New Year's Smoking Ban and Tobacco Taxes

New Year's Smoking Bans and Tobacco Taxes, by Michelle L Devon

Living in Texas, we are now seeing many signs popping up stating: New Taxes Effective January 1st - Stock Up Now!

Beginning January 1st, Texas residents will see an increase in tobacco taxes by nearly a dollar. Packs of cigarettes that already cost a ridiculous amount of money when compared to production costs will increase to over $5-6 per pack. Other tobacco products will be affected similarly, with chewing tobacco maxing out over $7 per can, making Texas the 10th highest tobacco taxed state in the nation.

While there are no bans on smoking sanctioned by the state, Texas does allow the individual municipalities to determine whether or not public facilities allow smoking. I live in Odessa, and the city has smoking regulations that require a public facility to declare whether their establishment is smoking, non-smoking, or both. If a facility decides to be both smoking and non smoking, special, and very expensive, air circulation and filtration systems to keep the smoking and the non smoking sections of the establishment separate must be installed. This is very cost prohibitive to most establishments, so many have decided to go all smoking or all non smoking, and in doing so, will potentially lose a large customer base either way they choose.

In our sister city, Midland, the municipal ban on smoking doesn't exist except for in government building, and many residents of Odessa often drive the 20 miles to Midland to dine out if they are smokers.

However, this article isn't really about cigarette taxes or banning smoking in public facilities and establishments. What I'd like to focus on is a different type of ban on smoking.

Several apartment complexes across America have instituted bans on smoking in the common grounds of the apartment, which most won't argue about too much, but a few apartments have taken the ban a bit farther, and they are now banning smoking inside the tenant's own unit.