Several tax increase proposals – including one governor to generate $ 7 billion a year for the shaky state budget – aim for a vote in November 2012. Until now, no one qualified. Negotiations under the guidance of the Governor Office conducted to combine them or cut them back, provided that the recession-weary voters may be inclined to approve billions of dollars in a few packages of new taxes. Already a vote of borrowing $ 11.1 billion for water projects statewide.

Beer and cigarette makers will have a tax reprieve of at least one month after Parliament’s delay in passing the Finance Bill left the Treasury without authority to collect new taxes.

In just under a month, the Idaho Legislature begins its 2012 session, and already proposed issues are sparking discussion. One of those is whether the state should raise its tobacco tax. A coalition of Idaho health groups wants a pack of cigarettes taxed an extra $1.25.

Two shops have been fined by Edinburgh City Council for selling tobacco to under-age children.

With effect from January 1, 2012, the Indonesian government has decided to increase the excise tax on cigarettes next year by an overall 15%, with the intention, it was said, both to discourage smoking and to increase tax revenue.

An unscheduled agenda item has the City Council reconsidering the language of an emergency ordinance passed last week involving synthetic drugs and drug paraphernalia. The two ordinances passed prohibit the sale, possession, manufacture and distribution of any substance that contains cannabimimetic or hallucinogenic agents as well as any type of drug paraphernalia.Drug paraphernalia is further defined as equipment that is used, intended for use, is designed for use in or injecting ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing a cannabimimetic or hallucinogenic chemical substance into the human body.

Jamal Adil Makhlouf, 54, of Illinois, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to conspiracy to transport, receive, possess, purchase and sell contraband cigarettes.Makhlouf told investigators that he took part in a conspiracy to purchase and transport contraband cigarettes in and around Huntington from August 2010 to December 2010.Makhlouf also said he arranged for the purchase of about 120,000 contraband cigarettes from Huntington to Illinois.

Smokers are less likely to buy cigarettes if they are in plain, unbranded packages with warning labels featuring graphic images of cancer, a new study finds.Susquehanna University researchers held an experimental auction with 404 adult smokers bidding on four different kinds of cigarette packages.One package had a text-only warning about the health effects of smoking that covered 50 percent of one side of the pack, which meets current U.S. policy. Another had a text-only message that covered the lower half of the front, back and one side of the pack.