Enough already!!! Quit Taxing Tobacco and BAN it!!!

Give me a break! Congress enacted a tax increase that today raised the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes by $0.62. Sure, you can argue that smoker's cause health problems, health problems cost money, and increased costs demand higher taxes on the evil tobacco to offset the nations growing bill caused by this hideous group of products and those who consume them. Problem...Does the increases revenues go to health care? Or, is it just another tax hike that you are ok with because it doesn't affect you? Is it just class warfare? Those people smoke...THEY are the problem? Listen to the media and government officials, they are not talking about where the money is going to go. They are saying the tax is being raised for one reason...to "encourage" people to quit smoking and using other forms of tobacco. There are so many things wrong with this it is hard to know where to start. I'll start with a few...

1. What about no tax increases on families making less than $250,000? (or $200,000, or $150,000 depending on which Obama speech you flip back to.)

Statistics show that the percentage of people who make $90-100 k who smoke is 13%
As income continues to go up...tobacco use continues to decline to as low as 7% for those reaching way up there in Obama's Evil Range of $250 k+
Thats a lot of people getting a tax hike; the tax hike hurts more the less money you make.
Statistics prove that this tax hike is hurting the very people Obama promised to help the most...the "working poor"

Like Obama was fond of saying during the campaign, "Facts are pesky things", and the FACT IS that percentage of Americans making between $18,000 and $30,000 ("the working poor") who smoke is over 30%

So I guess if I wanted to use one of the liberals most cherished tactics I'd say..."This is a tax cut for the rich that leaves the working poor paying the bill!"

2. What about that little part of that seldom used document we wrote a while back? (The Constitution) This tax is nothing short of a bill of attainder. We can't target certain consumers! Remember the Stamp Act? We fought a little war over that and other bills of attainder. Americans don't like being singled out like that... Would we institute a tax and then raise it by over 100% on say...feminine products? Hey, we could say we are going to use that money to pay for the rising costs of uterine cancer. Why should I have to fund that? Its not my problem, I don't have a uterus or use tampons, so go for it.

(note: the House of Representatives has recently taken an eraser to whats left of the Constitution...Remember the 90% tax/bill of attainder on wall street bonuses? So, disregard argument 2...sorry)

3. The argument that we are "encouraging" people to quit is bull! We didn't "encourage" people to quit buying lead-based paint by taxing it. We didnt "encourage" people to quit using asbestos in the constuction field. We didn't "encourage" the manufacturers of either to quit producing it by forcing them to spend millions in advertisement dollars advertising against themselves. No...We demanded that lead-based paint and asbestos NOT BE PRODUCED OR SOLD in the United States of America! We KNOW that the use of tobacco kills thousands of Americans every year. Don't interfere with peoples' lives by saying they can't smoke in public, smoke at work, smoke around a child, smoke in their cars, smoke in a bar, or smoke in their own homes! Tell them they CAN'T SMOKE! If it is that big of a national health risk and cost...Pull tobacco off the shelves.


PERSONAL DISCLAIMER

I use smokeless tobacco and occasionally still smoke a cigarette now and then. I have been addicted to nicotine since I was about eleven years old. I don't mean I smoked one of my dad's cigarettes or tried a dip of Skoal...I started smoking a pack a day at age eleven. When I couldn't smoke because my parents or teachers were around, I chewed Skoal. Thats 4th grade people. I chewed everyday at school, all day and swallowed it. Not telling you that to gross you out, but to let you know that I understand addiction. Smokeless tobacco introduces 5-9 times more nicotine into your body than smoking. So, someone who chews tobacco from the time they wake up until they go to sleep gets roughly the equivolent amount of nicotine as if they had smoked 5-9 packs of cigarettes that day. I tell you this for two reasons... If I could quit, and stay quit, I would. I try all the time. And two, give smokers a break, they have made countless concessions over the last twenty years amid the growing movement to snuff out smoking. Most of them, like me, would quit if they could figure out how.

I am diametrically opposed to any legislation that will further encroach on a smoker's personal freedoms or property rights. I will never be FOR telling someone what they can or can't do in their car or their own home. I'm against all these bans on smoking in bars...I think its silly. If tobacco is a consumer product KNOWN to kill American consumers, then the only thing I will advocate is the ban of the sale and production of tobacco in the U.S.

Sorry...this just keeps going and going...

The government will never try to ban it because it makes too much money off of it... So who is the EVIL ONE? That "dirty smoker"? or the government that is profiting off of his death and the deaths of those around him?

One last thing... We can't ban it because of what that would do to the economies of tobacco states...Guess what? Alot of people lost their jobs in the Asbestos industry, too



Thanks for Reading...

John Jessup