Mike Enzi: “I need to ask how people would expect me to support $1.10 a pack when the State legislature looked at 15 cents a pack…”

“I need to ask how people would expect me to support $1.10 a pack when the State legislature looked at 15 cents a pack totally dedicated to health and turned that down. This one, as you mentioned, has all of these other ramifications. I know that one of the ramifications is to cut down on teen smoking. So I have addressed that in a number of trips I have made to the State. I tried to visit schools on Friday, and I am in Wyoming most of the time. I wonder how $1.10 is going to cause any concern. After all, kids will pay $50 for a pair of tennis shoes--I actually said $50 to see if people were paying attention. They will pay $150--I was in the shoe business for 28 years--$150 for a pair of tennis shoes. The parents can't afford it, but the kids can. In talking to these kids, they seemed to think that $1.10 a pack would be a deterrent for a few days until they realized how they were going to raise the other $1.10 a pack and maybe smoke one cigarette less, but probably not smoke cigarettes less. These kids asked me, and I want to ask you, how the price of a pack of cigarettes going up will deter smoking when the cost of marijuana is extremely high and there is no indication of it going down and there is still an increase in marijuana smoking. That is all black market. So if we think we are doing an elimination of the black market, that creates a great deal of concern to me, and apparently to you.”