Ahhhhh ok. 
Posted on 01/20/2007 1:19:51 PM PST by sh0tgun willie
Jane Gravelle: After the Clinton administration proposed a fairly substantial increase in the cigarette tax as a way of funding health care reform, my colleague Dennis Zimmerman and I wrote a paper entitled "Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform and Economic Analysis."* The part of the paper I'd like to talk about is the justifications for increasing the cigarette tax. I'm an economist, so I start with the presumptions that people have subjective preferences about what they like to do and how they spend their money and that, in general, we want to allow people to enjoy their lifetime resources in accord with those preferences. We would intervene in those decisions only under certain kinds of circumstances that we try to delineate and measure.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
Life will kill us...from one angle or another. We won't live forever. We aren't meant to.
I agree, but my New Year's resolution was to try to be nicer! LOL!!! I don't think it's working too well.
Ahhhhh ok.
Thanks for the laugh, She.
The sad fact these people fail to tumble to is that smokers get X number of years minus five. Quick! What does X stand for!
Couldn't tell you how many non smokers I've outlived. Poor devils, some of them were hit by trucks.
Yes, but smoking will kill you much earlier, with more pain and less quality of life. And it may also kill those around you.
You are funny, every time you open your mouth more stupidity comes rolling out. Your leaps of logic are just outstanding-keep it up. the entertainment value of a half wit is priceless!!!!
--. I dare you to show us all just ONE death certificate that states that a person died from smoking or even second hand smoke. I dare you!--
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,810663,00.html
How bogus you are.
LOL! Listen, no one is going to get out of this life alive! Don't you know that by now?
Something is going to kill me, but it's not 100% positive that it will ever be smoking.
When you can't come up with a decent answer, point that finger of yours and turn the table on the other person.
You are a joke.
I'm speaking only for myself here, but I do not support the Civil Rights Act.
I do not believe it is the business of any government- and especially not the Federal government - to dictate with whom one must do business. A person does not have the right to use the property or services of another private individual against the owner's wishes.
Personally, I would never support a business that chose to discriminate on the basis of race. But if a business owner wants to shoot himself in the foot by limiting his customer base and provoking the wrath of the Jesse Jackson's of the world, the law shouldn't act to protect him from his own stupidity.
WHOOPS!
--I think UpAllNight's point was that if you supporttobacco because it was part of the bedrock of America's early economy, then you have to support slavery for the exact same reason.--
I wasn't going that far.
I stand corrected. Didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
That is not true and you know it. That is a computer generated number based upon how many people have died in a given year and how many people are considered smokers or former smokers each year.
If I were to be run over by a bus while walking tomorrow I would be considered in the death statistics of at least 4 categories: motor vehicle death, even though I was a pedestrian, pedestrian motor vehicle death, tobacco related and alcohol related. The first 2 categories are justifiable....the 2nd 2 are not. The fact that I smoke or consume alcohol have no bearing on the fact that I was killed by a bus.
That is how SAMMEC determines smoking related deaths.
Well, we would rather not, but if you insist............
I, too, lost good friends at a very early age from car accidents or whatever, that didn't smoke. So, I smoke and thank God, I am still here. If the Good Lord wants me to die from smoking, that's how it will be.
I ask Him if he wanted me to quit smoking, to give me a sign. So far, I haven't received any. The Good Lord knows that smoking is my only vice and since I lost my hubby, it's even amazing I don't drink. hehe!
Maybe I should! LOL! But I came onto these threads drunk, the stuff flying off of my keyboard would get me suspended from FR, so I keep away from the sauce! 
I also quit last spring. June 1 after a long smokedown to less than 10 a day.
I think that eventually we're going to see heath care costs go UP because non smokers live longer and are bigger burden on the health care system than dead smokers.
Curious.
It therefore follows that people without an "addiction" do have special rights.
What if your "addiction" is to freedom?
Sure I know that, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start having unprotected gay sex in a San Francisco bathhouse either. A tobacco addiction will shorten your life, subject you to incredible pain, accrue enormous expense, and lessen your quality of life. Sounds like a great "lifestyle choice!"
Something is going to kill me, but it's not 100% positive that it will ever be smoking.
Yeah, but if I had those odds on a horse at the track, I wouldn't think twice.
OMG, what planet are YOU on? All my family members smoked, except one grandmother. She died full of cancer when I was only two. She never smoked in her life.
The rest of them all smoked and lived well into their late 70's and my other grandmother even lived to be 86, smoking three packs of unfiltered Camels a day!
Stop spreading those highly paid professional anti-smoking lies, will you?!
Sorry, not good enough. That is speculation. Not an official death certificate signed by a Medical Examiner.
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