I can’t stand the sight of spinach.
All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Popeye and eat my spinach. But the sight, smell, texture, and consistency of Spinach makes me want to puke.
If I walk into a house where cabbage is being cooked, I feel physically ill at the smell.
The thought of eating oysters makes me gag.
I am sure that I’m not alone in any of those powerful dislikes. And if I sought out my fellow spinach haters, cabbage bashers, and oyster despisers and we all got together and decided to tax those of you who love and cherish those foods, there would be a hue and cry throughout the land guaranteed to effect a swift repeal of any such tax.
Why then, do many of you wish to pick on smokers and take my property – my hard earned money – in the form of a monstrously discriminatory tax simply because there are more of you than there are of us?
Granted, smoking is extremely hazardous to the user and not so good if you’re standing next to someone puffing away. Banning smoking indoors everywhere is something we smokers must come to accept – although I would love to see the law altered so that entrepreneurs could open “smokers only” bars and restaurants. Everyone from the owner down through the employees and customers would have to either be a smoker or sign a waiver to the effect that they don’t mind the smoke.
I can even see the efficacy of banning smoking at the ballpark or other places where large numbers of people are in close proximity to each other.
These are accommodations I am willing to make. What I am not willing to do any longer is sit still while the rest of you bully me around and take my money for exorbitant taxes while sanctimoniously weeping about it being for “the kids” or “for health care.”
I could give a good goddamn what it’s for. As long as smoking is legal, you have absolutely no right to target me and my property for excessive, ruinous taxes whose expressed purpose is to force me to change a behavior you find objectionable.
If smoking is such a health hazard, so much a threat to children, you have only one option; ban it entirely.
I don’t want to hear about Prohibition and the problems enforcing the Volstead Act. Smoking is portrayed by government and activists as evil – thus making those of us who choose to smoke an easy target for what under any other circumstances would be considered theft at the hands of government and a bunch of health Nazis. If you want to save me from what you see as my own folly, keep kids from starting smoking, cut health costs associated with smokers that is putting such a drain on resources, then for God’s sake have the balls to ban cigarettes!
Instead, you enjoy the exercise of power too much over your fellow citizens – and the use of funds associated with your ill gotten gains – to stop now. Government is on a rampage not against tobacco but against its users. And that is unconscionable in a free society.
The state of Illinois will most likely add nearly a dollar to the cigarette tax in a few days. The extra 20 bucks a week Zsu Zsu and I will have to pay to indulge our habit and pleasure is nothing compared the affront to our rights as citizens to be secure in our property from unreasonable taxes. Targeting a minority for such treatment would not be tolerated if we were talking about religion, race, sex, or sexual preference. But since smoking is frowned upon by society, that disapprobation is transferred to the smoker and any indignity becomes possible, even desired.
I enjoy smoking cigarettes. It makes no difference to me whether you accept that or not. There are things about you, I’m sure, that I couldn’t understand or stomach. Perhaps you’re an oyster eater or cabbage lover. So be it. You have no fear of having an excessive amount of your property taken from you in taxes just because you enjoy those slimy mollusks. Perhaps if I started a campaign to demonize oysters and tax the processing, selling, and eating of them beyond all reason and fairness, you might get an idea of how I feel.
I’m not asking for the elimination of cigarette taxes nor even a reduction. I am asking for a moratorium. Either that or a ban on the growing, selling, and consumption of tobacco. It is time to stop treating smokers so unfairly.
5:54 pm
Texas recently increased the taxes on a pack of cigarettes to $1.00 “It is for the kiddies” was the rallying cry. To fund our schools. Somewhere there is insanity in that policy.
If our schools are funded by tobacco tax, and every damn Texan like myself who smokes, quits, then what? Where is the money for the schools going to come from? Let’s say that every damn pork project that D.C. bellies up to is funded on cigarette taxes and all Americans quit smoking; then what?
To base “it’s for the kiddies” is just bullshit of the highest order. It’s because someone got a thorn in their butt over tobacco and the trial lawyers jumped on board demonizing all smokers.
Why don’t we hear “let’s tax all potato chips a $1.00 a bag. It’s for the kiddies and we have to make sure that Americans eat right.”
Maybe Frito Lay hires better lobbyists than R.J. Reynolds.
7:01 pm
I am against any more taxes on cigarettes because it is regressive. Tax the rich I say.
7:05 pm
Sorry Rick, no sympathy from me on this one. I’m all for “sin taxes.” Raising government revenues while simultaneously providing disincentive for use of a deadly (for the user) and annoying (for everybody else) product strikes me as the height of sanity.
7:40 pm
I don’t are if you smoke away from other humans, to me it’s like illegal drug use. It’s the lower end of the gene pool cleaning itself through natural selection…the addicted die soonest. Go to a cancer ward and take in the river of God awful misery that smoking has laid waste. The poor souls who can’t get an ounce of oxygen into their blood anymore, they are slowly suffocating to death. No matter they are riddled with cancer as well. They have no insurance, all we can do is try to abate their unbearable pain until death. I’m a nurse, I see it every day.
But lets not, as you say, as a society, make any effort to deter this powerfully additive behavior, even from teens, because potato chips are bad too. With that logic, lets legalize heroin and crack.
8:19 pm
Sorry dude, usually I’m a big fan and I love the blog and I give you lots of link love because you get it dead-on right so often. But I can’t go along with this one.
There are three solutions available to you: 1) politically oppose increases in cigarette taxes and encourage others to do the same; 2) smoke less; or 3) put on your big girl panties and pay the extra money for your cancer sticks. You’re frustrated that option #1 apparently failed, and that option #2 requires you to make an unpleasant balancing decision between pleasure and money. But you make the same kind of decisions all the time with household budgeting.
But like it or not, taxes are and have been used by the government as an incentive to get people to change their behavior “voluntarily” rather than by forcing them to do something. This has been a staple mechanism of governmental influence over individual choices since British colonial days, and the Founders embraced the idea warmly (See, e.g., Federalist #21).
The failure of the Volstead Act is an outstanding analogy to draw regarding why a ban would simply not work no matter how foolish the rest of us think you might be for maintaining your habit. See also the ongoing failure of the Controlled Substances Act to ban harmful but enjoyable narcotics consumed for purposes not dissimilar to those you describe in praise of your tobacco habit. If the government decided to tax spinach (instead of subsidizing it) or oysters (which, as a luxury food, are taxed in some municipalities) or potato chips (which has been proposed already) that would be well within the scope of what the government is empowered to do as well.
So I’m sorry your tax burden is becoming higher and higher. But you are flat wrong to say that the government has no right or power to impose the tax and to structure it in exactly the manner that you have described. This sort of thing has been in the cards all along, and it’s no more “theft” than any other kind of taxes are.
9:05 pm
I’m sorry. I would like to be sympathetic. As a recovering smoker I would really like to be sympathetic.
But I can’t.
I don’t see why (didn’t when I was smoking regularly) people on their way into a hospital (as I was recently) for cardiac rehabilitation should have to walk through a choking cloud of smoke.
If smokers had been responsible on their own accord, draconian measures to protect those who don’t want to smoke might have been avoided.
My favorite example comes from a time when I was smoking regularly (which explains why I was sitting in the smoking section of the aircraft), the jerk in the seat in front of me would light some kind of foul-smelling cigarette and hold it above the seat so the smoke flowed in a tight stream right into my face. He would not take it down from that position until it had burned down to the filter. A few seconds later he would light another, rinse, lather repeat. It was not a full flight, so I moved to the middle seat (which meant I had no place to put my legs)—damned if he didn’t move too.
I will have to say, the spinach appeal is right out of the leftists handbook. Nobody forces you to eat the spinach.
9:20 pm
i am supposed to feel sorry for you? this was the stupidest post i have read in quite a while – you are a moron, plain and simple. smoking is DEADLY to you and everyone around you. cabbage and spinach are FOOD… what the hell is wrong with you? i do not smoke, and do not think smoking should be banned. however, i DO think there should be NO HEALTH INSURANCE for smokers who give themselves CANCER and HEART DISEASE.
9:28 pm
Of course you don’t want to ban it. You love the feeling of smug, self righteous superiority you and the other health nazis get when lecturing me about what I can do in my own house with my own life.
No balls either, otherwise you’d support banning cigs.
BTW - Nowhere in that post was I asking anyone to feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for you, however, because it’s obvious you and your buddy Steve above didn’t read what I wrote and responded emotionally without even addressing the main issue I brought up; it isn’t taxes – it is excessive, ruinous, confiscatory taxes that is the issue.
But I guess that was too hard for you to understand. Next time, I’ll put in in words of two syllables or less.
9:49 pm
Mr. Moran. Let it rest overnight and come back tomorrow and look at what you wrote and what others have written.
I don’t care what you do, what you do it with, what your religious is, what your gender preferences are. I DON’T CARE.
I do care what I am forced to do against my will. High on the list are listening to whining smokers, inhaling tobacco smoke, listening to whining gays, watching and listening to straight or gay transactions that I don’t want to (or am not allowed to) be part of. I don’t want somebody’s religion jammed down my throat and I don’t want to read people’s writings that make me have to think I’ve been wrong about their credibility. I’m running out of stuff to read.
10:00 pm
Who’s whining?
I am exposing a wrong perpetrated by government – the excessive taxation of a minority while being hypocritical by not banning something they and some commenters here say is deadly.
Rather than tax it, ban it. I call for a moratorium on raising taxes and get the crap beat out of me by people who are proud to claim that “government is the problem.” Except in this case they gleefully ride on the government’s back claiming they’re doing it for the kids or to recoup what they think smokers cost them due to their choice to smoke.
12:03 am
Jim opines, “...however, i DO think there should be NO HEALTH INSURANCE for smokers who give themselves CANCER and HEART DISEASE.”
How do you feel about people that go out to the beach to bask in the sun? Should they be denied healthcare too if they contract skin cancer?
What of the roofers that provide you shelter? Should they get healthcare despite working out in the sun and contracting same cancer, because their charge was more noble (as it benefited you directly) than those that were merely seeking to enjoy themselves without benefit to you?
Should, too, those of us that enjoy bacon, be denied healthcare because we should’ve followed the dictates of you “nannyists?”
Why are you, oh so noble people, so anxious to defer your freedom to the state?
Do you fail to understand where your inanity leads?
12:47 am
Rick,
“Rather than tax it, ban it.”
Careful what you wish for. I’m totally sympathetic to your argument, however, things could get worse for you. That is all.
6:35 am
I am a former smoker. I will not be paying the tax. But Rick is right. This is not using tax policy to cause social change. It is attempting to use the taxation of a legal addicitve substance to increase the government’s coffers. It is a remarkably regressive tax, since most smokers are at the lower end of the income spectrum. It is taxing an unlikable minority, smokers, who lack the ability to challenge the law.
I fail to understand where this is whining. This is expressing an opinion of distain for governmental expansion of power over the lives of its citizenry. And it uses the phoney arguement that it will fund schools…like the lottery (an equally regressive tax scheme.)
Those of you who complain about Rick’s column prove the point. My (former) unlikeable habit is fair game? What about your unlikeable habits? Smokers are using a legal substance who’s addictive properties make its taxation an unstopable cash grab.
Its not about ending smoking. Just follow the money. Its about grabbing $10 a week from the bottom end of the tax spectrum, period.
6:40 am
Oh, let me back up my income disparity arguement. http://www.impacteen.org/generalarea_PDFs/NCTOH2003_Jun%20Yang.pdf
7:31 am
“Why then, do many of you wish to pick on smokers and take my property – my hard earned money – in the form of a monstrously discriminatory tax simply because there are more of you than there are of us?”
Actually, I am a fax of banning cigarettes. Sure they will be the paid of weeding it out of society, but give it a generation.
Short of that, you are right, the tax issue has got out of control. You just missed that you are not being singled out, they are trying to raise the taxes on everything. Have you seen the list of taxes and fees on phone bills lately? Why are people living outside of NY City’s public transportation system levied with a MTA Telecom Surcharge, which goes to public transport. As it is, most of the bridge and tunnel tolls in the NY Area don;t go to bridges and tunnels, but to subsidize the busses and trains. So they pick on the car drivers. Now, they are busy piling fees and taxes into mobile phone bills because people are ditching their land lines, causing a drop in revenue. My phone company want to give me a free phone. I won’t take it because even without using it, it will cost me $12 a month in taxes and fees. That’s just crazy.
Then you have the taxes on gas. And they did have a drop in revenue when the prices went up and demand went down. The solution to meet the difference was to propose to raise gas taxes even more.
The whole tax and fee issue has gotten completely out of hand.
8:26 am
“...unreasonable taxes.”
Are you kidding, Rick? Three quarters of the taxes levied on the people of this country are unreasonable. Take New York, for instance. Because rent controls in NYC artificially deflate the value of residential property, therefore capping property tax revenues, those of us who don’t live in the Big Apple have the privilege of paying not only for our own municipal services, schools, etc., but for those of Gotham denizens as well. Ever been to Manhattan? I have, and I can assure you without a doubt that if the property there was taxed at the same rate as mine, they’d have more than enough to pay for all of their own silly crap.
When we drive on interstate highways 90 and 87, we actually pay for that privilege a number of different ways. First and most obvious is the toll, which was supposed to expire some time back in the mid-80s but keeps on trucking (excuse the lousy pun.) Next we have the exorbitant gas tax, which, per gallon, yields more revenue for the state government than it yields in profit for the people who extract, refine, distribute and sell the stuff (where the hell’s my “windfall revenue” payment, hmmm?) Third, a portion of our state and federal taxes are distributed the NY State Thruway Authority, which begs the question as to why the hell they need the tolls in the first place.
I understand where you’re coming from, but governments – municipal, county, state and federal – discriminate against various groups of people for various reasons, and trying to discern the logic of various tax schemes can drive one to drink. I were a smoker, I’d seriously consider getting into the business of selling black market cigarettes. When the taxes get too high, people are going to start doing it anyway, so why not strike while the iron’s hot?
9:04 am
For all of you who think that it is not enough that smokers [like Rick and myself] are banned to the dark corners of our own homes/cars because we inconvenience someone who claims to have an allergy to smoke [when did that become vogue?] and want to tax us out of our socks, what about the other people who cause inconvenience to our lives because of their personal behavior? When I pay $600.00 for a flight to New York and then have some morbidly obese person next to me with their Wal-Mart bag of junk food taking up half of my seat, does their behavior not make me uncomfortable? Can’t the government stop his behavior by taxing his Fritos an extra $1.00 a bag? How about the woman who wears cheap perfume that I happen to be allergic to standing next to me in the grocery line giving me a banging headache and making my eyes water so badly that I can hardly drive. Does that person not have a responsibility to me? Can’t the government regulate where she can wear her cheap perfume? Why do I think that in those cases you would tell me that I have a right to move MY location if their behavior bothers me or gives me a headache?
The practice of using tobacco taxes to fund schools and medical treatment is socialist philosophy at it’s best. Like I ask in my original post, what if everyone stops smoking? Then what? And should’t the person who loads up on Big Macs and Fritos everyday giving them cardiac stress have to pay for the burden they place on society? You have no sympathy for the person who smokes if they get lung cancer so then would you agree to taxing sex if a person contracts HIV/AIDS due to irresponsible behavior? How would you do it? Per act? Per number of irresponsible acts? Or using the analogy that smokers understand the risks, can we not say that in this day and age, people understand the risks of irresponsible sex or the person who orders a biggie fries and two Big Macs knows that it is unhealthy and should be responsible to society for what they eat?
Behavioral modification thru taxation does not work. And will never work. It wasn’t meant to. It is a cash cow that the governments have latched onto because smokers are the people you love to hate. Do you have the same disdain for the person who does not bathe and makes you gag when you are in any proximity of them?
Perhaps the government will tax cigarettes and cigars right out of usage. Then, when 90% of American smokers quit and you have to pick up the tab for your school taxes and the free health care given to others and your pay check is less than it was since you are now picking up the tab, you will wish for the smokers to return. And then we can go after your Big Mac’s and Snickers bars. After all, what goes around comes around.
9:28 am
Let me try this again. It’s not that I love government intervening in people’s personal choices, it’s that I accept that the United States isn’t a libertarian utopia and was never intended to be one.
Consumption taxes have long been used to simultaneously generate revenue for the government and to discourage use of particular substances. I invoke the Founders to demonstrate that this is as appropriate a use of the government’s taxation power as an import duty. I cited before to Hamilton, but consider also that George Washington (successfully) led troops into battle to preserve the government’s right to tax whiskey. Come to think of it, the government STILL taxes whiskey more than it does other kinds of things we might consume.
Since I like to have a drink now and then, I too am a “victim” of this “tax-but-not-ban” policy, even though I’m not a smoker. But you won’t hear me complaining that I pay more taxes on my booze than I do on my bananas. There are two reasons for this.
First, even if, in theory, we were to accept that the government properly has no power to tax something consumable but does have the power to ban it instead, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good policy to ban a consumable substance. We already tried that once. Prohibition demonstrated why (and I believe the War on Drugs again demonstrates why) banning a substance is bad social policy.
Second, I don’t accept your argument that the government lacks power to tax a particular substance, or the corollary argument that even if it can, it shouldn’t. Taxes on discretionary, consumable items are an effective blend of fiscal and social policy and they are well within the legitimate power of the government. I may not particularly like it, especially when I’m the one targeted to pay the tax, but then again I don’t like paying income taxes either but I still do that.
Be realistic—a ban wouldn’t stop you from smoking. But it would drive you to buy your cigarettes from a street dealer, just as if you were a crackhead, and with all the same risks the crackhead faces.
Your complaint should not be that there are special taxes on cigarettes. It’s better addressed to the amount of the tax. Sirius’ argument—if taxes on cigarettes become insanely high then a black market will form just as if there were prohibition—is a much stronger one than the argument than “ban it, don’t tax it.” But a ban would guarantee that such a black market would form.
9:50 am
Yes, I agree that it should be banned entirely. Everyone knows how dangerous it is to smoke and most sensible people who smoke have found a way to quit.
10:48 am
Is smoking a pack of cigaretts a greater “sin” than consuming a quart of White Horse? Or eating two Big Macs with large fries? The tax on cigarettes, as with alcohol is a “sin” tax. So some politician decided what “sin” we are permitted to engage in freely [two Big Macs] and what sin we have to be punished through our wallets for. Is the smoker who developes a hacking cough a greater sinner than the 340 lb. man who eats fast/junk food everyday contributing to his heart/lung/et al problems?
What is the tax on a quart of White Horse? Is the state tax $1.00 a bottle? Is the federal tax greater? What percentage of the cost of alcohol is tax compared to the percentage of the cost of a pack of cigarettes?
10:55 am
the debate should really be about regressive taxes. this is not about cunsupmtion taxes.
12:45 pm
Rick,
Could I have permission to reprint this with attribution on cigardiary.com?
5:26 pm
This time Rick is 100% correct. Those anti-smoking bunnies that have the love of tobacco tax revenue, yet the moment a nickel beer tax is proposed have the opposite self righteousness. This tax is only proposed because the demand for this product is near term inelastic, because the consumers are addicts and the revenue doesn’t come out of your pockets for programs you are not willing to pay for. Government could collect an enormous amount of revenue if we were to add $1.00 tax per gallon of gasoline, don’t we need to change our driving behavior? Doesn’t second hand auto emissions cause many health related afflictions? I’ll sit in my garage with Rick and 5 of his smoking friends for an hour, but I certainly wouldn’t with your car running. Those of you that gave us so many comments on health are hypocrites because you all drive cars and purchase many products that have second hand health issues. We could easily eradicate cigaret smoking in the United States, start a date certain that each year the legal age to smoke is raised by one year. People like Rick would be able to legally smoke until they die so the chance of a black market would not exist. No true conservative can agree with these types of taxes. This is a tax, it is unfairly burdened and used to con the public to broaden spending.
When I was a smoker, years ago my country club began to restrict smoking. It didn’t take long for the board to discover that unlike government, they don’t have exclusive power. 30% of a membership that smokes is quite a large loss of dues. They made accommodations and all were happy. Like the tax on cigarets, it is amazing how quickly non-smokers faced with massive loss of revenue will accommodate when a burden would fall upon them. That is what Rick is talking about, liberal self interest should not give conservatives cover. We should stand against this bogus tax burden and force liberals to ban tobacco or offer my policy for eradication.
10:28 am
Testify brother! I have been smoking since the age of 14 (and was a competitive athlete when I took up the habit – how’s that for intelligence) and I damned well enjoy it. I have cut my consumption back to about 3-4 packs maximum per week and as far as I’m concerned, as long as I don’t force my secondhand smoke on anyone – it’s my damned choice! Taxing me into the ground isn’t going to change my mind or my consumption. In fact, right around the time the cost of a pack of cigarettes passed $5 in Ohio, I moved to Virginia where I pay $3.82 per the same pack!
What excessive and discriminatory taxation WILL do is endanger your re-election! The government is sticking its nose into our lives far too often and too deeply. I believe that less government is required, not more! I don’t need a nanny. I’m 65 years old and will actively campaign for the removal of office of all you nosey parkers!
3:27 pm
Right on with this post. These “sin taxes” are the horrifying offspring wrought from busy bodies who feel it is their responsibility to mind everyone else’s business married to greedy politicians who will use any excuse to take more money. Some of the former are commenting right on this page.
The government needs less, not more money. I enjoy reading how people on here are all for these types of draconian measures becasue it no longer impacts them. Just wait until they start yanking up the taxes on potato chips and cheeseburgers. We’ll see how the minds change.
5:41 pm
I thought just living in Illinois guaranteed unfair, unjustified taxes to pay for pointless garbage while real education and other necessities tanked. Was I mistaken?
I don’t smoke, but if you want, I have friends in Iowa—and one just across the river from Burlington, over here in IL —who would pick up a carton or three for me if I asked…. Just say the word.
And, oh yeah: can we ban Brussels Sprouts while we’re at it? Those things smell nasty even when they’re just growing in the fields.
4:23 pm
Spoken like an addict.
You take a product that damages America. Smokers cost more in health care, they addict American children, and they damage our health and comfort. You compare that product to FOODS you don’t like to smell.
Your right to swing your fist stops short of my nose. Why not carcinogens? I have no objection to banning it but frankly, smokers owe the people’s life you have degraded far more than you’ve paid.
If your brain was not fogged by your addiction, you’d realize that you are being given a choice. Rise above your addiction and ban it from your own life.