cigarette nicotine levels have increased?

[WalterMitty]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

[dazzleman]

I hate cigarettes.

But if you smoke, it's your own fault.

[© tweed]

I have cigarettes.

But if you smoke, it's your own fault.

You mean "hate"?

[dazzleman]

I have cigarettes.

But if you smoke, it's your own fault.

You mean "hate"?

Yes sir, you are correct.  I will fix it.

I was just testing to see if people were on their toes....

[Inverted Things]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

Almost all of the states want to both tax cigarettes and discourage their use. These are conflicting aims.

[jerusalemcar5]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

Almost all of the states want to both tax cigarettes and discourage their use. These are conflicting aims.

I think most want steep taxes in order to discourage their use, not for revenue.  So same aim.

[© tweed]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

Almost all of the states want to both tax cigarettes and discourage their use. These are conflicting aims.

I think most want steep taxes in order to discourage their use, not for revenue.  So same aim.

"Most" of what?

[jerusalemcar5]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

Almost all of the states want to both tax cigarettes and discourage their use. These are conflicting aims.

I think most want steep taxes in order to discourage their use, not for revenue.  So same aim.

"Most" of what?

States.  Thought that was implied.

[Inverted Things]

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

yet more reasons for a robust taxation on tobaccos.

Almost all of the states want to both tax cigarettes and discourage their use. These are conflicting aims.

I think most want steep taxes in order to discourage their use, not for revenue.  So same aim.

Could be true in some cases. I know for a fact that here in Minnesota, Pawlenty hates raising taxes so he imposed a "fee" on tobacco products to balance the state budget.

[WalterMitty]

actually i want higher taxes on tobaccos for revenue purposes.  why not exploit the addicted?  if they are stupid enough to pay, say $10 per pack (my ideal price), then why not take their money?

i would use those revenues for a single payer government health plan.

[angus]

I had an undergraduate physical chemistry professor who did a postdoc at the Phillip Morris tobacco company.  It was a fun job he said.  They'd sneak into the production plant and smoke the twelve foot long cigarettes before those were cut into the one hundred millimeter cigarettes for packaging.  Anyway, one thing he told us was that cigarette companies had the production pretty well down by then.  They'd extract all the polar and nonpolar compounds out of the tobacco via normal industrial-scale extraction techniques, leaving behind a big vat of colorless, clear limp cellulose, then go back in with carefully controlled amounts of tannins, tar, and nicotine.  No doubt the goal was to create a cigarette with much greater amounts of nicotine than would naturally occur in the leaves of tobacco plants.  There are, of course, less technologically advanced ways of getting your plants to produce certain chemicals.  I've found that poking and cutting at the roots of cannabis plants causes them to produce greater amounts of THC than would occur in a plant in a less hostile environment, thus apparently THC is probably produced as a reaction to stress, but if you're making cigarettes on a large scale you don't want to depend on evolution or the gods or mother nature.  Nowadays you can pretty much make a cigarette contain whatever you want it to contain.  And more nicotine is a guarantor of repeat customers.  Better living through chemistry. 

[Nation]

damn. that's not helping me.