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What do you think, should “roll-your-own” cigarettes be taxed? This will hurt smokers and tobacco shops that offer rolling machines, but will keep things fair between them and the manufacturers of rolling tobacco.

The issue lies on the high-speed rolling machines, labeled as pipe-tobacco, which produce a carton of rolled tobacco in just 8 minutes. What do these machines actually produce, rolling tobacco or pipe tobacco? And what do these shops actually sell, rolling tobacco or pipe tobacco?

If we see the produce, consumers get rolling tobacco similar to that of Marlboro and other cigarette brands. Essentially, these products must pay taxes just like the others. Technically, though, the machines were provided to make rolling-you-own tobacco much easier to customers. They need not do it manually. If these machines produce tobacco in a much slower pace, would the issue become as big as what it is now?

However, due to the more than tripled increase in sales of “roll-your-own” tobacco, from which the U.S. government could have raised $345 in a span of 15 months, they may as well be subject to levy. While there is no clear difference between pipe tobacco and rolling tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco shops and their customers will enjoy $2.83/pound “pipe tobacco” compared with $24.78/pound rolling tobacco, with the help of roll-your-own cigarette machines.

Besides rolling tobacco manufacturers and the government itself, anti-smoking organizations will be the first to say yes to taxing “roll-your-own” tobacco. I can see many physicians in Grey’s Anatomy scrubs will also say yes.