Rant#4 Tobacco Tax

I can’t believe the shit our government is pulling with this tobacco tax. One-hundred and fifty-eight percent (158%) increase seams criminal, there has to be a law against such actions. I guess that’s why the “tea tax” people were up in arms, or at least one reason for some. I don’t see them raising the tax on guns 158% and they’ve killed more people than cigarettes ever have. Nobody ever put a cigarette to someone’s head and pulled a match to kill them. Nor has anyone ever put one in someone’s mouth and made them smoke themselves to death. And no one has ever committed suicide using a cigarette either.

It seems to me that the tax collectors are preying upon the addiction of the smoker, forcing them to quit or pay whatever the government wants, using us to make up for the money they’ve lost. That’s bullshit and unfair, not to mention morally questionable, underhanded and just plain mean. If they raise the tax on cigarettes like this then they should raise the taxes on such things as fur coats, diamond jewelry, yachts and other vices only the rich can afford. Why do they always raise the prices on the poor mans’ vices; cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets; twenty-dollar scratch-offs; please!

There should be a better way to raise money than to tax the hell out of one particular product despite its bad reputation. I know that people are angered because they’ve lost loved one’s to lung cancer. I understand that, my grandfather, who I loved very much, died of lung cancer when I was fifteen. So I get it, but I didn’t get mad at the tobacco companies, just him for smoking so much. I know their full of poisons, but that the choice we make, it’s our responsibility.

Blaming, protesting and hounding the tobacco companies is only serving the governments’ tax needs, and driving yet other American companies out of business, not to mention costing more people their jobs. The bottom line is that people are going to smoke regardless of the price or the danger. Persecuting smokers and the companies that provide the smoke, like we’re dealing in the worst drug on the planet, is just plain wrong in my opinion and should be stopped immediately.