Quote:
Originally Posted by TurboAngel
The tax money won't go for ANY cancer treatment it'd for 4 million kids to have health insurance.
They should have handed more birth control out. I don't see why we (us that smoke, yea it's nasty and blah blah) I don't feel like I should be responsible for the kids having health insurance, that's a parents responsibility.
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The problem is that people who are so anti-smoking (more often than not, they're former smokers) don't want to see three simple facts.
1. It is de-facto national (and multi-national, for that matter) policy to eliminate smoking. I'm not arguing whether it's good or bad policy --- it's just policy. The smoking rate has plunged over the last 15 years, but that's not what they want, they want to eliminate it. (And I'm not getting into *why* it's de-facto national policy...but anyone with the patience and intelligence can just think about lobbying, then follow the money and understand it.)
2. But they don't have the political will (that is, the balls) to try to make it illegal. And the largely disingenuous anti-smoking PR campaign (have you seen the ads recently condemning the hand-out of free cigarettes on the street? there haven't been cigarette giveaways for YEARS.) has only cut the smoking rate, not eliminated smoking completely.
3. Therefore, the only other avenue is to continue to raise taxes on cigarettes (and "find" more revenue in the process). It has nothing to do with funding smokers' health care or anything else. (And it has nothing to do with the fact that cigarette taxes, and alcohol taxes, are the most regressive taxes in existence - yet still supported by champions of the poor.)
It's really not hard to understand. It's easy, it's "found" money - and those are two things politicians will gravitate to every time.