From: Reason.com
Strictly speaking, Maryland lawmakers aren’t overtly planning a gift to cigarette smugglers, but that’s certainly going to be the ultimate result of
a proposal to massively hike taxes on all sorts of tobacco
products. The share of cigarettes supplied in the state by the
black market more than doubled from 2006 to 2011 under the pressure
of politicians’ appetite for other people’s money. That can only
continue to grow if SB 589 becomes law and gives the state the fourth highest
cigarette tax rate in the country.
