LOL. They're out to get you, run for the hills!
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 want to help me lobby for the 28th Amendment? I'll get you a clipboard -- I'll move to Missouri and we can go door to door and rack up signatures to petition local congressmen.
Diet choices, drinking choices, drug choices, all can 'kill' someone. Everyone will die from something. There are people who never smoke that die from heart attacks or cancer, including lung cancer. There are people that smoke and live beyond the average age of death.
The best you can say about smoking that is more of an 'absolute' is that it will likely shorten your life, on average. If you insist on saying that smoking kills, then you have to also say that eating kills, drinking kills, etc because people also die from those activities.
These are choices we are talking about. Personally, I don't smoke and think it's a real bad choice. But just because someone doesn't smoke doesn't mean that they won't make equally as bad of a choice that can 'kill' them.
Out of curiosity, do you?
It seems to me that that act stopped segregation and the "separate but equal" mindset.
You anti-smoking Nazis won't be content until there is no place on the planet for smokers.
I was hoping someone would bring that up. Thanks metesky!
Words of wisdom spoken by someone in favor of using the guns of government to restrict competition.
And once again Godwin's Law rears its beautiful head.
It seems to me that that act stopped segregation and the "separate but equal" mindset.
No, there's nothing preventing discrimination against smokers until the Supreme Court grants smokers "suspect class" status. That won't happen until passage of the 28th Amendment. Will you help me get that crucial piece of civil rights legislation passed?
The single most preventable cause of death is stupidity.
It should be followed by @ssholeism.
Post #14 well said, spot on.
XXVIII Amendment to the United States Constitution (proposed)Section 1. The Right of the People to be secure in their Addictions shall not be infringed.
Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
"I wasn't going that far."
------
Nor was I. I'm just stating the fact that in the colonial period, tobacco was a major source of income.
Granted, the overwhelming source of labor was forced. Should we then discount or disavow the advances made during the industrial age when children were forced to labor in factories?
My point is: As humans develop new technologies, as well as new moral values, we should not be so quick to condemn those who came before us. Their world was not our world. Judgement comes not only from the Lord, but also from those who will write the books in the future. (Only one really counts, though.)
If that's the case, then this thread is the world's largest recorded séance, because there's no way these posters are alive. Stupidity would have killed them long ago.
NHTSA lies often and repeatedly.
It is a population control mechanism.
The government loves our tax dollars, but hates our nasty habit. How hypocritical.
Make tobacco illegal, and get it over with. Then I'll quit.
LOL. They're out to get you, run for the hills!
If we're all so stupid as you say, why are you here?
You know, the smoker/non-smoker decision ought to be solely decided by the owner of an establishment. So why is it the state thinks it has the right to decide for a property/business owner who they can/cannot enfranchise? I believe it fall squarely to overzealous politicians and their attempt to "grow" government..
I no longer smoke and, frankly, now detest the scent, but the final decision to allow smoking or not ought to rest, FIRST with the owner of an establishment then, SECOND, with the patron. That choice ought to be properly posted as you'd stated was done and THAT ought to be the extent of the state's involvement.
Actually, oxygen kills you, but only after having given most of us 75+ years of pleasure.
I'm calling BS on that one.
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