Laws to Put Out Cigarettes and to start socialized medicine from the back door

My Way News - Congress Aims to Put Out CigarettesWASHINGTON (AP) - Congress is taking new whacks at the cigarette industry, banning tobacco sales in Senate buildings and - more importantly - seeking a significant federal tax increase on cigarettes. The industry, once a lobbying behemoth, is quietly working against the tax bill. But it lacks the clout it once wielded. Several key lawmakers said they have had no recent contacts with tobacco lobbyists. And both houses have signaled a willingness to raise the cigarette tax if other provisions of a children’s health bill can be resolved. “I think the industry has tried to do things more quietly, largely because they obviously know how popular a tobacco tax is,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. The health advocacy group supports a proposed $35 billion increase in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which a higher cigarette tax would finance. House and Senate negotiators are trying to craft a veto-proof version of the bill. President Bush says he would veto it because it calls for a 61 cents-per-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes, taking it to $1.

I don’t smoke cigarettes but I know this is not right. Federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes and lawsuits will push cigarettes to over $5 a pack. What right does government have to fund programs which have nothing to do with smoking on the backs of cigarette smokers? They are doing it because they can get away with it. Next, they will start ratcheting up taxes on CO2 or something else to pay for their socialized programs.

What will be the result of $4 a pack Federal and local cigarette taxes? People will just find more and more ways to get around the taxes through illegal activity making more criminal activity and abetting organized crime. Most poor people who are addicted to tobacco will chose cigarettes over things they really need for themselves or their family every time. So these tax laws are actually impacting the children of smokers by taking one to two hundred dollars each month from the family income. Money that they might use for food clothes and medical care.

In one way or another people who are addicted to tobacco are going to get their tobacco fix even if they have to grow it themselves. If the high taxes on cigarettes actually succeeded in reducing the number of smokers the government would not be able to fully fund these programs and they would continually have to raise taxes until they priced tobacco out of the legal market. After that the taxpayers would have to pick up the cost of the socialized programs that the tobacco taxes funded. In other words this is really a back door attempt to bring in a government socialized medicine plan by incrementation.

We don’t need a nanny state that robs from people to pay for socialized programs and that creates more criminal activity. We already have the highest incarceration rate in the world mainly due to jailing people who traffic substances that other citizens use. Taxpayers pick up the bill for all that. We don’t need to find ways to create more criminals. If government really must tax things that have negative consequences on society they might start with taxing porn, abortion and the people who pass these destructive laws.