County health officials float proposal for licensing tobacco sellers

Poor Massoood! He might have to pay a fee to sell cancer sticks. Cigarettes are nothing less than a device to addict one, and thus lead one to serious health effects. If Mr. Madani, or any others don't want to pay the licensing fee, then they don't have to. No one is forcing him to sell this harmful product. But, if he does want to profit from being a cancer stick pusher, then he can certainly contribute to the only way that our locality can have enough funds to deter retailers like him from selling to minors.

Simply raise the fine if the state law is broken. Sting operations for alcohol can also check for tobacco. No new county fee and subsequent county job needed. Another example of government growing and feeding itself can be avoided.

Following the counties plan brings us one step closer to having no businesses at all!

Why not fund enforcement through fines against lawbreakers instead of through those who obey the law?

disabuser wrote:

Why not fund enforcement through fines against lawbreakers instead of through those who obey the law?

Sounds good to me.

Another fee, another set of forms, another program, another set of administrators, supervisors, or bureaucracy. I thought this was already funded by the fines collected or has this been confiscated by the State? Cigarette resellers are already "licensed" by the State I believe through the State Board of Equalization. Next thing will be a license to sell alcohol locally even though the State "proof" tax already exists. The burden of government isn't in the taxes alone, it also includes the bookkeepers, accountants, and office staff to keep up with the forms and regulations. In the end it is all passed to the consumer where it is taxed again under sales tax.

Another attempt to grow our bloated government even larger.

With the high tax it has created a world wide black market. kids can now buy all the tobacco they want, no age limit. just something else to take money from the people.

Shall we license sugar sellers also? Fat people place a huge burden on our health care system. And yes, it's the sugar, not the fat. Hey parents, if your child smells like tobacco smoke, you have work to do.

Typical Howard Jarvis right-wing and completely OUT OF TOUCH blabber about too much government. First off, any idiot who chooses to smoke is likely to become addicted, and, if they don't stop or get killed in a car accident or by heart attack, they are likely to develop lung cancer. And, even if they have insurance to cover their medical costs, the state still picks up a huge portion of the tab. So, "taxing" businesses who choose to peddle (really, PUSH, as in drug pusher) these deadly sticks, is more than fine with me, and completely fair, as it is clear in the article that the state does not currently have the funds to police the businesses who sell cigarettes, many of who are selling to minors. Larger fines are good, but without funds to hire people to bust the offending businesses, larger fines are useless. I'm all for larger fines, Do that, too.

Siggy Knot settle down. Have a smoke and relax. This isn't about you. It is about taxing 83% of compliant businesses in order to control the behavior of the other 17%. Enough already. If you really want to stop the underage smokers fine the lawbreakers including the youth who purchase them and their parents. Then make them attend classes to inform them of the risks in smoking. Fine them heavily and leave the law abiding businesses alone.

Siggy Knot wrote:

Typical Howard Jarvis right-wing and completely OUT OF TOUCH blabber about too much government. First off, any idiot who chooses to smoke is likely to become addicted, and, if they don't stop or get killed in a car accident or by heart attack, they are likely to develop lung cancer. And, even if they have insurance to cover their medical costs, the state still picks up a huge portion of the tab. So, "taxing" businesses who choose to peddle (really, PUSH, as in drug pusher) these deadly sticks, is more than fine with me, and completely fair, as it is clear in the article that the state does not currently have the funds to police the businesses who sell cigarettes, many of who are selling to minors. Larger fines are good, but without funds to hire people to bust the offending businesses, larger fines are useless. I'm all for larger fines, Do that, too.

The high taxes have created a world wide black market. Kids every where can now buy all the tobacco they want, no age limit, no ID.
All you people mention helping kids and all you have done is help them get access to tobacco. 1.5 million kids living an the street and starving, who is helping them. But heaven forbid if they breath SHS that has been proven harmless. It is ok for them to live on the street, starveling, breathing car carhaust which is millions of times worse than a cigarette.

Siggy Knot wrote:

Typical Howard Jarvis right-wing and completely OUT OF TOUCH blabber about too much government. First off, any idiot who chooses to smoke is likely to become addicted, and, if they don't stop or get killed in a car accident or by heart attack, they are likely to develop lung cancer. And, even if they have insurance to cover their medical costs, the state still picks up a huge portion of the tab. So, "taxing" businesses who choose to peddle (really, PUSH, as in drug pusher) these deadly sticks, is more than fine with me, and completely fair, as it is clear in the article that the state does not currently have the funds to police the businesses who sell cigarettes, many of who are selling to minors. Larger fines are good, but without funds to hire people to bust the offending businesses, larger fines are useless. I'm all for larger fines, Do that, too.

The government also picks up the tab on everybody over 65 who gets sick. Using your logic I would suppose we should rid ourselves of those people too, maybe ship them to Canada. Don't forget to tax the people for going to the beach as they increase their chance of skin cancer. No one under 18yo allowed in the sun...how far down the slippery slope do you want to go. All very Orwellian.

azmac wrote:

<quoted text>
The high taxes have created a world wide black market. Kids every where can now buy all the tobacco they want, no age limit, no ID.
All you people mention helping kids and all you have done is help them get access to tobacco. 1.5 million kids living an the street and starving, who is helping them. But heaven forbid if they breath SHS that has been proven harmless. It is ok for them to live on the street, starveling, breathing car carhaust which is millions of times worse than a cigarette.

Ah, but we're taxing car exhaust now aren't we.. all that nasty CO2. Soda will have two taxes... sugar & CO2, just think of the paperwork.. employment for all!

Pab Laz wrote:

<quoted text>
Ah, but we're taxing car exhaust now aren't we.. all that nasty CO2. Soda will have two taxes... sugar & CO2, just think of the paperwork.. employment for all!

Did you know Obama has increased the size of the government by 78,000 people and guess who is going to pay their wadges to sit on their butt all day. You are with a tx increase.

richie rich wrote:

It is about taxing 83% of compliant businesses in order to control the behavior of the other 17%. Enough already. If you really want to stop the underage smokers fine the lawbreakers including the youth who purchase them and their parents. Then make them attend classes to inform them of the risks in smoking. Fine them heavily and leave the law abiding businesses alone.

Yeah....it seems it is really about COLLECTING FEE INCOME for a government that is out of cash.

If we really cared about the kids, we would already be putting significant amounts of the extremely high taxes ALREADY collected for tobacco at the State and Federal levels toward enforcement of the "no-sales-to-minors" laws. But we don't really care. It is all about getting more money to flow into government coffers. The "feel-good" justifications are only convenient pretexts. Our "leaders" in county government have found that they can get away with persecuting smokers and those who cater to them. So they are going back for one more round of milking the reliable cash cow.

I am so tired of hearing about the "social costs" of smoking. The obligation to pay for smokers' health care is "SELF-IMPOSED" (or, more properly, imposed on all of us by our oh-so-wise-and-compassionate "leaders"). It is disingenuous -- and more than a little passive-aggressive -- to pretend to be charitable by providing health care at taxpayer expense, and then turn around and try to modify people's behavior to lower that expense. Simply quit extracting taxes to pay for health care. It's almost impossible to get people to make good choices unless they are faced with the full consequences -- positive and negative -- of those choices. The one who pays is the one who is going to have the most incentive to change the behavior of the one who receives, so the only proper (and moral) thing to do is to make the payer and the recipient one and the same.

We need to junk the current health care funding model -- "insurance" plans made available through employers -- and work our way back, as quickly as we can, to the "pay for what you use" model that we enjoyed until WWII. That model worked, giving incentive to the right people in the right way. We did not move away from it because it didn't work, but because it was increasingly incompatible with the growing socialization of our system, which was triggered initially by FDR's wartime interventions in the economy. The short story is that FDR broke the economy, a left-turn toward collectivized medicine was deemed the best adaptation at the time, and soon that approach acquired a life of its own, persisting through momentum even after FDR's main economic damage was repaired, and eventually metastasizing into the crazy, dysfunctional patchwork "system" we have now. Enough already! Let's concentrate on getting back to something that actually worked, and was sustainable: true, free-market health care. Let's not leave the government any more excuse to engage in behavior modification.

pre WW-II, if you got sick, and weren't obscenely rich, you probably died.

yeah, lets set the wayback machine for the 1890s, wooot!

azmac wrote:

<quoted text>
Did you know Obama has increased the size of the government by 78,000 people and guess who is going to pay their wadges to sit on their butt all day. You are with a tx increase.

you mean by creating the TSA and the Department of Jomeland Security? Oh wait, that was Bush, my bad.

The real Realist wrote:

<quoted text>
you mean by creating the TSA and the Department of Jomeland Security? Oh wait, that was Bush, my bad.

This is what Obama has done since he has been in office. He wants a bigger government. He has said so. He is also turning the economy over to the federal reserve which is owned by foreign bankers.

hell,this whole country is owned by foreign bankers, we've been borrowing from them for years, both federal and private sectors.

what else is new?