Reply #5: I had exactly this discussion with my state senator at a county party meeting.

[Jackpine Radical]

I pointed out that smoking is strongly associated with economic class, and with clinical depression. Although I don't smoke, having quit in 1984, I see tobacco taxes as horribly regressive. Tobacco addicts (God knows I was one) are much more likely to go without something else than they are to go without tobacco. Taxing tobacco takes food out of the mouths of poor kids.