Summary
I was amused by your front-page article on cigarette smuggling ("Smoking out smugglers," Sunday). In just a few years, Maryland's regressive cigarette tax has produced a new category of criminals. Now the revenue collected by the increased tax has to be used to fund a task force to catch the people trying to avoid the tax.
I have a possible solution to this problem. Why not lower the cigarette tax to a rate lower than any in the surrounding area? Why not create a cigarette tax attractive enough to make people in the surrounding states buy cigarettes in Maryland rather than in anyplace but Maryland? Supermarkets and retail stores would make out like fat rats, which, in turn, would enrich the state sales-tax coffers. Catching smugglers would be the other guy's problem. It may take an intervention session with the lawmakers, but once they can admit that the cigarette tax is simply a money grab and not a health issue, they might see that the high tax rate is counterproductive. They claim they're saving "the children." But I imagine "the children" don't go on to other drugs by buying a pack of smokes at the 7-Eleven. However, if they hook up with a smuggler, that smuggler just may have a couple of other goodies to sell.See the full content of this document
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Supply-Side Cigarettes
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