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Sounds good, until you get down to specifics. Motorcyclist doesn't wear a helmet, gets a head injury, doesn't have insurance. Do we just let him die? No, we spend $100,000 on public care, and the taxpayers eat the cost.
well yeah that's my point exactly. So are we gonna start increasing the taxes on motorcycles and mopeds so that low income people can't afford them? why are we targeting one group and not other groups? just seems wrong to me.
........... why are we targeting one group and not other groups? just seems wrong to me.
Tobacco taxes are exactly the same for everyone. You can't get any more fair that that. In addition, tobacco taxes are 100% voluntary. Nobody has to pay tobabcco taxes. It's not like a tax on food, because nobody can go too many weeks without eating, so a food tax would be mandatory.
Don't want to pay the tobacco tax? Just don't buy tobacco.
I don't care if someone smokes or not, as long as I don't have to smell their stink or breathe their smoke. However, I like the concept of voluntary taxes. The more they chose to pay in voluntary taxes, the less I have to pay in mandatory taxes. Works for me.
why are we targeting one group and not other groups? just seems wrong to me.
The group being targeted is smokers. As my dad used to say, you've got to get your mind right about this. The group being targeted is smokers. Smoking is hazardous to your health. The intent is to reduce smoking, and thereby to reduce health problems, and health care costs.
Quote:
“For every pack of cigarettes sold in the United States, our country spends an additional $10.47 on health care costs. Increasing the tobacco tax would dramatically reduce these costs and save lives at the same time.”
...
Increasing the cost of cigarettes is the single most effective way to prevent children from smoking and to help children and adults quit.
~ John R. Seffrin, PhD, CEO of ACS CAN, the advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society.
The intent is to reduce smoking, and thereby to reduce health problems, and health care costs.
That's similar to what we're trying to do with early intervention and preventative medicine - by identifying and treating children (or as early as possible), we don't end up taxing the system 20 years down the line with the patient needing $500k surgeries, which ultimately helps with systemic health care costs.
It sounds odd to a lot of people (I have no idea why), but it's similar to what you're saying OpenD - ultimately reducing the spread of diseases and lowering the health care cost.
I'm not arguing it's the best way or most appropriate, but for me it's a no-brainer. Granted, I can't speak directly to the smoking issue, but it's pretty similar to EI/Preventative Med.
The public health costs associated with smoking are higher than the taxes collected. As the smoking rate keeps inching down, the single biggest incentive for people to stop smoking is to raise the prices.
In short, there's no way you'll get the prices lowered. In this case, at least, resistance is futile.
I Think our govt-corp alliance wants the cigarettes to be as deadly as possible. Farmers are told to grow the plants with chemicals (fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides) that make tobacco break down into lead and polonium 210 that has a half life of 21.5 years, which explains why people who had smoked can still die up to 25 years after quitting. Essentially non-organic cigarettes are radioactive! And what's bad for all is they are using the same or similar chemicals on nearly all our food! What about these new flame-retardant cigarettes supposedly to save lives? What chemicals are in them?
One thing that could get taxes on cigarettes down is for govt to admit they lose money when they raise taxes as people can still buy from overseas sellers for as cheap as $14 a carton, including shipping. All one has to do is search for discount cigarettes or cigarette store, etc, & up they come.
Apparently they sell so many the cigarette factories can't keep up, as most of these places are usually out of 1/3-2/3 of the brands they try to offer. But if govt loses some cig tax $$, just print more $$, or raise taxes for all in an obvious way. If they could stop smugglers for $100 trillion, wanna pay for that?
If one wants to smoke even cheaper, a couple cartons are only about $5 if one grows their own. The kit ads appear rarely in with the newspaper. I suppose typing in something like cigarette growing kit might bring it up.
If our government really wanted everyone to quit tobacco, they'd legalize cannabis, which has not been proven to be a direct cause of death in even 1 person, out of the more than 1 billion who've used it. Willie Nelson used to smoke 3-4 packs a day, plus get quite drunk frequently. Now he's a moderate drinker and has quit tobacco.
Keeping cigarettes legal is likely in part a favor to get Docs & Big Pharma more $$. Same for keeping cannabis illegal.
60% of Americans are now getting cancer & half of that 60% die from cancer. Yes, more cancer than ever, despite more having quit smoking & fewer starting smoking. This means other things are causing cancer, too, but the govt & likely most Docs don't seem to talk much if at all about these things.
If nicotine is really the most addicting drug known, then might we expect those that can't afford it to do things like shoplifting, breaking into homes, & robbing people on the street at gunpoint? More business for police, lawyers, prisons.
The public health costs associated with smoking could be much lower if people used less expensive treatments that Docs, Big Pharma, anti-smoking groups, & govt won't talk about. cancertutor.com has 400 cancer treatments that they claim are 50% effective on average & would probably be better odds if people used them sooner & didn't have organ damage from conventional so-called treatments.
Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center skmcc.org is another site worth looking at.
I was just reading about a doctor using baking soda to effectively cure stage IV prostate cancer! Doesn't sound very profitable, does it? Best wishes, all.
ok so the cheap brand of cigarettes is now 10-11 dollars where I live. I buy american spirits rollies for 15 dollars a pack. You know, crazy prices for friggin' tobacco! so I say we start a group and we start fighting back with our dollars.
Find the places with the most affordable tobacco and give them all our business until we drive the price back down. We gotta make these business owners go after the politicians that keep raising taxes on us because we've been villainized. Over half the cost of a pack of cigarettes go to taxes you know and that to me is criminal. People die from driving cars and eating too much, but they're not paying outrageous taxes of what they do.
Who's with me? Let's work together and get our rights to smoke back. Anyone know the best place to buy in honolulu?
I can only think of 3 possible options: buy from overseas smugglers, grow your own tobacco, or move to a country where cigarette taxes are very low & there are few restrictions. In Indonesia, cigarettes are $1 a pack, with no minimum age. They actually have babies who smoke (several You Tube videos about that).
They have fewer legal drug choices than us, as they are Muslims & Islam forbids alcohol.
Tobacco smokers aren't "villainized". They're just stupid, self-destructive, narcissistic and annoying.
Lots of people need *something* to help them feel better. If cannabis was legal in all 50 states, we would have less tobacco users. US govt not as anti-tobacco as they are anti-cannabis.
Nice how the last sentence made it "applicable" to Hawaii.
I think cigarettes are still cheap. You can get your little "high" for 50¢ a smoke. That's pretty cheap for taking away a day of your life and giving the others the gift of second hand smoke and lung disease. Where else can you spend half a dollar and get so much out of it?
Anti-smoking groups used to say a minute off your life for every cigarette you smoke, not a day off your life for each cigarette. They quit saying a minute off your life for every minute you smoke, apparently admitting that someone who chain smokes 6 packs a day has less than 12 times off their life than someone who smokes 1/2 pack a day. Still, it's a major killer. But some might think it worth it if addiction is intense.
As for 2nd hand smoke, I hope you don't worry if someone is smoking 100+ feet from you. Consumer Reports admits the risk is dose related. Even an exposure to moderate smoke levels if infrequent, likely is safe. One must consider that those who die from smoking have smoked a few hundred thousand cigarettes, or for very heavy smokers, some have made it past 1 million cigarettes.
The American Cancer Society also claims cannabis ("marijuana") causes cancer, something nobody has ever proven. About 60 studies say it doesn't cause cancer &/or that it fights cancer, and it has 126 known conditions it can help rxmarijuana dot com Granny Storm Crow's list & Wikipedia is good, too.
ACS also claimed some cannabis users had to have limbs amputated from numbness, even though anyone who has studied it knows cannabis enlarges/dilates blood vessels.
American Cancer Society recommends radiation (nuke the patient to help them live. Cut them & poison them, too). ACS has been around for nearly a century, gets billions to do research that lies where necessary to protect the business owners at top of organization. They can legally beg for money, pay no taxes as a non-profit organization, no penalty for fictional studies. In nearly the century ACS has been is business, cancer rates have skyrocketed.
No govt source or source tied to govt conditions can be considered free of bias if govt pays them to say the conclusion they want.
The American Cancer Society also claims cannabis ("marijuana") causes cancer, something nobody has ever proven.
Do we really need a study that lungs and smoke regardless of the source aren't a good combination?
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