Let's be honest...

It's about money. It's about jobs. It is not about the greater public good, and it doesn't have a damned thing to do with children. I'm talking about tobacco taxes as applied to premium cigars.

All across the country, every day, honest hard-working Americans go to work in a tiny little segment of the tobacco industry and sell premium cigars. We are the true tobacconists. The ones with passion. We possess a breadth and depth of knowledge that is born of the love of what we do. We enroll in educational classes. We travel to cigar factories to further our knowledge and understanding. Of course we do it to make money too, and there's not a thing wrong with that.

We don't sell glass pipes for pot smokers and pretend they're something else. We don't sell "bath salts" and pretend anyone is going to actually bathe with them.  We don't deliberately design packaging to be attractive to minors. We sell hand-rolled cigars that are enjoyed by adults, and frankly are not well suited to the purpose many machine made cigars are put to.

Get off my back. Get out of my pocket.

I watch in amazement as advocacy groups time and again testify in favor of massive increases in tobacco taxes, including those on hand made premium cigars, in the name of public health and protecting children. They know when they go into those hearing rooms with their dog and pony shows that they are marketing to pathos, so they show the legislators a whole array of brightly colored objects to make their point, just as they did last week in Maryland. You know what was missing? Premium cigars.

Okay. I get it. There are products on the market that probably are attractive to minors, even if not deliberately designed to be so, or even perhaps so designed. There may well be products that can have terrible health consequences, but I don't use them, so I wouldn't know. But what I do know is this; premium hand rolled cigars aren't it.  I also accept that increasing taxes on products that are most attractive to youth or pose significant public health risks may make some sense from a policy perspective.

So my question is this, if you can't prove the point that the products I manufacture and sell are as inherently "evil" and harmful as the ones you're actually willing to hand around that big mahogany table why do you lump them in with them? I can really think of only two likely reasons; Either you're actually ignorant of the difference, or just after the money, and my belief is it's the latter. In my mind that makes about as much sense as taxing pet owners to subsidize the capture of dangerous escapees from the zoo.

I sat in stunned amazement in a legislative hearing last year and a committee member asked the following question: (I'm paraphrasing) Why, if premium cigars don't pose the same health threats and societal risks as the products actually shown, did the sponsors and advocates want them to be so highly taxed? The answer from one of the sponsors was (again paraphrasing) that the people who can afford to buy expensive cigars can afford to pay the tax. The advocacy group representative did not speak to the issue, but did nod her head in silent agreement. There you have it. It's about the money.

If an automobile manufacturer creates an inherently unsafe car it gets recalled, but we don't recall every car in the country. That's just good common sense. The same logic should be applied to the regulation and taxation of tobacco products.

Even some life insurance companies now offer lower life insurance rates to premium cigar smokers than they do to other tobacco users, and they're in the insurance business to make money. They wouldn't do this if they didn't clearly understand that there is a significant difference between premium cigars and other tobacco products.

Let's be honest. I'll admit to you that I'm in the premium cigar segment of the tobacco business not only because I love this tiny little industry and the people in it, but also to make money. In exchange, why don't you openly admit to me that you haven't a shred of evidence to prove that premium hand rolled cigars pose the same risks as the other products you've declared your enemy, and that you're just advocating the taxation of them for the money.  Seems fair, don't you think?

So here's a thought. I propose there be a five dollar surcharge on every 12 ounces of any form of liquid consumed by any employee or representative of any advocacy group at any time any state or federal legislature is in session. Oh I know that the consumption of bottled water isn't harming anyone, but some of you just might drink alcohol, and if you do someone might get hurt. There's a societal cost there, and after all they're all liquids so they're all the same, right? This money will be used to subsidize the payrolls of any industry that is impacted by your advocacy, because after all, highly paid lobbyists and well funded advocacy groups can afford it.  This would obviously impact those of us who advocate on behalf of the premium cigar industry, but that's just fine, I don't mind paying the price of looking out for my own interests out of my own pocket. Nor should anyone else.

Just my thoughts on the issue.