A Tax Too Far
There are some people in the community you can just kick whenever you want to. Pedophiles are endlessly popular targets, as are their cousins, the cigarette smokers.
This writer’s father died at an early age from smoking tobacco; it’s crap, there’s no doubt. But in a free country, people do as they like with their own bodies. If people want to smoke, it’s their business, and while at least it isn’t illegal like cannabis is, neither should it become defacto illegal by virtue of unbearable taxes. Here is the text: IMPOSES ADDITIONAL TAX ON CIGARETTES FOR CANCER RESEARCH. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Imposes additional five cent tax on each cigarette distributed ($1.00 per pack), and an equivalent tax increase on other tobacco products, to fund cancer research and other specified purposes. Requires tax revenues be deposited into a special fund to finance research and research facilities focused on detecting, preventing, treating, and curing cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other tobacco-related diseases, and to finance prevention programs. Creates nine-member committee charged with administering the fund. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increase in new cigarette tax revenues of about $850 million annually by 2011-12, declining slightly annually thereafter, for various health research and tobacco-related programs. Increase of about $45 million annually to existing health, natural resources, and research programs funded by existing tobacco taxes, but a decrease of about $45 million annually in tobacco taxes for early childhood programs. Increase in state and local sales taxes of about $32 million annually. (09-0065.)
Comes forward now N. Eugene Hill with a proposition to add another .05 a cigarette, or $1.00 a pack, with similar increases for other tobacco products.
Mr. Hill means to take yet more money away from those bad tobacco smokers, and give the money to worthy causes like cancer treatment and little kids. After all, every nickel makes it harder for a smoker to smoke; maybe if we charge enough we’ll force them to change their ways.
