From One Federal Employee to Another

Just a little reading for everyone. This law was a big deal because it effectively cut off shipments of cigarettes and dip to service members. Which may seem like a good idea but tell any Mo-reen about the hazard to health a cigarette presents and I'm sure it's low on the totem-pole. Well it just got a little personal after I ordered some cigars from famous-smoke.com and they sent me a letter telling me that my FPO shipping address was a restricted shipping address. Well if you read the above statement from the USPS it clearly states that the shipment of Cigars is not restricted. You'd think that a website whose only way to get product to customers is shipping would know the law a little bit better. So this is now a headache.



For those not in the loop, the ban on shipping is really to staunch the flow of cheap nontaxable goods. Money is the root of this problem because states have different tax rates on tobacco products. Even after some changes, it's caused quite an uproar all over the federal government and even some states.The trend of online shipping is either to tax the goods under whatever state tax codes the goods are being shipped under or tax under the tax rates of the recipient's shipping address. Enforcing the latter for the general public and the former for deployed service members would let online companies cover the taxation of sales.

You might as well just start doing this, it's gonna be cheaper...

I can't agree with the outrageous near 8th Amendment violating price strangulation of tobacco that's been happening over the last 20 something years. It's like a whipping horse for federal funds, but also it's acceptable by the general public by putting pressure on whats widely viewed as a nasty habit. So smokers will always have to pay, I just hope after it costs 20$ a pack that they don't turn the all seeing eye toward my cigars.



In other news, Pakistan continues to rally together and rebuild after a devistating flood conduct business as normal.