Taxing smokes.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Data - Cigarette tax - Brief Article

In July, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill raising New York City's cigarette tax to $1.50 a pack, he said he didn't really want the money. He just wanted to "save people's lives."

"If it were totally up to me," he said, "I would raise the cigarette tax so high the revenues from it would go to zero."

By equating zero revenue with zero smoking, Bloomberg implied that New Yorkers who refuse to pay the highest cigarette taxes in the country--$3.39, including the state and federal levies--will have no choice but to quit. In the real world, however, smokers have alternatives.

Rather than pay $7.25 for a pack of Camels, for instance, they can buy them online for $2.70. Or they can buy them untaxed in New York, courtesy of smugglers who transport cigarettes from...