That isn't the question.
So there's talk that the Legislature and the Governor may combine to raise the cigarette tax anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar a pack. The Star yesterday had a big scare headline on the front page, "Can 25c more a pack help us kick the habit?"
The answer is no. Even another dollar is not going to stop committed smokers. I still can't believe what Sally used to spend on cigs before she finally decided to quit on New Year's Day a year ago. But she didn't quit on her own -- she has Wellbutrin to help her. And my father -- smoked till the day he died, even though it killed him. He didn't care what it cost.
What is upsetting is that cigarette taxes (and liquor taxes, for that matter) are regressive as hell. They affect the poor so much more than they do the middle and upper classes.
Rush just made the best point of all -- "If government doesn't want us to smoke, why don't they just outlaw the sale of tobacco?" And of course that's rhetorical -- because tobacco will just become the next illegal drug and the government won't be able to make any profit off of it.
Governments actually don't have any percentage in pushing smoking cessation measures. There is so much crying about how Medicaid money and other resources end up going to take care of people who have smoking-related diseases, but the fact is that smokers as a class don't live as long as non-smokers! The people who are REALLY costing us big bucks these days are people who live to be 80 and 90 years old and end up requiring extremely expensive long-term care in nursing homes. Most smokers (like my dad, my Aunt Betty, and my Uncle Bud, all of whom were regular smokers -- Aunt Betty smoked like a factory smokestack) don't live that long. Dad lived the longest and he only made it to 76.
So the dirty secret behind raising the cigarette tax is not that we want people to stop smoking -- we want them to keep smoking so we can make them cough up more money to the state.
Because if that wasn't the case, tobacco products would either be outlawed altogether or cigs would be 15 bucks a pack and rising, with a significant state-sponsored smoking cessation program in place.
As my wife says, "Wellbutrin is a wonderful thing." And it's just one of several helpful therapies. If smokers really want to quit, they can choose to do so. What the state needs to do is quit lying about why it wants to raise taxes on smokers and just come clean with the truth.
