacco taxes will also rise. Simply shop wisely. Fair prices are out there.

Many US smokers already pay no cigarette taxes whatsoever. As in Canada and Britain, vicious tobacco taxation in the USA has produced a thriving and easily accessible black market, and it is this black market which will benefit most from the SCHIP tax as more and more smokers turn their backs on conventional dealers.

That’s as it should be. Defy always in every way, smoke proud, and for every slap your vicious society and government gives you, give ten back.