The fight over whether New York State can collect taxes on cigarettes sold by Indian tribes highlights nothing so much as the extent to which the state’s politicians have abused the excise. New York residents wouldn’t be out trying to dodge taxes by buying cigarettes from tribal merchants if cigarettes weren’t being taxed at $1.50 a pack throughout most of the state and $3.00 a pack in the city. The state’s tax commissioner, Andrew Eristoff, has announced that the state will put off collecting taxes on tribal lands until at least March 1, heading off a confrontation with tribes, such as the Seneca Nation in western New York, which argues that its reservations are exempt from state taxes under treaties dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries. But with tribal sales to non-Indian New Yorkers preventing the state from collecting hundreds of millions of dollars a year in cigarette taxes, by most estimates, the issue will have to come to a head sometime soon.

A 1994 Supreme Court ruling gives New York the right to collect taxes on products sold on tribal lands to non-Indians, but Governor Pataki gave up on an attempt to enforce this decision in 1997 in the face of bitter protests by Indians. An enforcement attempt in 1992, under Governor Cuomo, ended after demonstrators closed a state highway through the Seneca reservation by burning tires and throwing debris off an overpass. Now, this doesn’t leave the Indians holding the moral high ground. But not all of those calling for the collection of taxes on Indian lands have the purest of motives either. Some are anti-smoking nuts. One, Russell Sciandra, of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York, cast the issue in Prohibitionist terms when he said recently of the state’s delay in collecting the taxes that: “During those three months, hundreds, if not thousands, of [smokers] will take that fatal puff…” Others, such as the Alliance for the Fair Application of Cigarette Taxes, which represents cigarette retailers and distributors, have a more logical argument, that the state’s failure to collect taxes on Indian reservations amounts to giving the reservations an unfair advantage over traditional businesses such as convenience stores all over the state. But they formed a strange-bedfellows coalition with the antismokers.

Better for the alliance to direct its anger at the government for raising excise taxes so high in the first place. In 2002, the state collected about $1 billion in taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products. Then, Mr. Pataki raised the state’s tax on cigarettes to $1.50 a pack from $1.11 a pack in order to finance an election-year payoff to the state’s health care union, SEIU/1199. Mayor Bloomberg, facing down the yawning chasm that is New York City’s budget, boosted the city’s tax to $1.50 a pack from 8 cents a pack. Collecting taxes from Indian tribal merchants will put the tribal merchants on equal footing with merchants in the rest of the state — at least outside of New York City. New York City cigarette sellers will still be at a massive disadvantage compared to any seller outside of the five boroughs. And even sellers outside the city will face competition from Internet sales, despite attempts by the state government to crack down. States such as Kentucky and North Carolina have taxes on cigarettes as low as 3 cents and 5 cents. The national average is 59 cents. Better to level the playing field for our merchants by getting on a level field with these competing states than to start a war with the Indians.