Online discount cigarettes

June 23, 2004 - As a 75-cent-per-pack cigarette tax hike is set to take effect next week, area tobacco retailers fear customers will turn away from their stores and go to the Internet for their smokes.
The state Senate on Tuesday approved the tax, which will become effective July 1.
"All it's doing is pushing it to the Internet," said Denise Scowden, co-owner of Sunrise Coast Tobacco, 4225 Miller Road in Flint Township.
On www.cheap-cigarettes.com, cartons of cigarettes imported from European duty-free shops range in price from $16.60 to $21.95, depending on how many cartons are purchased and the brand.
By comparison, a carton of Marlboros costs about $34 in a store.
Cheaper, roll-your-own cigarettes sell for only about $10 a carton.
Sales of those cigarettes are rising, while interest in more expensive brands has dropped at Smokers World, 4372 W. Pierson Road, in Flint, said owner Nick Jarbo.
Jarbo's cheapest pack of cigarettes
is exempt from the tax as now proposed. Since they are rolled in
cigar paper, they aren't taxed like cigarettes.
Regardless, Jarbo doesn't see smokers as too worried, especially the younger ones.
"Younger people don't care," he said.
Smoker Mark Schrieber agreed.
"People are going to go ahead and pay the price for it," he said.

The Idaho House bucked GOP leadership Friday and killed a plan to tax cigarettes sold on tribal reservations.
The bill, which is strongly opposed by all five tribes with reservations in the state, was sponsored by Majority Leader Lawerence Denney and supported by House Speaker Bruce Newcomb.
Can we legally do this? Denney asked on the floor. In a word, yes, we can.
The U.S. Supreme Court forbids states from taxing cigarettes tribal stores sell to American Indians, but Idaho doesn4t tax any of the packs and cartons the tribes sell to those who are not American Indians.
Denney and others said the bill was about fairness it4s an attempt to plug a hole in a leaky bucket.
But the Democrats and a number of Republicans disagreed and the bill failed 32-38. They said the bill ignores tribal sovereignty, could destroy reservation economies, and may spur a tax and fee war between the state and the reservations, which could prove to cost the state more than the sponsors hoped to gain from the bill about $10 million.
It4s not plugging a hole in a bucket, Hayden GOP Rep. Jim Clark said. We4re trampling on the constitution of the state of Idaho.
Denney said the change would just make sure that the tax is evenly spread out, but conservative Republican Rep. Lenore Barrett has said all along that it4s a tax increase, and she won4t support it because of that.
Cooked cabbage by any other name still drives you out of the kitchen, she said.
The bill has had a choppy existence since it was introduced by former state Rep. Don Pischner, who brought it to Boise for a group of north Idaho tobacco retailers who say the tribes have an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

But representatives from each of the reservations said the tribes each charge their own cigarette tax, and those revenues pay for education, public safety and social programs on tribal lands.
On the House floor Friday, Lewiston Democrat Rep. Mike Mitchell said the state doesn4t spend a dime on mental health, child abuse, foster care and other services provided on the Nez Perce Reservation.
Even if it passed, Mountain Home Rep. Richard Wills said, it could be impossible to enforce.
There4s not any agency in this state that has the right to go on the reservation and enforce a state law on a Native American, he said.