Posted on 03/20/2002 5:50:27 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The utter wickedness of the attack on the tobacco industry, the naked grab for a new stream of funding by the states that banded together, claiming that they wanted to reduce the health impacts of smoking in order to offset the costs of Medicare for those affected by the habit, is being exposed for the sham it always was.
It turns out, according to a survey by the Investor Responsibility Research Center, that many of the states that received billions of dollars in the national tobacco settlement, not only are not investing much in campaigns to reduce smoking, but are actually investing in tobacco industry stocks!
The settlement created the "largest new revenue streams in state history" according to the IRRC, insuring that 46 states would receive $206 billion from tobacco companies over the next 25 years as the supposed "reimbursement" for the tobacco-related medical expenses of the Medicare program. Presumably, if you could get fewer people to smoke, that would be a good thing, reducing those expenses, but the reality is that less smoking means less state revenue.
A new study from the Council of State Governments suggests that falling cigarette consumption will result in a 20 percent loss of the income projected. Through 2010, states will get $14 billion less from Big Tobacco. That's the last thing they want!
The settlement was never about getting people to smoke less. It was nothing more than an extortion scheme by the states and the people who end up paying the bill are those who, by their own free choice, want to smoke. It's not about healthier people. It was and is about the MONEY.
If they truly wanted healthier people, the states would have banned tobacco use, just as this nation once banned alcohol, but banning things people want as a lifestyle choice is idiotic. The result of Prohibition was the creation of organized crime syndicates because people wanted to drink. And people want to smoke. Just as people can and do choose to stop smoking.
So, governments, having generally overspent their taxpayer's money, simply impose new taxes. In New Jersey, the Governor is contemplating a $1.30 per pack tax! In New York, the tax per pack is $1.50, in Washington it's $1.45, in Connecticut, it's $1.10. And it's all obscene!
Government as a huge extortion racket is, in too many cases, what government has become. Everything requires a license, registration, a waiting period, certification, inspections, and on, and on, and on. This is supposed to be a nation where we have personal liberty, but so long as we are taxed for our free choice of what we want to consume, the smoking, drinking or eating habits we want to pursue, that concept is meaningless.
The one thing the federal government and the States have never contemplated is actually spending less; reducing their budgets so they are not dependent on tobacco industry extortion schemes. This constant need to spend more explains why we are seeing more and more States accepting gambling revenues. Once it was only Nevada. Then it was Nevada and New Jersey. Now gambling will go nationwide because people want to gamble. The income stream for the States is irresistible.
Granted the States need income to function, to provide the services needed by their citizens, but deliberately punishing segments of their population for lighting up a cigarette is as un-American as you can get. In the end, it is all a lie and it is a lie whose purpose is to get money.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.
Alan Caruba
BUMP
You are so right! The law of the PC will ultimately take away all our freedoms, because they are so much wiser than you and me. In the meantime, they line their freaking pockets with our tax dollars.
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