Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Are terrorists cornering Kentucky's cig market?

Kentucky's media can't report on Budget Director Mary Lassiter's August revenue report because that would mean telling you revenues continue to climb.

But if they did, you might find out Kentucky's cigarette tax revenues are down 22% from last August. That means Kentuckians are either smoking less or they have used Gov. Steve Beshear's repeated threats to raise taxes as motivation to go ahead and find a terrorist black market cigarette dealer.

Either way, this suggests that raising the cigarette tax further may not be the best idea.