Amendment to highway bill sideswipes Little Tobacco [View all]

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Source: Wash. Post

Nobody mentioned tobacco last week when the U.S. Senate adopted an amendment to the $109 billion federal highway bill.

But tucked into the 5,600-word amendment to provide aid for rural schools was a single paragraph that would settle a two-year-old fight between Big Tobacco and a small Ohio company that builds a do-it-yourself machine that allows smokers to get their cigarettes a lot cheaper.

The amendment would reclassify tobacco shops that offer the machines as “tobacco manufacturers,” imposing on them new regulations and higher taxes, and it opens a window into the ways of Washington, where the powerful and the connected can sometimes win even before the opposition knows the game is underway.

“This is catastrophic,” was the response of Phil Accordino, whose tiny company builds the roll-your-own cigarette machines in Girard, Ohio, when he heard of the Senate action. Word arrived in Ohio after the amendment had already been approved on a bipartisan vote.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/03/14/gIQAKoCBJS_singlePage.html