Obama & Max Baucus tossing more people out of work to help Big Tobacco.

[Soul Crusher]

Roll-your-own cigarette operations to be snuffed out


http://www.lvrj.com/business/roll-your-own-cigarette-operations-to-be-snuffed-out-161539845.html


Jerry Henkel/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Istban Jambor of Las Vegas places cigarettes in a carton at the Sin City Cigarette Factory on Thursday. (enlarge to view more photos) » Buy this photo



Jerry Henkel/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Sin City Cigarette Factory manager Martin Owens, right, moves to help Russ Tamashiro and his wife, Eva, as they collect cigarettes from the roll-your-own cigarette machine, Thursday. The business is set to close its doors because of new legislation that would force the business to acquire a manufacturing license to continue business. (enlarge to view more photos) » Buy this photo


By BETH KARUSCHAK
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Posted: Jul. 6, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
Updated: Jul. 6, 2012 | 10:42 a.m.

 
A tiny amendment buried in the federal transportation bill to be signed today by President Barack Obama will put operators of roll-your-own cigarette operations in Las Vegas and nationwide out of business at midnight.
 
Robert Weissen, with his brothers and other partners, own nine Sin City Cigarette Factory locations in Southern Nevada, including six in Las Vegas, and one in Hawaii. He said when the bill is signed their only choice is to turn off their 20 RYO Filling Station machines and lay off more than 40 employees.
 
"We'll stay open for about another week to sell tubes and tobacco just to get through our inventory, but without the use of the RYO machines, we won't be staying open," he said.
 
The machines are used by customers who buy loose tobacco and paper tubes from the shop and then turn out a carton of finished cigarettes in as little as 10 minutes, often varying the blend to suit their taste. Savings are substantial - at $23 per carton, half the cost of a name-brand smoke - in part because loose tobacco is taxed at a lower rate.
 
"These cigarettes are different because there are benefits in saving money and in how they make you feel," said Amy Hinds, a partner who operates the Sin City Cigarette Factory at Craig and Decatur.
 
"These cigarettes don't have any of the chemicals in them, and the papers are chemical-free, unlike the cartons people buy from Philip Morris."
 
But a few paragraphs added to the transportation bill changed the definition of a cigarette manufacturer to cover thousands of roll-your-own operations nationwide. The move, backed by major tobacco companies, is aimed at boosting tax revenues.
 
Faced with regulation costs that could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, RYO machine owners nationwide are shutting down more than 1,000 of the $36,000 machines.
 
"I feel it's kind of shaky,'' Wiessen said. "The man who pushed for this bill is Sen. (Max) Baucus from Montana, and he received donations from Altria, a parent company of Philip Morris. Interestingly enough, there are also no RYO machines in the state of Montana. It really makes me question the morals and values of our elected speakers."
 
Sierra Bawden, a single mom with two kids who started rolling her own smokes at Hind's shop three months ago, said cost is only one factor.
 
"It saves me time and money, and in the end I feel better because I don't get all of the chemicals that the other cigarettes have," Bawden said. "With the brand-name cigarettes, we pay for the chemicals and the name, and I don't want any of that, so I don't even know what I'll do when the shop closes down."
 
In Southern Nevada, there are two basic RYO business models: traditional smoke shops that also sell brand-name cigarettes, hookah and smoking paraphernalia, and RYO lounges that sell only loose tobacco and materials.
 
"Our stores are like lounges where our customers can buy the pieces for the product then roll them by hand or use the machine to make their cigarettes," Wiessen said. "It's a relaxed environment. Rolling a carton of cigarettes by hand can take one person up to three hours."
 
Even before the bill is signed, Hinds' location on Craig Road was already feeling the pinch. They were to close Thursday because suppliers stopped delivering needed materials last week.
 
Wiessen and others are attempting to mount a petition drive asking for relief from the new regulations and are talking to lawyers now to explore their options.
 
"As it stands right now, we'll have no choice but to shut down at midnight on Friday, but we're not giving up," Wiessen said. "We have to see what our lawyers tell us and go from there."
 
Contact researcher Beth Karuschak at ekaruschak@ lvbusinesspress.com or 702-383-0456.

[Soul Crusher]

This is how you kill off the nation, one corrupt crony deal at a time. 

Obama fucking the little guy for Big Tobacco - and the obama cultists still worship him.     

[Soul Crusher]

Friday, July 6th, 2012
Roll-your-own shops, jobs going up in smoke
by Dave Flessner

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jul/06/roll-your-own-shops-jobs-going-up-in-smoke



Floyd Palmer measures out tobacco from a holding bin onto the scale at Firebrand Smokes in Hixson on Thursda. Firebrand Smokes is a roll-your-own tobacco establishment that will be forced to close down when President Barack Obama signs the just-passed Transportation Bill.
Photo by Alyson Wright.

President Barack Obama will sign a $105 billion spending plan today to help preserve road-building jobs and low-interest student loans.

But tucked within the omnibus transportation package is a tax provision that could force most roll-your-own cigarette stores to go up in smoke, including nine such stores in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia.

"This will totally shut us down and end up hurting the economy by cutting jobs and taxes," said Angie Cunnyngham. She's general manager for Firebrand Smokes, which operates eight stores in the Chattanooga area where smokers avoid higher cigarette taxes by rolling their own tobacco.

"This place is like family to thousands of people in this area, and putting us out of business makes no sense at all," she said.

The new law will redefine stores such as Firebrand Smokes as cigarette manufacturers, making them pay the same taxes as cigarettes sold in convenience or grocery stores.

Since 2009 when Congress imposed different taxes on ready-made cigarettes than loose tobacco, roll-your-own stores have spread like weeds. The stores allow smokers to buy their own tobacco and rent rolling machines in the stores to make their own smokes, cutting their tax bill and cost of smoking nearly in half.

"It seems like the government tries to get everything they can from what the poor working man makes," said Floyd Palmer, a 50-year-old smoker from Hixson who on Thursday was rolling 800 of his own cigarettes at the Firebrand Smokes store in Hixson.

Palmer paid $96 for the equivalent of four cartons of cigarettes, about half the cost of the same smokes at a convenience store. Palmer said he has come to Firebrand Smokes every week for the past two years to buy loose tobacco patterned after Marlboro menthol cigarettes, then roll it up.

"I'm the one who operates the machine, so I don't see how they can say the store is a cigarette manufacturer," he said.

Palmer, who suffers from asthma and emphysema, also claims rolled cigarettes made from loose tobacco have fewer irritating chemicals.

Anti-tobacco groups, cigarette manufacturers and state revenue agents united in a highly unusual political alliance to convince Congress to close what they claim is an unfair tax loophole for roll-your-own shops.

In 2009, Congress more than doubled the federal excise tax on cigarettes and raised the tax on roll-your-own tobacco from $1.10 a pound to $24.78 a pound. But the tax on pipe tobacco increased only to $2.83 a pound and roll-your-own smoke shops quickly seized on the tax advantage of selling pipe tobacco, then using it to roll cigarettes.

In a recent study, the Government Accountability Office found that roll-your-own cigarette tobacco sales dropped 74 percent since the 2009 tax changes while pipe tobacco sales rose nearly tenfold. The GAO concluded the increase was because of consumers switching to pipe tobacco for their store-rolled cigarettes and not because of any increase in pipe tobacco sales.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he included a provision in the transportation bill being signed today to classify roll-your-own smoke shops as cigarette manufacturers to help level the playing field among cigarette retailers.

But Carrie Heffner, who with her husband, John, opened the U-Rolit tobacco store on Cleveland Highway in Dalton, Ga., last October, insists their store is different from conventional cigarette retailers.

"We're not cigarette manufacturers because the customer is the one who rolls the pipe tobacco we sell," she said. "I'm incredibly angry because they stuck this in the middle of a transportation and student loan bill, and we don't have anything to do with either of those areas of government."

The rolling machines, which cost about $33,000 each, make about 200 cigarette-equivalent smokes every eight minutes. While waiting for the rolling machines to do their work, customers at Firebrand Smokes often watch television or talk with other patrons on the leather couches in the front of the store.

"This is really like 'Cheers,' where everybody knows your name," Cunnyngham said. "It's going to be sad for a lot of people if we have to shut down."

Firebrand Smokes employs 44 employees at its eight stores and was preparing to open three more stores until the owners heard how the new cigarette manufacturing language was inserted into the transportation bill last week.

"Unfortunately, a lot of folks are simply going to go online now to buy their tobacco because they've found they like roll-your-own smokes better because there are fewer chemicals," Cunnyngham said. "That means there will end up being fewer jobs and less tax money collected."



________________________ __________________


Obama is killing this nation off one day at a time.


So guess what happens now - more vacancies, less payroll and sales tax revenue for localities, etc. 



And you obama cultists want to give this communist thug another term?   are you people sick? 

[Soul Crusher]

Roll-your-own cigarette stores going up in smoke
BY EMILY MORRIS Staff Reporter July 4, 2012 4:38PM
Updated: July 5, 2012 10:06AM



For smokers who bargained on roll-your-own cigarette stores for cheap smokes, it looks like those days are numbered.
 


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On Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law a federal highway bill with a section that redefines tobacco manufacturers to include any business with a roll-your-own cigarette machine and taxes those products at the same rate as packaged smokes.
 
The move comes a month after Illinois increased taxes on such roll-your-own machine-made cigarettes.
 
Marcia Smith, 47, of Lake County, decided after the state tax increase that she should move her Smokes & Such tobacco shops in Skokie and Gurnee to Wisconsin, where taxes on rolled cigarettes are lower.

If Obama signs the law, she said she’ll shut her doors.

The machines, which cost about $33,000 each, allow customers to pick their own tobacco and pour it into a device that can roll the tobacco into a carton, or about 200 cigarettes, within minutes.



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Since 2009, RYO stores have been selling cigarettes with far lower taxes than packaged cigarettes.
 
Why? In 2009, Congress more than doubled the federal excise tax on cigarettes, and, to bring RYO tobacco in line with packaged smokes, raised the tax on RYO tobacco from $1.10 a pound to $24.78 a pound. Yet it raised the tax on pipe tobacco by a far smaller amount — from $1.10 to $2.83 a pound.

And RYO stores popped up across the country.
 
Since the 2009 tax increases, Congress’ Government Accountability Office says RYO tobacco sales have fallen 74 percent while pipe tobacco sales have exploded, jumping from 3.2 million pounds to 30.5 million pounds a year, according to government reports.
 
The GAO concluded the increase was due to consumers switching to pipe tobacco for their machine rolled cigarettes and not to a sudden jump in pipe smoking.
 
The GAO found that a carton of RYO cigarettes cost half as much, or even less, than a carton of discount cigarettes at a store because of the lower taxes.
 
State and local governments have been trying to close the loophole as well, with Cook County raising taxes on RYO cigs in March and Illinois increasing the taxes on them last month, when the state sharply raised taxes on all tobacco products to help fund Medicaid. Starting Aug. 1, cigarettes made by RYO machines in Illinois stores will be taxed the same amount as company-manufactured cigarettes, and retail owners of the machines have to get a machine-operator license.
 
“It doesn’t matter where the cigarettes were rolled,” said Susan Hofer, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Revenue. “It matters that you walk out of the store with a pack of cigarettes.”
 
There are 60 RYO machines in the state, the department estimates.
 
Noel Valenti, 43, of DuPage County, owns six of them.

Valenti opened three Cig tobacco stores about a year ago to supplement his work as an independent construction contractor.

He operated two stores in Chicago and one in Worth but closed down one of his stores and moved two shortly before Cook County raised RYO taxes. Now, the issue has followed him out to the suburbs, where he lives and co-owns stores in west suburban Westmont in DuPage County and Mokena in Will County.

“They’re basically making us follow the same regulations as big tobacco,” Valenti said, “But [we can’t] reap the same rewards.”
 
Valenti calls it a “killing” of small businesses and said closing his stores means his 21 employees lose their jobs.
 
He maintains that the new regulations make it incredibly difficult to continue operating the RYO machines, particularly the requirement to obtain a manufacturer’s license.
 
Valenti and Smith said they offer pipe tobacco to give their customers more choices.
 
Smith, who got into the business two years ago after quitting her job at a screen-printing business, owns three RYO machines.

She calls the law “un-American.” Smith argues that things aren’t equal for the small stores that can’t compete with larger tobacco companies.

“It’s quite clear that this is politicians and big tobacco working against small businesses,” Smith said.
 
It’s true the Altria-owned tobacco giant Philip Morris USA has been a strong backer of the federal legislation.
 
“They are cigarette manufacturers,” David Sutton, a Philip Morris spokesman, said. “And [they] should make tax payments, be regulated by the FDA and make state settlement payments just like other cigarette manufacturers.”

Valenti said if the federal bill becomes law, as expected, customers will go online or even cross state boundaries where taxes are cheaper in order to get their fix.
 
And what if the bill isn’t signed into law?
 
“I will go open up five or six [RYO] stores on the border of Illinois and Indiana,” Valenti said. “I’ll set up buses to transport” customers.”

[Soul Crusher]

Roll-your-own cigarette stores going up in smoke
 Chicago Sun-Times ^ | July 4, 2012 | Emily Morris



For smokers who bargained on roll-your-own cigarette stores for cheap smokes, it looks like those days are numbered.

On Friday, President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law a federal highway bill with a section that redefines tobacco manufacturers to include any business with a roll-your-own cigarette machine and taxes those products at the same rate as packaged smokes.

The move comes a month after Illinois increased taxes on such roll-your-own machine-made cigarettes.

Marcia Smith, 47, of Lake County, decided after the state tax increase that she should move her Smokes & Such tobacco shops in Skokie and Gurnee to Wisconsin, where taxes on rolled cigarettes are lower.

If Obama signs the law, she said she’ll shut her doors.

The machines, which cost about $33,000 each, allow customers to pick their own tobacco and pour it into a device that can roll the tobacco into a carton, or about 200 cigarettes, within minutes.




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Obama the Destroyer at it again. 


He is a one man wrecking crew against this nation.   

Imagine you are a legal small business person who just bought 3 of these machines for 100k and now Obama just shut you down because Big Tobacco lobbied Max Baucus ? 


Fucking communists.

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.lvrj.com/business/roll-your-own-cigarette-operations-to-be-snuffed-out-161539845.html?numComments=91


Lol at the comments.   And I am accused of being over the top? 

[Soul Crusher]

bump