SALON

Friday, Mar 1, 2013 1:59 PM UTC

There is kitty litter in your cigarette

And it's helping tobacco companies avoid up to $1.1 billion in taxes

By

Topics: Cigarettes, Tobacco industry, Big Tobacco, Business, Consumerism, , ,

There is kitty litter in your cigarette (Credit: Shutterstock)

A dozen tobacco companies have avoided as much as $1.1 billion in taxes by using fillers (like the clay found in cat litter) to make their cigarettes heavier, exempting them from a 2,653 percent increase in a federal excise tax on non-”large cigar” tobacco products.

As reported by Bloomberg News, current rules “require a rolled tobacco product to weigh at least 3 pounds per 1,000 to be labeled as a ‘large’ or ‘premium’ cigar, a category where taxes increased just 155 percent.”

The practice of weighting tobacco products has contributed to a 100 percent increase in sales of the filler-laced products, and a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blames the “tax disparities between product types” for increased adult consumption of pipe tobacco and cigarette-like cigars. While cigarette smoking has been on the decline for more than a decade, “large cigar” smoking, including the filler-laced cigarettes, tripled in the same time period.

Despite booming sales, the Government Accountability Office estimated in a 2012 report that “market shifts from roll-your-own to pipe tobacco and from small to large cigars reduced federal revenue” by up to $1.1 billion from April 2009 through September 2011.

And it’s completely legal. The Treasury Department said tobacco companies aren’t doing anything illegal by making their products heavier, according to Bloomberg.“If you meet the definition of a large cigar, then you’re a large cigar,” Thomas Hogue, a spokesman for the tobacco bureau, told the news outlet in a telephone interview. “There’s nothing in the Internal Revenue code that goes after the specifics on how that weight is achieved.”

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin recently introduced legislation to close the loophole, which would equalize the tax structure and eliminate the incentive to pack products with weighty fillers. The measure, if passed, could generate $3.6 billion in new tax revenue over 10 years, Christina Mulka, a spokeswoman, told Bloomberg by e-mail.

According to the CDC, tobacco use causes more than 5 million deaths, worldwide, each year. Current figures suggest that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths annually by 2030.

It remains the leading preventable cause of death.

Katie McDonough is an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com. More Katie Mcdonough.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 14 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations