“But we where told that they will stop at smoking..”
I’m a former smoker. About twenty years ago I worked with an overweight guy who liked to criticize smokers and he was all for tobacco taxes, smoke free areas, etc. I’d occasionally tell him that some day they’d get around to the overweight, and that I thought that there should be a surcharge for the overweight added to all airline tickets since the limitation on plane cargo is weight as much or more than volume.
He thought I was just making something up for the heck of it. But I really believed the day would come because we have a big element of self-righteous, know-it-all little Stalins in our society and they’ll eventually get around to most anything one could imagine if they’re allowed to keep it up.
Having said that, I don’t object to a tax on items that do have a social and real cost to taxpayers; such as alcohol, tobacco, and sugar. Sugar will some day be proven to be far more harmful than either alcohol or tobacco. These taxes (if reasonable) don’t prevent anyone from their indulgences, and there is a real cost to their use.
I’m against it period.. I don’t like to use taxes as a social engineering tool
Social engineering has no place in a free society.