COLUMBIA --The Senate gave key approval Wednesday to a 50-cent tax increase on a pack of discount cigarettes in a 30-11 vote, one vote shy of being veto-proof.In the House, members stripped out a Senate provision for a new state immigration status form, saying employers should be required to use the federal online verification system or a S.C. driver's license or state photo ID.The House also briefly debated its revisions to the Senate's changes in the $7 billion budget but put off action until today. The latest version takes more money from reserves to put back items such as $10 million for a 2-for-1 matching grant for tourism promotion.On the cigarette tax bill, the measure raises the levy from 7 cents, the nation's lowest, and uses the money mostly for health care programs. Some would be reserved for anti-smoking education.All four Horry and Georgetown county senators voted for the bill.The Senate debated the bill for hours, however, first on a proposal to remove a provision making the tax go up automatically each year in an amount based on the inflation rate of health care.

"I would like to know where those figures come from, probably some Benson & Hedges sponsored study! I am not convinced and if not direct smoking, secondary smoke and smoking during pregnancy causes many problems that are not even documented (asthma in children and premature and low birth weight babies) SCBU is ?800+ a day per baby for instance. If all the smokers are happy to pay for their smoking related diseases when they occur and not burden the NHS then fine, do what you like. Until then everything and anything should be tried to try and deter and stop the young from trying and buying marlboro cigarettes, including this latest scheme. I do not wish one penny of my tax to pay for smokers' health related problems, it's their choice to smoke - they should pay for their way privately with the NHS

All you nonsmokers keep complaining about your rights. What about smokers' rights? Smoking is legal, and we pay a hefty tax to buy our cheap camel. We help keep your taxes down.If you want to go out to eat and not be bothered by smoke, then visit a restaurant that is smoke-free. There are plenty of them. It is getting to the point where all our rights are slowly being taken away. The Constitution says we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If smoking makes me happy and I am willing to pay the price, you should leave me alone. After all, I am not breaking the law.Our country is changing from a democracy to a dictatorship. First we were told we could no longer have God in our school. Then, we were told we could not make our children say the Pledge of Allegiance in school.We were told we no longer have the right to raise and discipline our children in our own way. We watched the state provide food stamps, welfare and health care to illegal immigrants, even though many of our own citizens don't get these things.If you put half the effort into fighting these injustices as you do in picking on smokers, perhaps we could get this country back to being as strong as it once was.Please leave me alone and let me enjoy my camel. You are free to go some place that bans smoking.

Kirst blames the closure of his food and tobacco wholesale distribution business on the failure by New York State to resolve the long-standing issue of collecting taxes on camel online sales by Indian retailers, whose tax-free sales put his products at a severe price disadvantage.УYou are looking at a casualty of New York StateТs failure to enforce the tax law,Ф Kirst said Monday in Albany as a group of his supporters announced a lawsuit against Spitzer for failing to collect the taxes Ч which have been estimated to total as much as $1 billion when gasoline sales are factored in.The lawsuit, filed by Assemblyman David Townsend, an Oneida County Republican, and by a Franklin County convenience store, seeks to compel the governor to collect the taxes. The governor, despite numerous promises, has backed away from mandating that the taxes be collected at the wholesale level, instead taking a route that involves trying to negotiate individual deals with the stateТs Indian tribes.The plaintiffs want the governor to enforce a law enacted in 2006 that requires wholesalers to pay the stateТs $1.50 per pack excise tax before the products are transported to Indian retailers for sale via smoke shops, the Internet and mail order. The Seneca Nation, the kings of tax-free tobacco sales in New York, have long argued treaty rights dating back to the 1700s protect their business from state interference.The Spitzer administration has said it canТt enforce the law, in part, because a judge in Erie County last year issued an injunction saying the tax department failed to print coupons that Indians, personally exempt from the tax for their own cigarette purchases, could use to buy tax-free cigarettes. Critics say the administration could fix that legal problem by simply printing the coupons.