Smokers beware

I've smoked since I was seventeen. I am one of those individuals who, while admitting my nicotine addiction, enjoy smoking. I smoke Camels and Fuentes cigars. I know they're not safe. But then again I drive in Miami and that is not safe either. I have always believed that the confiscatory taxes on cigarettes (and maybe soon on cigars), via the extortionate agreement made with the tobacco companies, would never stop increasing once in the greedy and filthy hands of government officials who, while professing it is for our own good, salivate over the prospect of more revenues.

I may just quit, not for health reasons mind you, but just to spite the greedy politicians who think they can fuck us over at will with confiscatory taxes on a legal activity. If they were so concerned about our health, they'd make tobacco illegal and enforce prohibition on its use. (And we all know how successful prohibition worked before.)

Read this piece in the Orlando Sentinel about the new increases they're contemplating in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. Here's a taste:

The U.S. House this month passed a reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that includes a 61-cent hike in cigarette taxes to pay for it.

Wonder what effect that will have on Florida's plans?

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week found 71 percent of Florida voters favored raising the state's rock-bottom 34-cent cigarette tax by $1.

But if that happens, it would be a $1.61-per-pack punch to smokers' wallets. Economists and the tobacco industry alike are arguing that a lot of people would feel they had no choice but to quit -- and stop paying that tax.

Posted by George Moneo at January 27, 2009 08:47 AM

Comments

Posted by: thinwhiteduke at January 27, 2009 10:03 AM