Let me say it, clearly, unequivacably: Smokers are not idiots.
We’re aware of the health risks. We know all the facts. We’ve been told, thousands of times, that smoking “is bad for us.”
We smoke because it’s enjoyable. We smoke because it finalizes the meal we just had. We smoke because it’s the thing to do with our hands in an awkward social situation. We smoke because it’s a great stress reliever. We smoke when we have a beer with friends, like passing the peace pipe, when we want to relax after a long week. And who can forget the calm of two lit cigarettes, buzzing like fireflies in a darkened, hushed room, riding the heady breath in the afterglow of two lovers?
Many of us (obviously, not all of us) are polite about it, and try not to get it in non-smokers faces, or disturb them while they’re eating.
There are, for us, a lot of good reasons to smoke, and we do it because we want to. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why we shouldn’t, but then there are a lot of good reasons not to eat Big Macs and fries at every meal as well, but most of us visit our greasey drug pusher cum-goofy-annoying-clown far too often.
But trying to tax tobacco into obsolesence? If enough smokers do quit, the tax doesn’t make sense. Where’s the sense in taxing a product into a niche market to pay for health care, only to have the number of purchases of said product decline, thus making your returns from the tax less and less?
And if smokers don’t quit? Then they will find other methods of feeding the nicotine monkey on their collective back. Online and catalog orders from distributors in other, taxless states will see a rise in the number of people they ship to in Oklahoma, continuing the disturbing trend of sending our money to other states. And it’s not like the Kansas border is really that far away from our humble abode, either. Now, let’s be honest, raise your hands if you’ve ever made a beer run to another state to get away from the 3.2 swill water we laughingly call “The King of Beers”.
And while we’re on the subject of alcohol, let’s take the analogy one step further, and dive into the hypothetical for a moment. While we’re upping the ante on sin taxes, let’s tax alcohol in the same manner, at the same rates. Now, suddenly, that keg of cheap Keystone Light costs $75 instead of $45 or $50. And that’s for Keystone Light, the champagne of urine. Your cover for that beer/booze dorm-room bash just got a little higher. Want to do some shooters? Buy enough for all of your friends and your paying 35% more just to spend a calm, relaxing evening in a demented, raging haze grabbing your friends in a half-nelson and acting disturbingly similar to a 30-year lonely convict with a mission. And for those who may argue that alcohol isn’t as dangerous, I have a few friends with loved ones dead or injured because of drunk drivers, liver cancer, and alcohol poisoning. And I’m sure the family of that underage fraternity member at OU might have a rebuttal as well.
What the proponents of this question aren’t talking about is that only a third of the percentages in the bill directly pertain to funding Health Care. The rest of the money? You guessed it, funnelled into the State’s Pork Barrel Coffers (also known in the vernacular as the “General Fund”) to fund more politically-incensed crap we don’t need. Additionally, some Native American tribes, which sell Tobacco (I personally smoke “Skydancers”, produced in Grove, Oklahoma by the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe) for their livelihoods, will be hurt financially by the tax and the tighter regulation surrounding their businesses.
But, I propose an alternative. Enact further limitations to cigarette companies’ advertising, with extreme prejudice on preventing targeting those jerks that stood outside the halls in middle school looking like a disaffected midget-sized member of Generation X. Enact tort reform that prevents smokers, who make a choice every time they pick up a cigarette, from suing cigarette makers into financial oblivion, thus further clogging up our court system with costly, yet side-tearingly humorous, lawsuits. Create more regulation on what can and cannot go into tobacco products, instead of allowing companies like Phillip Morris to drop in even more poisons into Marlboros (some of the most toxic, horrendous, and stinky cigarettes ever made), and call them “additives”. And instead of just focusing on revitalizing health care to account for the costs created by those that smoke, why not actually fix health care so more of these people can get it, instead of being given the metaphorical finger when they walk in to a clinic holding a vital organ in their hands with a look on their face of “This is bad, isn’t it?”
But of course, that would make sense. And we, as a society, can’t have that.
Originally printed with permission in The Daily O’Collegian, October 29th, 2004
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