Federal and State governments are playing a dangerous game
Welcome back!
I had quite a shock today. For the first time in about a month I went out to buy some cigarettes. My wife and her mother usually buy a month’s worth at a time and when the smokes run out a few days before they’re due to get more, I make the trip into town to get them enough to see them through.
I knew that the State of Arkansas raised the tax on cigarettes last month and that the Federal Government raised it again this month, but this is the first time I’ve seen the effect of those stunts. I just paid $4.26 a pack for generic cigarettes! That means that the price has DOUBLED since I quit smoking four years ago!
Ostensibly, the tax hikes are to fund cancer research, seeing as how cigarette smoking causes cancer (blah, blah, blah). The problem with that cover story is obvious. The news keeps talking about how many people will quit for every 10% raise in price. If you raise the tax enough, then eventually enough people will quit so as to make the money raised by the tax negligible. What happens to the cancer research then? Surely they’d have to find another way to fund it, seeing as how everything from car exhaust to bad genes to loud noises seems to cause cancer, according to the Surgeon General.
A lot of non-smokers are going to read this and say, “So, if you don’t want to pay the extra tax, just quit smoking”. I smoked a pack a day for twenty years before I managed to quit. I can tell you honestly: unless you’ve actually tried to kick the habit you have no idea how difficult it can be and, therefore, have no business making idiotic statements like, “So, just quit”. It’s been four years since I’ve smoked a cigarette and I still have to fight the desire for a smoke … every … single … day. When the subject comes up, I tell people that I have quit every day for four years.
Then tonight I heard that several states want to raise the tax on sodas and other high-sugar soft drinks. Lawmakers weren’t so coy about their reasoning this time. They said straight out that by raising the tax on high-sugar soft drinks they hope to do something about the obesity problem in this country.
Hello?
The act of drinking sodas alone doesn’t make you fat. It’s gulping down soda after soda while you sit flat on your butt playing with your Nintendo or Playstation or Wii all damn day that makes you fat.
If you want people to quit smoking, give them a reason to quit that doesn’t sound so cliche that nobody will listen to it. Don’t raise the price so high that they’re going to be stressing over their financial situation. Stressed smokers smoke MORE, not less. You might be surprised how many people would quit if there was a monetary reward for doing so instead of a monetary punishment for not quitting.
If you want people to lose weight, encourage them to get off the couch and DO something. Don’t make it so easy to sit around and play with electronic toys like cell phones, game consoles, and dvd players - not to mention cable television and satellite TV, both with advertisements for junk food every 15 minutes.
Nobody is ever going to be able to control the masses just by taxing the hell out of them. King George III tried that and learned an expensive lesson on December 16, 1773.
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Your arguments are selfish and whining. What power does the legislature have — it can use it’s taxing power to effect the general welfare. Is taxing high sugar soda the complete answer? Obviously not, but it will contribute to the solution.
I also have a hard time feeling sorry for smokers (like those in your family) who burden other taxpayers and consumers with huge societal medical costs. When it comes to tobacco use, I don’t sympathize with the producers or with the consumers. Stop being a burden to society!
You seem to be of the opinion that smokers are the only ones who get cancer and that means it’s okay to tax the daylights out of cigarettes in the name of cancer research.
According to what I have read:
Red meat causes cancer.
Certain sugar substitutes cause cancer.
Sugar causes cancer.
Milk causes cancer.
Salt causes cancer.
Are these products taxed at a higher rate to fund cancer research?
Stop being an arrogant boob.
I agree. It is really hard to kick the habit of smoking. You have a way of putting things that make people see the truth. By the way, I really like your reference to King George III.
You wrote,”If you want people to quit smoking, give them a reason to quit that doesn’t sound so cliche that nobody will listen to it. ” You’re joking, right? Doesn’t “quit smoking, it will kill you” work?
BTW, the Boston Tea Party wasn’t about how high the taxes were, it was about the levying of taxes without representation.
Lots of people have heard the chant “smoking will kill you” so often that the tend to see the person saying it as a worrisome old lady trying to frighten her child into obeying.
Yes, I actually read the page about the Boston Tea Party when I added that link. “The levying of taxes without representation”, huh? Well nobody I know (smoker or non-smoker) was asked their opinion about raising the cigarette tax. I was only told about it after it was a done deal.
The cost to our society of smoking isn’t limited to the smoker, so your comparisons to sugar, milk, etc. don’t work.
Personally I think the best way to convince someone to give up smoking is for them to be at the death bed of someone they love that is dying from smoking. I’ve done it. Twice. I’m not ever going to smoke again.
The government has tried appealing to smoker’s self-interest (don’t smoke, you’ll die) and their concern for others (second hand smoke is a leading cause of asthma in children and causes many problems for workers in places where smoking is allowed). Since that hasn’t stamped it out, the government is making smokers pay for the damage they are doing, just like gas taxes are supposed to be used, in part, to repair the pollution damage caused by cars.
While you, and others, may not approve of taxing cigarettes, that doesn’t mean you do not have representation. You do. Your government representatives are voting the way that they believe the people they represent want them to vote, not the way you want them to vote. Comparing this to the Boston Tea Party is foolish. You don’t want to pay taxes, they wanted a say in their government. Your position is childish, their position had real meaning, not just for them, but for all of us. Don’t cheapen it by whining.
My mother, a smoker, died when a cancerous tumor in her throat broke loose and she choked to death. I was and still am of the opinion that the real problem was an incompetent doctor who didn’t bother putting a scope down her throat until the thing was almost the size of a billiard ball - in spite of the fact that she had been living on Slim Fast for three months because she couldn’t swallow anything solid. I didn’t quit until three and a half years later when a doctor told me I needed to have open heart surgery because of three leaky heart valves.
It doesn’t help convince people not to smoke when the government tells people “smoking WILL kill you” and everyone seems to know people who smoked like chimnies for 50 or more years then finally died of something totally unrelated to smoking (like my father-in-law did) or when the second-hand smoke argument is presented in such a way as to make it sound like second-hand smoke is actually WORSE than smoking. “Simple… smoke it yourself instead of getting it second-hand. It’s safer.” I’ve actually heard that discussion.
When you make a clear distinction between “the people they represent” and me, then you’re saying that they don’t represent me, but you’re using that logic to assure me that I do, in fact, have representation…? Point blank, the folks in congress represent the interests of the lobbyists who are greasing their palms.
If the government was THAT worried about eliminating the horrors of smoking then they’d lean on the people growing tobacco to find a different crop to grow. There’s really no other use for the crop than to smoke it, is there? They’re not doing that. They’re making money hand-over-fist from people who are additcted to something that’s very difficult, impossible for some people, to quit. You know… just like drug dealers do.
I’m sorry for your loss, and while I agree with your point, that doctor probably could have done more, it was the smoking that caused the tumor, not the doctor.
People that smoke do die from things other than smoking. Not giving up smoking because you know someone that smoked for 50 years and died from something else is illogical, though, since there are so many deaths that can be directly attributable to smoking. Some people that jump off the Golden Gate Bridge live - is that a good reason to give it a shot?
That kind of thinking is the addiction speaking, not logic. It’s almost impossible to break through that kind of wall; that’s why so many smokers only quit when they have to quit (your case is an example). That’s part of the reason why the government is trying other methods of decreasing smoking, including education before people get addicted and higher taxes that make it harder to get and stay addicted.
Regulating tobacco farming isn’t the answer. If demand stays high, and we decrease the number of domestic farms, it will be grown somewhere else and imported. If the demand decreases, there will be domestic tobacco fewer farms. Besides, it’s a personal responsibility argument, isn’t it? Who is responsible for the tobacco being smoked? The person smoking or the farmer?
You have representation, as does everyone in your Congressional district. It’s not a lack of representation if their votes don’t agree with how you would vote. I agreed with very little that Bush did while he was president, but he still represented me. Since I didn’t like how he represented me, I did my best to make sure that someone like him didn’t get elected this year.
There are people in this country that don’t have representation in our federal government. They are those that live in the District of Columbia and the legal immigrants. They have to obey all of our laws, including paying taxes, but cannot vote, or, in the case of the people of D.C., can vote for President, but not for a voting member of Congress.
We don’t have is direct government, where we all have a vote for everything. The founders were very careful to avoid direct government when they created the Constitution. Personally I’m glad for that - just look at what happened to Athens when they tried that form of government.