CIGARETTE TAXES

Re: "Higher cigarette tax to spur smugglers," July 14.

As your story on new taxes on cigarettes pointed out, these taxes are the
best thing that has happened to organized crime in years. The mobs that
have been dying out or that have concentrated on illegal drugs can now get
fat on smuggled cigarettes.

While users of a commodity will pay reasonable taxes, if those prices are
too high, a black market will organize to avoid them just like black
markets provide access to prohibited substances. Even after alcohol
prohibition ended in this country, bootleggers flourished in some areas
just for customers not wanting to pay the high taxes.

New York, with already high cigarette taxes, has had a cigarette smuggling
problem for decades; and the smugglers? The Mafia. Some of the cigarettes
are purchased in places like North Carolina where the taxes are low, but
many legitimate shipments are hijacked, resulting in violence, injuries and
death.

The British now estimate that 40 percent of the cigarettes consumed in
Britain are smuggled to avoid taxes. Why is there surprise that Ohio and
Maryland are also having problems?

If you like drug prohibition and drug dealers, you will love high cigarette
taxes. Organized crime will get rich, street corner dealers (yes, selling
to children, too) will appear, violent crime will increase, legitimate
merchants will be hurt, law enforcement costs will increase; but the tax
revenues will increase much less than expected.

Taxes like this have been proposed for Texas. We should stay out of the
mess and leave the problems to New York and Great Britain.

Buford C. Terrell, Houston