Grandma got run over by the DOR

I don't condone smoking, but I just noticed that cancer sticks, over the past decade or so, have more than doubled in price. You could get a generic brand of smokes for $2, and a name brand for $3. Today, a generic pack costs $5.50 and a name brand pack is $7.50. This is due to our $2.51 state tobacco tax and the new $1 or so tax to fund children's health care. Cross the border into New Hampshire, and the prices are slightly less.

One industrious lady went the route of getting generic cigarettes from an Native American Smoke shop. One carton of their brand goes for the rock-bottom price of $14.89 - which comes out to 79 cents a pack. Pretty good deal, right? And the Native Americans, since they operate from a sovereign nation (aka the reservation), don't charge taxes on what they sell. You can get name brand cigarettes for $35 a carton - a huge savings over Massachusetts' $150 per carton.

But the Native Americans, making sure they keep kosher with the states, report whoever buys their cigarettes to the tax rolls of each state. As a result of buying 5 cartons of Seneca unfiltered cigarettes, this woman now must pay an additional $91.58 to the state. And, she's refusing to pay, even if they levy penalties and interest.

Let's calculate what's going on here. $14.89 times five cartons is $74.45. In order to tack on $91.58 to her bill, the tax on each additional carton must be $18.316, making her actual purchase (in the eyes of the Commonwealth) $166.03 - or $33.21 a carton. Why would the state chase this woman over cheap generic cigarettes at $33.21 a carton when there are bigger fish to fry - the people who fork over $150 for name brand cigarettes? Maybe it's because the Native Americans have a much better handle on freedoms and what it means, versus the health neurotics who can't seem to keep their germophobic mitts out of other people's business - and if they had a chance, not only would they not hand over names, they'd tell the states what rabbit hole to go down to?

When cigarettes and tobacco are banned from the state, I can tell exactly who's going to need the bigger nicotine patch - the Mass DOR, as billions of tax dollars generated from cigarette and tobacco sales fund everything the desire, and you bet they'll have a jones worse than a heroin withdrawal once that tax money goes away.