Clearing The Air

Lawmakers and smoking ban activists who point to decreased cigarette sales as sign that smoking bans & tax increases work....should think again

Fellow freedom activist Audrey Silk used to smoke Parliament brand cigarettes made in Virginia, now she smokes a very limited, exclusive vintage grown in Marine Park, NY......Silk brand tobacco, fresh out of her appropriately named garden...."Bloomberg gardens".

Ms. Silk would have spent more than $1,000 had she bought nine cartons in parts of New York City. Instead, she spent $240, mostly for the trays, the buckets and plant food.

Ms. Silk, 46, a retired police officer and the founder of New York City Clash (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment), a smokers’ rights group, it is not just about the money. It is about the message. In the state with the highest cigarette taxes in the country, in a city that has become one of the hardest places in America to find a place to smoke, Ms. Silk has gone off the grid, growing, processing and smoking her own tax-free cigarettes from packets of seeds she buys online for about $2. She expects to produce a total of 45 cartons after planting two crops — the first in the summer of 2009, the second last summer — and estimates that she will have saved more than $5,000.

“It’ll make the antismokers apoplectic,” said Ms. Silk. “They’re using the power of taxation to coerce behavior. That’s not what taxation is supposed to be for.”

More at NY Times here.

posted by marcus aurelius @ 9:05 AM