The most
misleading, misconstrued and misrepresented article I ever read about cigars was
published on RedNova.com, July 9, 2005. The two most bothersome things about
their "research" is that they DO NOT differentiate between drug
store cigarillos and handmade premium cigars. They lump them all
together. Then they go on to proclaim that taxes should be raised on cigars
so the underage youth of America will stop smoking cigars. WTF?!?!
...Can
someone please take the "stupid pills" away from the folks at
RedNova.com? I can't believe this article! Here's the link so you can
see what I'm ranting about.
Idiotic
Article at RedNova.com
The title of the article is; "Effects of Public Policy on Adolescents' Cigar Use: Evidence From the National Youth Tobacco Survey".
On their "About Us"
page, Red Nova states that their site has "subject matter a bit more intellectually oriented than most".
Whatever. I guess when you use words like; "elasticity", "logistic regression models",
and "complex survey design" some people might be impressed.
Basically, the Red Nova article comes down to
this. They say that kids in grades 6-12 smoke cigars. They discovered that price
effects demand. (I remember that from Economics 101.) They recommend that policy
makers raise taxes on cigars so kids won't smoke them. By the way, they're using
data that's 6 years old. "The primary data for this analysis were the 1999 and 2000 waves of the National Youth Tobacco Survey."
Here's the most telling line of the piece; "...the average price per cigar was $0.72".
First of all, nobody on this site
considers anything that costs $0.72 to be a cigar. The Red Nova authors are
doing the equivalent of throwing Thunderbird wine into the same category as Dom Perignon.
Maybe if we raised taxes on ALL wines and champagnes we could lower the amount
of winos we have in society. I'd gladly pay more for my Dom Perignon to help
decrease the wino population. 
Not!
We have laws against selling tobacco products to minors, but they say that isn't
effective. Why not? They say, "We found that youth cigar demand is sensitive to price but not state tobacco-control regulations."
And this is the problem of the premium cigar smokers? Hey kids, listen up: Don't
smoke cigars until you are of legal age and make sure you know that there can be
negative health possibilities...just like everything else in this world. I'd
rather stay home and smoke cigars all day than take a 20 minute drive on the
highway. I think the latter is much more dangerous to your health.
Advising policy makers to increase
excise taxes on ALL cigars is not the answer and is irresponsible. Increasing
the excise tax on the actual products minors buy is not the answer either. Why
should we have to pay more because of someone else's bad parenting? The answers
are education, enforcement of current laws against minors purchasing tobacco,
and parents being responsible for their kids.
The Red Nova authors, policy makers, politicians and anti-smoking zealots need
to mind their own business and let us enjoy the few freedoms we have left.
I'd love to hear your comments.
Create a free login, (we won't spam you, I promise) and post your comments.
Kev
