I don't smoke cigarettes. I quit smoking the day the doctor told me I was pregnant with my first baby. That was in 1978. I don't like the smell of it. I won't go near places where people are smoking. I am adamant about no smokers in my home or around our babies.
But I would not ever presume to tell others that they can not smoke or buy cigarettes. I can find many better uses of money than to purchase cigarettes however if one chooses to do so, that is their decision. Now I don't know how much healthier your own rolled cigarettes truly can be but if you want to do that, it should be your choice.
Today the President signed into law more regulations. There is an amendment buried in the federal transportion bill that will put owners of small businesses that use roll-your-own cigarette stores out of business tonight. There is language in this bill that changes the definition of a cigarette manufacturer to now include thousands or roll-your-own operations nationwide.
Do you ever wonder why there are so many sneaky little amendments attached to all these bills?
First, I think there should be a law that Congress can not vote on any bill without reading the bill. That would mean that bills would need to be limited in size- no more than a few pages.
Then the bills should be limited to one law per bill. No attachments and no amendments that have nothing to do with the bill being introduced.
After doing some research on this bill I discovered that:
The Senator who pushed this bill was Max Baucus from Montana.
He was given donations from Altria who is the parent company of Philip Morris.
There are NO RYO machines in Montana.
Things that make you go, hmmmm.
The tobacco companies made strange bed-fellows with the health industry to go after these roll your own small stores. The stores depend on a machine that is called, Roll-Your-Own. The people who buy these machines and tabacco save money rolling their own cigarettes and they say they are much better than the ones you buy in the store. They use all natural paper and do not add chemicals to the tobacco. One person can roll a carton of cigarettes in about three hours.
The company that makes the Roll-Your-Own machines is laying off more than 40 employees now. The stores that sell the tobacco and machines will be shutting down tonight and tomorrow. They will seek legal council to see if anything can be done.
This move backed by the major tabacco companies is aimed at boosting tax money coming into the federal government. They say they will raise 100 million dollars in taxes.
The costs of these new regulations are so high - they run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.None of the RYO machine owners can say in business so the government won't be getting that money from these companies.
Again, when government and big business get together to rig the free markets- you no longer have a free market capitalist enterprise but instead you have cronyism. That is NOT a free market. In a free market government and business do not sleep together. We have not had a free market here for the past 50 years at least.
