Just another tax to fund ever growing government!
Then you have states like New Jersey where disgraced Governor McGreevey basically flipped the tobacco annuity into a single payout and thus there's practically nothing now.
I don't like to be around people who are smoking at the time but I have nothing against smokers. My view is that the tobacco companies should fund an insurance program and pay out according to those diagnosed with a smoking related illness. The only role for the government is as an insurance regulator which every state has. Smokers wouldn't be dependant on the government to pay their healthcare but that would mean the state would have little justification for high cigarette taxes. This would probably wind up LOWERING the prices of cigarettes since the state gets a big chunk of that price per pack.
If anyone knows of any info about when trhe American public became generally aware of cigarettes causing cancer, I'd appreciate a url. I mention this because someone said this was known in the '40s but the companies kept it secret, yet the doctor (who just died) who discovered the link in Britain did so in the 50's, and the US surgeon general announced it in 1964, I believe.
Why is it unsurprising that politicians spend any money they can get their grubby little hands on?
The former governor of American Samoa supposedly sold the settlement awarded to the territory for a fractional lump sum.
That money is currently unaccounted for. He was a Democrat. Died of a heart attack.
His Lt. Governor is currently following in his footsteps, and exceeding the corruption of his predecessor. The Lt. Governor was recently elected to the governorship in his own right, and he continues his march to ruin American Samoa.
Pray the FBI is onto him.
Some day soon, I will need that medical care. If the tax money that I have invested (as a smoker) is not used for my own personal health care, then there will be a retribution.
Today, politicians think that a tobacco tax is free money, that they can spend in any way that they wish. Once they are no longer serving in an elected position, they falsely consider themselves as free and clear.
Some of us make a point of remembering the elected individuals responsible, and even 20 years later, these people can be tracked down.
While someone is serving in an elected position, that office will be respected. Once these people return to civilian life, they will be held accountable for their actions.
"Between 10,000 and 13,000 people die early in New Jersey each year from tobacco," Downs said. "Before they die, they wrack up huge health care costs. The numbers are so high they become incomprehensible to the average person."
They also lose all their accumulated earnings into the social security trust fund.
Someone please tell me which those are. Non smokers get lung cancer, throat cancer, emphasyma, and heart disease. Why? Not smoking didn't prevent them from getting it. Were they cheated? If non smokers get thse things how then can we KNOW that tobacco causes them?
Okay. Then my view is that Hostess and McDonald's should do the same for fat people and their related illnesses.
How bout Smith and Wesson doing the same for anyone disabled with a gun?
Or Harley Davidson doing the same for someone in a motor cycle wreck, or Ford for someone who doesn't wear their seat belt, or . . .
I hope you get my point. We ALL do things that endanger our health, and many of those things have lasting consequences. Athletes pay physically in their later years, coal miners have health related problems, hell, tellers are notorious for getting carpal tunnel. Should banks set up a special fund for that?
I know, I know, smokers are especially evil and burdensome. I'm so tired of this same old racket.
What? Government politicians used ear-marked extortion money for something other than they promised?
SHOCKED! I'm shocked I say!
How do we continue to let these pinheads get away with this crap? Oh yeah, the average voter (forget the idiots that thankfully don't vote) is a moron.
The tobacco consumer pays extra for: Health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, and homeowners insurance. We also pick up the tab for the "settlement", along with all the taxes on a pack of smokes.
We would end up paying for an additional insurance program.
ENOUGH!
Just imagine a world without cigarettes. If you weigh 400 pounds and DIE, there would be no cigarettes to blame. If you work with carcinogenic dusts, chemicals, or fumes in your workplace and happen to have cancer, the cigarettes would not be blamed.
The parents of toddlers with leukemia would have to look for a different boogeyman.
If you fall off a damn bridge what would they blame if not the cigarette in your hand?
WOW! Doctors would have to start learning jack squat about their patients and practicing real medicine again!
Is this all tobacco nazi crap science or is it just an excuse to get rid of something some people don't particularly like?
Something safer for police to do (take cigarettes away from grandmas in a bingo parlor) rather than pursue criminals who might be making methamphetamine, who just might get violent?
And before anyone tries to palm off the "secondhand smoke" study as science, forget it. It is a computer model, not hard data. It has no basis in fact.
For the anti-smoker, go ahead, ban them allready. Get it over with, let your tax coffers go COLD TURKEY right along with the rest of us. Don't have the moral fortitude for that, do you?, just enough to treat us worse than Jim Crow Negroes and act condescending. (Negroes under Jim Crow at least had their own section at restaurants, bars, and the back of the bus.) But we smokers are just nicotine niggers, not real human beings, right?
For the consumer of tobacco:
You want to smoke?
There are only a half-million or so people in North Dakota, move here and we'll elect a tobacco friendly government. Yep, the weather sucks, it is either too cold or too hot. There are no really outstandingly splenid scenic areas the Government does not own allready, so we won't get overrun with Hollywood types and so many whiny tourists we can't keep it that way. We might have to give Fargo to Minnesota, but that would cut the state's crime (and budget!) nearly in half anyway.
I was one of the people who supported the idea of a no smoking SECTION so non-smokers would not have to be inconvenienced by me having a cigarette, and look where that went. I have learned my lesson. NEVER AGAIN! NOT ANOTHER INCH.
This settlement was never about getting people to stop smoking. If there were no smokers, there would be no pot of money for the politicians to buy votes with. In Texas, the lawyers, who did practically no work on the lawsuit because the other states had already filed, divided 15 BILLION dollars from the settlement. It did land one crook, Atty. Gen. Morales (D) in jail though, for padding the pockets of greedy lawyer friends who were not even on the case, so it accomplished something.
Wow, his panic is palpable.
The spectre of making an honest living must have pushed him over the edge.
"States struggling with budget problems have shifted potential tobacco control money to pay for rising Medicaid costs and non-health expenditures on highways, schools and other items."
Proving that their case was fraud to begin with. When you can't substantiate a "cost" that cost does not exist.
These people actually piss me off more than the "Homeless" racket.