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 ...
You're addicted to the bounty this country provides for you to enjoy...for now.
I think you should be cured of your addiction.
Coroner Milne's verdict: death from natural causes.
Nice try, I see you make a habit of misleading people and/or stating 'less than factual' data...
That may fly on the obscurity of DC but you have to get your act together here...people are on to you.
Here is something even more sad.
Last August tenth, I was bittten by a poisonous snake in my garden. While in the emergency room, I joked that I'd be needing an ashtray. a nurse came and gave me a stack of literature about how to stop smoking!!! When I asked what was this crap, she said she was required to give it to me. These people are incredible! They have their priorities screwed up. Here I was swelled up like Jabba the Hut, on oxygen, heart monitor, and morphine and maybe even dying and they're worried I'm going to die from smoking. To add insult to injury, these sensitive, caring people sent me home with more literature about how to care for a snake bite wound. It had a nine square inch full color illustration of a rattlesnake in the corner of the first page. Like I needed to be reminded!!!
In the United States, 87% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. The percentage is actually higher in most other countries.
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!
Like I said, you must be the only person on the planet not convinced that smoking will kill you. I applaud you for your steadfast commitment to your delusion. It's not even shared by your fellow addicts here.
Then feel free to move your smoke free zone.
LOL! I wish I were paid to post here!
53,000 deaths caused from second hand smoke?
The anti-smoking zealots believe they can get away with saying or doing anything if the subject is smoking. This proves they can't if we remain vigilant.
Wanda Hamilton
--Nice try, I see you make a habit of misleading people and/or stating 'less than factual' data...--
Habit? I posted a link only. I stated no 'less than factual data', if fact I stated nothing. I made no judgement, stated no opinion.
That's a crock. You check your obituaries every day and most of the people are very elderly. Smokers or not, they had to be around second hand smoke at times in their lives and our nursing homes are FULL!!!
I think you have a great deal of passion on this subject. I am not sure about "earlier, more pain or quality of life." That seems to be subjective. Many diseases cause much worse pain. They are not induced by anything at all..just life.
The original topic seemed to be about government intervention and smoker's rights.
Good summary of your contribution.
Computer generated number? What, exactly, is it that you're smoking?
The 400,000 figure is the number of excess deaths caused by smoking, over what one would expect from a non-smoking population.
It is not a count of the number of dead smokers in a year. That's a blatant falsehood and if you don't know it, you should.
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.
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Glad you're laughing, for now.
Well, you can blame this on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The more bans, control and restrictions hospitals and the health care community puts on smokers, the bigger the grants the RWJ will bestow!
We all know hospitals are desperate for money, and they are chopping off the heads of the smokers to get that funding. Blood money, I call it!
Where did I go wrong? Given the increase (1) in the number of Americans driving and the number of miles driven since 1945 and (2) the sharp decrease in the motor vehicle fatality rate, why is it wrong to (3) posit that if the motor vehicle fatality rate were today what it was in 1945, that 500,000 or so Americans (rough figure) would die on the roads each year? You can add or subtract 100,000 deaths if you'd like (like I said, it's a back of the envelope figure), but the logic seems sound.
Your elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor, do you know it?
When the revolution comes, I'll be first up against the wall?
Awfully worried about our Constitution for an Israeli national, aren't ya bub?
Maybe a few do, but I haven't seen them. I'm an old man and I've seen many people die of many things. I've served in two wars and I've seen people die in horrible ways in combat. I've witnessed a terrorist bombing.
But I've never seen anybody in any more pain than when my sister died of lung cancer. Maybe she was a special case, I'm not an oncologist and I can't say I have a wealth of personal experience, but seeing her scream and flop around in agony, as the doctors injected morphine directly into her spinal column (the fastest way to get it to her brain) really scarred me. If there are more painful ways to die, I hope I never see them.
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