as seen on tv
Senator
in order to save 5 million lives a year. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270751.php
full disclosure - i'm not a smoker, and never have been. several relatives succombed to lung cancer, so i know the genetic dispotion to this runs in our family. but even if that weren't the case, i still wouldn't smoke. it's nasty and disgusting.
That said - cigarettes should probably remain LEGAL.
the WHO theory that millions and milions of lives will be saved annually from a tax hike is only slightly more fanciful than pretending that anti smoking public service announcements have helped. or that making tobacco illegal is a good idea.
the huge US tobacco settlement a few years ago was supposed to virtually eliminate smoking. Instead, many addicts migrated from the "legacy" brands saddled with settlement costs to cheaper startups and imports. And ("the horror") some people in southern states are now growing tobacco for personal consumption.
this sounds just like . . . pot . . .???
Colorado legalized pot yesterday. The state of washington is set to do so as well (watch for an even "buggier" and less user friendly version of Windows 9, i guess. unless more programming jobs are outsourced to India). Presumably the taxes on legalized pot will bail out the budget problems in Colorado and Washington, right? That's what the NORML people say, but they might just be stoned. I'm not stoned, and I believe that politicians will spend every dime of tax revenue, then still run deficits while forwarding schemes for new taxes. Can legalized prostution with a 25% tax on a half and half balance the budget? Let's send a congressional delegation to Nevada and have them find out !!
Tobacco is one of those things that . . . if it wasn't legal already . . . the FDA would never allow it to be sold. Like pot and booze, its neither a nutritional staple nor a "cure" for anything. The evidence that all 3 impair your health is overwhelming.
About 200 years ago London had a "gin crisis". It coincided with the industrial age. As people went to work in factories, low cost gin became the national beverage. People showed up for work drunk and died in industrial accidents. Mothers accidentally suffocated their infants, sharing the bed at night in a drunken stupor. The incidence of orphaned kids skyrocketed too.
England did not make liquor illegal.
In the american west, the confluence of cheap whisky and cheap handguns created misery and carnage. this culminated in the prohibition act, and the confluence of cheap whisky and organized crime and submachine guns created misery and carnage. And repeal of prohibition.
Liquor taxes are probably high - they don't post them separately in the stores, its bundled into the price - but I'm not aware of anyone claiming that higher liquor taxes will make a dent in the $100+ billion in annual social costs of alcohol abuse http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa11.htm
Nor is anyone (who's not on drugs) claiming that legalized pot is going to reduce alcohol consumption. Every party I ever attended where pot was being used featured liquor as well. I suppose there's some teepee or yurt on a commune where there's an exception. But the average marijuana farmer, moonshiner, or meth lab "scientist" isn't just trying to defray the costs of his personal consumption - he's making a nice living proving that the government can no more control THOSE activities than it could enforce gun laws, secure our border with mexico, prevent the importation of heroin and cocaine, or even force people obey the speed limit.
Tripling tobacco taxes will be embraced by politicians as "the answer". Just as "carbon tax credits" were embraced as the solution to global warming and assessing "truancy fines" on single parents when their kids skipped school was supposed to ensure higher graduation rates.
If higher taxes really altered anyone's behavior, then all the rich smart people would stop working, wouldn't they?
full disclosure - i'm not a smoker, and never have been. several relatives succombed to lung cancer, so i know the genetic dispotion to this runs in our family. but even if that weren't the case, i still wouldn't smoke. it's nasty and disgusting.
That said - cigarettes should probably remain LEGAL.
the WHO theory that millions and milions of lives will be saved annually from a tax hike is only slightly more fanciful than pretending that anti smoking public service announcements have helped. or that making tobacco illegal is a good idea.
the huge US tobacco settlement a few years ago was supposed to virtually eliminate smoking. Instead, many addicts migrated from the "legacy" brands saddled with settlement costs to cheaper startups and imports. And ("the horror") some people in southern states are now growing tobacco for personal consumption.
this sounds just like . . . pot . . .???
Colorado legalized pot yesterday. The state of washington is set to do so as well (watch for an even "buggier" and less user friendly version of Windows 9, i guess. unless more programming jobs are outsourced to India). Presumably the taxes on legalized pot will bail out the budget problems in Colorado and Washington, right? That's what the NORML people say, but they might just be stoned. I'm not stoned, and I believe that politicians will spend every dime of tax revenue, then still run deficits while forwarding schemes for new taxes. Can legalized prostution with a 25% tax on a half and half balance the budget? Let's send a congressional delegation to Nevada and have them find out !!
Tobacco is one of those things that . . . if it wasn't legal already . . . the FDA would never allow it to be sold. Like pot and booze, its neither a nutritional staple nor a "cure" for anything. The evidence that all 3 impair your health is overwhelming.
About 200 years ago London had a "gin crisis". It coincided with the industrial age. As people went to work in factories, low cost gin became the national beverage. People showed up for work drunk and died in industrial accidents. Mothers accidentally suffocated their infants, sharing the bed at night in a drunken stupor. The incidence of orphaned kids skyrocketed too.
England did not make liquor illegal.
In the american west, the confluence of cheap whisky and cheap handguns created misery and carnage. this culminated in the prohibition act, and the confluence of cheap whisky and organized crime and submachine guns created misery and carnage. And repeal of prohibition.
Liquor taxes are probably high - they don't post them separately in the stores, its bundled into the price - but I'm not aware of anyone claiming that higher liquor taxes will make a dent in the $100+ billion in annual social costs of alcohol abuse http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa11.htm
Nor is anyone (who's not on drugs) claiming that legalized pot is going to reduce alcohol consumption. Every party I ever attended where pot was being used featured liquor as well. I suppose there's some teepee or yurt on a commune where there's an exception. But the average marijuana farmer, moonshiner, or meth lab "scientist" isn't just trying to defray the costs of his personal consumption - he's making a nice living proving that the government can no more control THOSE activities than it could enforce gun laws, secure our border with mexico, prevent the importation of heroin and cocaine, or even force people obey the speed limit.
Tripling tobacco taxes will be embraced by politicians as "the answer". Just as "carbon tax credits" were embraced as the solution to global warming and assessing "truancy fines" on single parents when their kids skipped school was supposed to ensure higher graduation rates.
If higher taxes really altered anyone's behavior, then all the rich smart people would stop working, wouldn't they?
