Smoke 'em if you got 'em

[Matt McKenzie]

Although I quit smoking a long time back, I intend to start back up ASAP to help support my President's plan to provide health care for children. I expect all of you to do the same. After all, it's your patriotic duty.

Don't do it for me, do it for the children............the children!..........Think about the children!

[Steve Amrein]

I asked my wife who is generally much smarter than I why they raised taxes on cigs over a dollar. She said that they(read gooberment) realized that it is not enough of a deterrent and folks will just pay it.

[Matt McKenzie]

It's beautiful in its idiocy. We want to raise the tax on smokes to pay for health insurance for children. We also want the increase in taxes to influence people to quit smoking. But if they quit smoking the tax revenues will go down. So then how will we pay for the health insurance for the children? I guess we'll just have to raise taxes in the evil rich again. After all, those greedy bass turds have more than they need anyway, right?

[Kevin Eskam]

If you think that the tax on cigars are bad just wait tell we start paying all this money back?

Car registrations, property taxes, Business owner taxes, Portapotty taxes, You wont be able to take a s*(* without paying for it!!

[Goose]

With a tax tax here
And a tax tax there
Here a tax
There a tax
Everywhere a tax-tax

[Terry Britton]

What's next? Legalizing all drugs so they can be taxed? I can see it now, the govt. sending out samples to get everyone hooked so they will take more $$$.

[Gerry Clinchy]

It's beautiful in its idiocy. We want to raise the tax on smokes to pay for health insurance for children. We also want the increase in taxes to influence people to quit smoking. But if they quit smoking the tax revenues will go down. So then how will we pay for the health insurance for the children? I guess we'll just have to raise taxes in the evil rich again. After all, those greedy bass turds have more than they need anyway, right?

I wonder if anyone has actually studied the figures on whether the tax revenue on tobacco tax has decreased since the taxes have been increasing dramatically over the past 5 or 10 years?

What I find is that the billions of dollars that all the states got in settlement from the tobacco companies, possibly only a miniscule amount actually went to helping smokers stop smoking. In many cases, much of that "windfall" money simply went into shoring up weak state financial situations.

With the switch to digital TV, the government will give you a $40 coupon to offset the cost of a converter box. Why is there not a similar program for the purchase of stop-smoking aids?

While focusing on the young will possibly deter the number of smokers in the population in the future, the object of which would be to presumably lower the cost of health care that smokers "consume" ... the process should also be a two-pronged affair to decrease the health costs in the more immediate future by decreasing the present smokers.

The only incentive to stop smoking that I know of is the ability to deduct the cost of stop-smoking aids on your Federal Income Tax as a health care deduction. Not a lot of incentive for those who are lower-income; which is also the segment where education about the evils of smoking may have the least impact. Not even a whole lot of incentive for those who have higher incomes & have employer-provided health insurance, as they must have pretty high medical expenses for the health-care deduction to "kick in".

It is also interesting that just a short time before the new tax goes into affect, the tobacco companies raised the price of cigarettes by about 60 cents per pack. When the tax takes place, the cost of a pack of cigarettes will have gone up by about $12/carton. I think in NYS the cost of a carton was already something like $50. Only our legislators will be able to afford smoking cigarettes

It occurred to me that the tobacco company increases might be a sly way of them showing the tax people just what happens to their revenue when they actually succeed in decreasing smoking

There was quite a too-doo about Obama saying that GM & Chrysler would no longer participate in NASCAR. Aren't the tobacco companies also big sponsors there? If so, and if the tobacco companies also cut their spending there, it would appear that NASCAR may also face some survival issues ... and all those jobs associated with NASCAR (inluding the manufacturing entities that provide parts; employees of the tracks that NASCAR uses, right on down the line to the food vendors) will also be impacted.

It is also a proven fact that smoking cessation almost always leads to weight gain. Obesity is also a serious health cost. In "fixing" smoking, another health issue could well be compounded. Makes me think of the article on how the Japanese health care system penalizes people by their waistline size to try and ameliorate the health care problems/costs created by obesity. I begin to suspect that our income tax forms will eventually contain lines for our height and weight, so they can tax our body fat (I'm doomed!)

[Matt McKenzie]

Why should the government provide any incentive to "help" people quit smoking? Tattoos, piercings and cigarettes are how we quickly identify the idiots around us. (Obviously the more stealthy idiots must be conversed with to be positively identified)

Why should the government tax one consumer product any more than another?

It is the government's job to protect us from ourselves? Should I have the freedom to eat whatever I chose? Should I be able to smoke if I chose? Should I be able to use mind-altering drugs like alcohol, marijuana, LSD and the Oprah show if I chose? Should I be able to enter into a short-term contract involving money and physical intimacy?

To my way of thinking, our government is far too involved in our lives and is working its way deeper every day.

[Julie R.]

Although I quit smoking a long time back, I intend to start back up ASAP to help support my President's plan to provide health care for children. I expect all of you to do the same. After all, it's your patriotic duty.

Don't do it for me, do it for the children............the children!..........Think about the children!

Yeah, gotta love how the current admin. trots out a sacred cow to sanctify their latest tax assault and inexorable grind toward socialized medicine. All children need to have health insurance? What about the old saying, If you can't feed them, don't breed them! What's next, their poor overburdened crack whore mothers and the baby daddies that "need" insurance, too?

Does anyone else find it ironic this new tax really socks it to minorities and the poor? What if it had been Bush upping a tax on an addiction that disproportionally affects blacks, the hue and cry would be deafening but our Halfrican prezz gets a pass cause he's magic.


And Gerry, your post is spot on, especially this

What I find is that the billions of dollars that all the states got in settlement from the tobacco companies, possibly only a miniscule amount actually went to helping smokers stop smoking.

I'm a former smoker, I quit just over a year ago. And I live with a smoker who would love to quit. I believe he and many others would seriously try to quit if they could get free or subsidized Chantix or Nicorette gum or patches or any of the other quitting aids. Sadly, any one of the above aids are well over $100 so even though you will more than recoup it easily in a month or two, most people that smoke can't cough up that money so easily. $5 here and there for a pack of smokes is doable. But you can't buy the Chantix or the gum or the patch or the other aids in small increments like that.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Hookset

Why should the government tax one consumer product any more than another?

I agree. If the government is justified in taxing tobacco because smokers impact national health care costs, then it is justifiable to tax fat people for the same reason. Then it becomes justifiable to tax just about anything that isn't "good for you" ... like candy bars, or high-fat foods, or high-sugar foods, or cars that go faster than 65 mph ... or our our body fat There would be no end to the list of discriminatory taxes that one could dream up to protect us from ourselves.

But it is kind of unfair to classify all smokers as "idiots". For other addictions, we offer help so that the addicted person can contribute to society. I actually thought that was what the tobacco settlements should have been used for, along with education to prevent addiction in the future.

All of these taxes would end up having the same result ... if they succeed in solving the problem for which they are instituted, what happens as everyone stops smoking, gets svelte, drives responsibly & eats only healthy food? The tax revenues decrease. So those taxes should only be used to fund something that will not continue to exist beyond the problem which is being taxed. Thus, if the tobacco taxes fund health insurance for children, (as mentioned before) what happens when the revenues decrease? The children still need health insurance, but the funding for it disappears.

Please don't take that to mean that I believe that the whole issue of the tobacco settlements were necessarily an appropriate action. Most smokers have known for a long while that smoking isn't good for your health.