AP 4/7/09:
However, smokers die some 10 years earlier than nonsmokers, according to the CDC, and those premature deaths provide a savings to Medicare, Social Security, private pensions and other programs.

Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.

That article/research will end the “smokers burdon the health care system” issue.

The problem with these things is that they aren’t “choices.” Sure, the first couple of times, maybe. But then people get hooked, and they lose much if not most of their power to choose to stop. That is what makes them morally wrong.

Uh.. no, stopping may be hard.. but it’s not impossible. Addiction is not a disease, it’s a failure of will. If it was a real disease then how could anyone ever go ‘cold turkey’?

Freedom should include the freedom to fail. Using the power of the state to protect folks from drugs is the same impulse that the left uses to protect some folks from guns.

Control freaks, do gooders and pocket-pickers

I don’t smoke but I know this is rank injustice unless we are going to charge diabetics a sugar tax and promiscuous people an AIDs surcharge on their Blue Cross. People who ski whould pay a ski tax for their medical risk factor etc

Once we create a sub class of acceptable victims they cannot stop milking them to death

The main result of the tobacco taxes in my state will be an uptick in petty crime. I wonder at what point the smoker in the lower income bracket switches from legal cigarettes to illegal cannabis to fill the void

Vanceone on April 17, 2009 at 11:47 AM

Using your own logic, food is also an “addictive” product that should be “illegal”.

No one has a problem with taxing the “legal ones”, the rate of tax was the issue.

You advocate government-enforced “rehab” paid for by taxpayers?……good grief!

Drinking/smoking are “choices” just like food or any other activity that you would personally demonize as an “addiction”. Even a nanny-state socialist like yourself would have to admit to that.

It’s not moral to encourage self-destructive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol and tobacco. I have no problems with taxing the legal ones. But I do have a problem with the government using it for general revenue–taxes on cigarettes, etc. should be spent on rehab and other ways to help people kick the habit. Same with alcohol.

The problem with these things is that they aren’t “choices.” Sure, the first couple of times, maybe. But then people get hooked, and they lose much if not most of their power to choose to stop. That is what makes them morally wrong.

Buy Danish on April 16, 2009 at 10:45 PM

You assume only smokers are opposed to arbitrary “for your own good” taxation that supposedly helps pay for something completely unrelated. I think you may be wrong on this.

I don’t assume that at all. What kind of tax would you prefer?

It actually is the Government’s place to protect it’s citizens.

Welcome to the 21’st century where there is no doubt that tobacco kills. My Inlaws had to move after they stopped smoking they could not get the cigarette smell out of their own home. But when they smoked just couldn’t understand all the fuss about the stink they caused. It eventually killed both at young ages of 54 and 62.

Steveangell on April 16, 2009 at 7:29 PM

So when will automobiles be banned?

Dr. ZhivBlago on April 17, 2009 at 1:26 AM

You’re missing the bigger point. Whether property or cigarette or income tax, the issue is the same. Whenever in a fiscal shortfall, government ALWAYS elects to increase taxes rather than decrease spending.

As for weak unions in FL…whatever. The biggest and costliest (to taxpayers) unions are the same everywhere…local govt unions. This includes teachers, firefighters, cops, etc. I have nothing against those people. But when firefighters are making $150K a year with overtime in addition to overly generous health and pension plans and all that while retiring at 45, something’s not right with the system.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but smokers typically don’t live as long as non-smokers. Health care costs are like balloon mortgages: they rise dramatically with old age. Most smokers don’t get there.

If you’re going to make arguments about this tax or that, they should at least have some truth. Smokers smoke (and pay the tobacco taxes) because they need the nicotine. Time to get more legal addictions on board! All kinds of taxes can be extorted, then the person dies before he/she can benefit.

Anyway, next time you see someone puffing away, thank them. With sincerity.

Also, Florida depends a lot on tourism taxation…and of course with the economy being shot…

The property tax amendment saved developers and Disney big bucks. But construction is pretty much dead, and Disney World is laying off around 1100 of its employees anyway.

Keep in mind that Florida has no state income tax. Also, it is a right to work state and unions are few and weak. Because of the Sunshine Law government employees can’t strike.

What’s happening in Florida should be a lesson to the rest of the country-you can’t blame everything on the unions, and going to the opposite extreme of Democratic tax and spend mentality is no good either.

I don’t understand the love affair so many in the party have with tobacco.

It is a filthy habit. It bugs me when Rush talks about his “formally nicotine stained fingers” while smoking a stogie. It’s like he is bragging he stopped smoking while smoking.

I know too many people that died early because of tobacco. If it stops anyone from smoking it just might be worth it.

Steveangell on April 16, 2009 at 7:23 PM

I’m sorry for your losses. I can relate to how you feel through my own experience.
But… part of being free is the freedom to make bad choice, not just good ones. That is, as long as you’re not impinging upon the liberty of others.

These “sin taxes” on tobacco are WRONG. They’re justified by the bogus notion that smokers present a higher cost to the health care system and they don’t. In fact, and be warned this is and ugly fact, they actually save 32 cents per pack in health care costs according to a recent Vanderbilt study.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145659.php

The larger hypocrisy of claiming that smokers should be taxed more is that government routinely takes these revenues and uses them for other things. If they really believed that these tax dollars should be raised to offset the cost of smoking upon society, why aren’t they using those tax dollars for just that?

Nope. Don’t buy it. It’s just another BS reason for jacking people up.

Anyway, back on topic…. Crist is a tool, and everything that’s wrong with the GOP. :D

Squid Shark on April 16, 2009 at 7:27 PM

that is the game the politicians play. They cut needful things instead of the waste so that the public will back higher taxes to keep the “police, firemen, teachers etc) . It is a sad state of affairs when our governmetn would rather see the public do without needful services just so they can grow their government.

You assume only smokers are opposed to arbitrary “for your own good” taxation that supposedly helps pay for something completely unrelated. I think you may be wrong on this.

The issue would also be higher on your “list of issues” if you lived and owned a business in the Leftist-busybody infested s**thole state/city that I live. A governor that basically admits to enacting tax policy to destroy the tobacco industry, and obviously has a serious problem with alcohol sales not being taxed enough. A city that now has no nightlife (due in part to the nannyist-busybodies like the commenter I responded to, and taxes/regulation), illegal immigrant infestation, crime exploding/gangs, young pros gone, business leaving or being taxed out, “cultural” events paid by taxes, etc.. I wish I could give better/specific examples, but I prefer the anonymity (it’s better for conservative business owners to stay on the down low here).

When someone says they want the gov to eliminate a specific product/action because they don’t like the “smell”, the light berating they receive on a conservative board is more than justified.

Amazing Grace on April 16, 2009 at 11:32 PM

Texas is in the same hole everyone else is in. If they left the house, they would fall apart, to think otherwise is wishful thinking.

nottakingsides on April 16, 2009 at 10:09 PM

Jeez. Take a chill pill. Or smoke another cigarette.

But the cigarette tax is stupid.

Jaibones on April 16, 2009 at 10:12 PM

Maybe so, but on a scale of 1 to 10 with government stupidity, it’s at the bottom of my list of issues to get infuriated about.

The problem with this tax is when people actually stop smoking and tax revenue haults the government looks at the short fall and starts looking for another way to generate tax revenue.

lwssdd on April 16, 2009 at

It’s actually a slightly more sinister shell game, because they have already spent the assumed_tobacco_tax monies and so they merely claim that they have to make up the shortfall by raising property taxes (one of the few areas where (until very recently) raising taxes always increased income) OR shutting down your educational gulags (which of course, disproportionally affects the poor (:black), inner-city (:black), working class (:neo-marxist (I think?)) people (only they use the word “impact” instead of affect, because they are j-school grads)), and the horror this engenders is a perfect vehicle for driving thousands of non-property-tax-paying people to angrily vote for the increase.

But we daren’t utter the word “conspiracy” (mostly because we already have the phrases “lucky shot” and “odd how that always works out”).