Raise Taxes or Enforce the Law

Alaska has a lot of peculiar laws.

Since 1988 it has been against the law for minors to possess tobacco products. The law makes an exception for minors who are in prison!

Since 1978 it has been against the law to sell or give tobacco products to a minor. In 1990 the law was amended to make an exception for a minor who is in prison.

In both case the first makes good sense but one can not help but wonder who lobbied for the prisoners to get special privileges. Our prisons now have a no smoking policy so the point is moot.

Court records show that in 1996 there were 350 citations involving minors and Alaska’s tobacco laws in all the rail belt communities conbined. Almost all were settled by paying an almost insignificant fine. It does not qualify as a war on tobacco use by minors.

The 91 citations issued in Fairbanks for all of 1996 could easily have been racked up in one day with one good sweep!

The irony is heavy. We as a state deny minors who are prisoners the right to smoke despite a legislative grant of special privilege. At the same time, we allow other minors to smoke by not bothering to enforce the law in any uniform manner.

It is no wonder our youth have such little respect for the law.

We recognize that cigarette smoking is not good for one’s health. We do not want minors to smoke.

Those who want to raise taxes at any opportunity tell us that if we tax cigarettes, minors will quit smoking. They call it the law of economics.

If we arrest minors for smoking and fine them $300 every time they are caught, they will soon run out of money to buy cigarettes. That is called law enforcement.

If we follow that up by arresting and fining individuals who sell or even give tobacco to minors, people would soon get the message. But unfortunately we only pay lip service to keeping tobacco from minors.

When was the last time you saw a minor openly consuming alcohol? Minors smoking in public are so common we don’t even notice. The difference is we arrest minors for consuming alcohol and we don’t just slap them on the wrist and give them a $25 fine.

The proposed tobacco tax is a sales tax on consumers. The only legal consumers of tobacco are adults who happen to be a large political minority.

There are no limits to what some people will do to raise taxes! We are told the tax is intended to discourage children from smoking yet we already have laws that could actually do just that if only we would enforce them.

It is indeed peculiar why we have laws we don’t bother to enforce.

The above article was printed in the Anchorage Daily News (2/18/97), Juneau Empire (2/19/97), and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (2/22/97).