UPS Benefits from Recent Supreme Court Decision
February 21, 2008 – 9:55 amUPS - and smokers - benefit from a recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision in Howe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport. The case started when Maine enacted a law prohibiting companies like UPS from delivering tobacco products to anyone and then provided for penalties against companies that do so. The package delivery companies argued it’s not their job to enforce the whims of state legislators. SCOTUS correctly found that it is the federal government that gets to regulate interstate commerce and not the states.
While the states usually cite a desire to prevent today’s increasingly internet savvy kids from ordering smokes online and avoiding age requirements, the law is more often than not more about ensuring that smokers don’t evade state taxes on cigarettes, which can vary greatly from state to state. States that have very high cigarette taxes (New York, Maine) tend to have lots of laws about bringing smokes in from other states, designed to keep people from getting smokes in the deep south where they are much cheaper.