Discount cigarettes store

"None of these (vendors) report," said Gary Kirschner, chief executive of eSmokes.com. He said his Internet smoke shop has 450 online competitors, compared with 30 when his company started in 1999. "Eighty percent are Indian reservations," he said. Sales of cigarettes on Indian reservations are exempt from state and local taxes by law. Demand is greatest from high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, which levy the nation's discount cigarettes online highest smoking tax $1.50 per pack. New York tried to outlaw Internet and mail-order cigarette sales, discount cigarettes online but a federal judge struck down the provision last year.

As state after cash-strapped state slaps hefty tax increases on cigarettes, smokers are flocking to Internet sites where they can buy tax-free. Hundreds of Internet smoke shops offer a vast selection of premium and discount brands and the enticement of tax-free smoking. Anti-tobacco activists complain that Internet vendors are unregulated, making it easy for kids to buy online. Meanwhile, some states are looking for ways to collect the discount cigarettes online excise taxes that cigarette smokers are dodging. Massachusetts and other states have sought customer names from Internet vendors, but they have little leverage to force the issue.

Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., meanwhile, is drafting legislation to prohibit Internet sales to minors and require that cyberstores be licensed in every state in which they do business. Tobacco dealers discount cigarettes online dispute evidence that higher taxes discourage smoking. They say the tax burden only shifts dependence to low-cost brands and out-of-state vendors. "It's not people giving up the habit," said Joshua Sanders of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants. "They're just going somewhere else."

State Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, an Orange County Republican, noted that the most recent attempt to collect Indian taxes in New York resulted in a "tremendous outbreak of war and discount cigarettes online opposition."Still, non-Indian merchants have continued to push the collection of Indian taxes as an issue of fairness. Because they are not charging state taxes on their transactions, Indian vendors can sell cigarettes at $15-$20 less per discount cigarettes online carton and gasoline at 5 cents-20 cents less per gallon than nearby non-Indian businessmen, said James Calvin of the state Association of Convenience Stores.