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ArmoredOne -> RE: Anti Smoking... Nazis? (11/13/2008 5:06:07 AM)
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Oh my favorite rant. Let me pause to light one up, since this will likely take some time.
*puff puff*
Much better.
Alright, who's gonna pony up the extra taxes that wll be gone if we do as the anti smoking crowd truly wishes and do away with smoking completely?
*listening to the crickets chirp*
Yeah, that is what I thought.
Anyone given any thought at all to the thousands that are working in the tobacco industry, either growing or assembling? I suppose it is pointlss to mention that tobacco leeches so many nutrients out of the soil that the crops are rotated on a 3-5 year rotation schedual, which means that at any given time, 1/5 to 1/3 of the farmland a farmer uses for tobacco has to lay completely fallow, or be highly packed with nutrients just to replenish the ground enough for a simple crop, like wheat, to be grown.
Since I live in Kansas, I'll toss up some simple math based on Kansas.
The last census put kansas at about 6 million residents, with about 22% as smokers.
That's about 1 million people, give or take. Now if I am not mistaken, the tax is 85 cents a pack. Not even a dollar, you say. I, alone, as a pack a day smoker, paid 310.25 in taxes last year on smokes in kansas. Not a grand, whopping sum, until you multiply that by a million. Now that is a LOT of taxes to make up for any government at the state level.
Now, just for kicks, multiply that by 50, 1 for each state. Ouch, we're up into the multi-billions for taxes, and that is just at the state level, not the federal level, which has more taxes on cigarettes than you can shake a stick at. So that would add just about 51 bucks to everyone's property taxes in kansas. Okay, I can live with that. 51 bucks, okay.
Oh, but here comes some of those nasty things like what those taxes are used to fund, like public education, road repair and medical support for the elderly. Hmm, which programs to cut back on so we can afford the others? I am all in favor of just throwing darts, but I like the chaos theory of governmental politics, myself.
But wait for it, here comes the best part.
*puff puff*
Over 50% of the entire state revenue, plus over 60% of the workers in North Carolina are directly impacted by tobacco. By directly, I mean either farmers or laborers in the factories.
BOOM!!
One entire state declares bankruptcy. You thought bailing out Wall Street was going to have some negative effects, just envision that one for a few seconds.
Now, as to the rest of this utter nonsense.
"Eww, it stinks."
So do most perfumes. What's your point? Shall we ban those next, since they are a health hazard to asthmatics, small children and the elderly on breathing treatments? What, you aren't willing to do without that quarter of a bottle of body spray you insist on marinating in before you go out to eat at Chili's? How incredibly uncouth and rude of you to put all those people in danger, just for you own personal enjoyment.
"But smokers have more health problems than the rest of us."
Really.
No, really, you don't say? I suppose the fact that there are more dangerously obese people in this country than there are smokers is a facietious argument. Let alone that more than half of those people are morbidly obese. Hells, my own mother, who is definately in the secondary listing, was just diagnosed with diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. She quit smoking over 10 years ago. I've, personally, been smoking for most than 20 years, or 2/3 of my life. All I have to show for it is a slightly lower lung capacity. No cancer. No emphysema. Not even so much as a need for breathing treatments, and I have very mild asthma.
I mean, honestly, people.
Cigarette smokers, on average, according to the E.P.A. of all people, produce 1/6 of a pound of carbon monoxide in a given year by smoking. These are the people that insist on putting warnign labels on the sides of cigarette packs, as if we didn't know that they aren't exactly chocked full of Vitamin C and Riboflavin. The average Mickey Mouse wind up car, like Yugos and Rabbits, on the other hand, pump out a paltry 3600 pounds. Carbon monoxide is by and far, by great leaps and bounds, the most prolific chemical compound produced by smoking. Which seems like a bigger number to you?
Yes, it is a generally foul smelling habit, but let's put it in perspective, shall we?
"Oh No! Grab the kids, Earl, the secondhand smoke is drifting towards us!!"
*insert frantic scrambling and high pitched scream queen shrieking as needed*
Marlboro has already declared that if tobacco is ever banned in the U.S. that they will fully and completely pull up stakes and move out of the country. R.J. Reynolds has also made press releases that say, effectively, the same exact thing. Nah, that won't affect unemployment rates or the number of farm subsidies that are paid out in a given year.
Honestly, people.
Grab a gas mask.
Breathe shallower.
Get a personal fan.
Tobacco is the highest taxed item in the American economy, pound for pound and starting price to manufacture to starting price. Come on. Cigarettes used to cost 15 cents a pack, and I have an old newspaper to prove that they were sold at that price. Cars, in the same paper, sold for a couple thousand. Which do you think has more taxes on them? Houses? My house cost my great great grandfather just over 3000. To build an exact same size house today, even owning the land it would be put on outright, would cost well in excess of 100,000 bucks. 97 grand over 103 years, according to the original deed downtown. 15 cents to 5 bucks in less than half that time. Which do you think has been raped more?
Quit bitching about it and move on to something that is a bit more prevalent to modern culture. King George II said tobacco was a foul smelling product that darkens the teeth and hurts the lungs. That was over 300 years ago. It hasn't changed, only the governmental taxation concept.
Next time you drive over a road that has no pothole sin it, thank a smoker. We probably paid for it to be fixed.
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