I don't believe in banning tobacco

[MrScorpio]

I believe in taxing and regulating the shit out of it

[Oeditpus Rex]

1. And where would this tax go?

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Education funding and Medicare/Medicaid?

That's where it goes now, anyway (or most of it).

[Oeditpus Rex]

5. Maybe where you live

In California, a hell of a lot of it seems to wind up with HMOs and hospital corporations.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. That's only under that stupid Proposition 86...

which WILL direct a lot of the tax revenues to HMOs and hospital corporations if it passes, no? Or at least that's what I gathered from reading about it (increasing taxes to fund corporate handouts seems like a REALLY bad idea, too).

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. It's already happened

We've had two previous tobacco-tax hikes. I'm not sure of the first one, but the second one, the one Rob Reiner was pushing in 2002, largely made the medical fat cats fatter.

I wouldn't mind a tax hike so much if it actually did something about smoking other than attempt to charge people into quitting — like, say, free nicotine patches, as in Colorado.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I agree, my dear MrScorpio.........

Banning it just drives it into the hands of the smugglers.......

Keep it legal, and as you say, tax and regulate the shit out of it...

[WindRavenX]

4. Word.

And pot. Lots of pot...

[hedgehog]

6. Works for me, and I don't use either.

It makes more sense to tax pot than to spend my tax money chasing pot!

[MadAsHellNewYorker]

8. Don't they already do that?

at thats the way it is here in NYC

[L A Woman]

9. I don't know about the taxing...

I sure hate it, too, but at the same time I grew up in a low-income part of the country - a lot of these people really don't have much and, like it or not, beer and cigarettes are huge part of their entertainment and social experiences. If you make cigarettes $10 a pack, which they already are in some places, these people really suffer. Chances are, that money will come out of the food budget.

I'm just sayin....

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. Precisely

Addicts don't give up their addiction because the price goes up. They just fudge some numbers.

[Xipe Totec]

12. I did give up my addiction when the price went up

Well that, and the fact I was coughing up 2 oz green loogies in the morning shower...

and the fact that my wife was pregnant with my first child...

and remembering my father dead at 45 of lung cancer...




It takes many reasons and tremendous motivation to break the habit.

And even then, it takes several tries before succeeding.