On today's front page, Sarah Owen details a congressional bill that will once again raise taxes on cigarettes in order to fund unrelated programs.
It seems like a nice plan. Smokers pay an extra $.61 per pack of cigarettes and the government uses the money to provide healthcare to disadvantaged children nationwide.
Those evil smokers endanger children with secondhand smoke, so why shouldn't they help pay for children's ills? Besides, the higher prices of cigarettes will encourage smokers to quit, which will be good for their health, which in turn will allow health insurance companies to lower their rates, which will make healthcare even cheaper for America's kids. Sweet. Nobody loses.
One question must be asked, however. Are smokers really such a bad group of folks that they deserve to pay for the healthcare of a completely different segment of the population? Especially in Arizona, where smokers aren't allowed to light up within 50 miles on any other biological organism, secondhand smoke really isn't hurting too many kids. (Unless you're a parent and smoke in your house, in which case … stop!)
So where do lawmakers get off placing responsibility for the health of random children on a specific section of society? It seems a bit unfair and it's not like there aren't any other options. Implementing a tiny fraction of that $.61 as a general sales tax would help far more children and would not unfairly place the burden of doing so on a single segment of society.
Of course lawmakers would never vote for that because they don't want to be seen as raising taxes. Instead they demonize a minority of the population and then tax that minority extraordinarily heavily. Pretty tricky. Everyone's happy but the smokers, and those morons will be dead soon anyway, so who cares about what they want?
The recent wave of cigarette taxes set a dangerous precedent. By passing them, the government is implying two things. First, Americans need help paying for their childrens' healthcare. Apparently this one is true. Second, those passing cigarette taxes assume that Americans are too stupid to realize that smoking is bad for them, and must be coerced into quitting for their own good.
News flash: people smoke because they enjoy smoking, not because it's good for them. No, it's not the greatest choice to make, but the U.S. government shouldn't be influencing our choices at all. What's next? Unprotected sex tax? Skydiving tax? Rock climbing tax? Being a fat ass and ordering a double cheeseburger tax? If the government needs money, it should acquire it in a way that doesn't discriminate against the choices of a minority of the population.
