Insane Taxation02-17-2008
To the Editor:
The Commonwealth Care insurance program is in trouble, which is everyone's problem. It should be in everyone's interest that laws and taxing policy are made, not just a few. It is excise-tax-increase time again on tobacco, a song by anti-smokers whose verses never end. This current chorus says a dollar-a-pack increase on cigarettes, making it the second highest in the nation. Please stop the music! (Sound effects, needle sliding across a record.)
Here we go again.
It is beginning to look like government has taken on the tactics of the very people they love to hate and put in prison - drug dealers.
Isn't it the nature of drug dealers to keep raising the price of their product, after their consumer has gained an "appreciation" of it, to insane levels? Welcome to Massachusetts and America in the new millennium, a nanny scolding state that treat the freedom to smoke and smokers like toxic waste. Smokers should be among the most celebrated groups around because they are paying a higher percentage of YOUR bills!
Prisons are built to protect good people from the bad, as it should be. But what happens when the policymakers act like criminals and tax at a criminal level? Where are the prisons for them and who will put them there? This behavior is wrong on so many levels.
But who will slam on the brakes? What happens when the poor, the ones who struggle to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, get smacked by every taxing authority above them by never-ending "feel good" and healthful excise-tax increases on tobacco? Too much of this kind of health is a hazard to it. Shall we just quit playing with words and tell it like it is? This is a "Quit smoking damn it!" tax proposal. Where is free will in all of this?
Every July 4 we as a nation celebrate Independence day, a day to remember the freedoms America affords, if you can afford them. Freedom means very little if lawmakers on all levels say you're free but pass laws and levy taxes that squeeze you till you have little choice but to live their version of your life. Government spends fast and loose and if things get tight, they hit up smokers first. And if you don't like it, quit!
A government for the people? Smokers say, "With friends like this, who needs enemies?"
Dave Pickrell
President and founder
Smokers Fighting Discrimination, Inc.
A not for profit organization
PO Box 5472
Katy, TX 77491
E-mail: sfdsmoke@hal-pc.org
Pickrell says he has been an unpaid activist for the fair treatment of smokers since 1993 and a crusader against the use of junk science in public policy matters.
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