Life imitates The Alphabet Challenge
Federal tax hike on cigarettes? Smokers feeling abused? Didn’t anybody see it coming?
In my novel The Alphabet Challenge (ENC Press, 2003), I foresaw it years ago. I also foresaw it getting much worse:
From the parking lot, Howell followed Addison through the woods up a narrow path to a cement cube of a six-story building. Dozens of fire extinguishers hung on trees around the building. The sign at the tobacco kiosk by the entrance announced:
TOBACCO ROAD SMOKING AREA
PROUDLY SERVING NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY SMOKERS SINCE 2014
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE AMERICAN SPIRIT CIGARETTES
Despite Monday afternoon, the square room with concrete tables and benches on the first floor was crowded. Coming out here on a weekend would be suicide.
“I still can’t figure out who benefited from those stupid antismoking laws,” Howell shouted over the noise of powerful air cleaners, picking a cigarette out of a $50 pack, $40 of which was federal tax.
“People who didn’t want to breathe second-hand smoke?” Addison suggested. A blissful smile spread over his face as his lungs filled with smoke.
“Hardly. When millions quit smoking, everybody’s taxes went up to fill the gap in the economy, and they still breathe car fumes. Where’s the gain?”
I hear that many smokers are people of lesser education and lesser earning power (not the ones I know). Apparently, it’s the institutions of higher learning that teach non-smoking. God knows, they don’t teach much else. Like math. The ostensible reason behind the tax hike is, of course, the children. It’s always the children. The undereducated underachievers shall lay out more of their disposable income (what disposable income?) to indulge their vice for the most humane of all reasons: to finance an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The expansion, which will cost $35 million over five years, is expected to provide federally funded health care for an additional 4 million children.
Aww… What will happen to all these children when millions of smokers (a) die out; (b) quit; or (c) turn to black market? The new law signed by President Obama, a smoker who can afford his smokes and kind of belies the stereotype of an underachieving hick, doesn’t seem to make provisions for where the funds will come from in case we need Plan B to finance SCHIP. But then, “Where will the money come from in case there isn’t any coming from the source you currently have in mind?” doesn’t seem to be a burning — or even smoldering — question at the decision-making level.
I also foresaw a lot of other stuff getting out of hand as the government cares more and more. Like handicapped parking spaces might eventually take up 50% of all parking spaces, in the name of equality. (More math.) Or jail sentences for failure to recycle. But we’ll talk about that when it happens. Then I’ll be sure to remind you who called it first.
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I’m all for encouraging smokers to quit. Smoking killed my dad at too young of an age. But if the government was really serious about it, the extra taxes would subsidize the expensive products and medicines designed to help smokers quit. If the government was really serious about bringing down health care costs, they would just outlaw cigarettes and be done with it.
It is not the federal government’s place to subsidize saving smokers from themselves, and that is precisely the point. It is also not the federal government’s job to outlaw anything on the grounds that it’s bad for you. If you feel a loved one is killing himself with smoking, it’s for you to handle, not to look to the federal government to step in and make him stop.
When it does that, we call it the Nanny State.
It is the government’s place (our place) when we all end up paying for the outrageous health care bills racked up by smokers and their hapless victims over their lifetime (and especially at the end of their lifetime). Let’s face it, the FDA already outlaws things that are bad for you. And if cigarettes came on the market as a new product today, they would never get through the FDA.
Kate, you wrote: “It is the government’s place (our place) when we all end up paying for the outrageous health care bills racked up by smokers and their hapless victims over their lifetime (and especially at the end of their lifetime).”
You do realize that this is precisely the argument being used by those who want to tax soda and fast food and control what bakers put in their own cakes. How many behaviors could the government prohibit in the name of saving money on healthcare? Quite a few. Using the gov’t’s paying for some healthcare as a pretext for its telling people what they can and can not do to their own bodies (leaving aside secondhand smoke as a different issue that is more complicated than the “hapless victim” line implies) is a slippery slope whose consequences you should think about. Any reason to believe this stops with cigarettes? Better to get the gov’t out of paying for healthcare, or limiting its role, if people are going to use this as a justification for the gov’t to tell people how to live more than it already does.
You also said: “Let’s face it, the FDA already outlaws things that are bad for you. And if cigarettes came on the market as a new product today, they would never get through the FDA.”
That’s probably true. But given the health consequences and public/social costs of alcohol use in this country, if it were introduced today it would probably be outlawed as well. Would that be right? And the rest of the insane war on drugs is predicated on the same logic. That the government already tells people what they can and cannot do with their bodies is not an argument for it being right, or good, or a valid role of government.
I am sorry to hear about your father. I don’t like cigarettes. To the extent that tobacco companies deceived people about the addictiveness of their product and to the extent that some smokers truly did not understand the risks of their behavior, I get the anger at the companies and the arguments in favor of punishment for those who were deceptive. But everyone has known cigarettes were deadly for as long as I’ve been alive, regardless of what Big Tobacco said. People also know that they shouldn’t eat red meat three meals a day with a side of bacon, yet they continue to do so. And the obese are costing us a lot of healthcare money and millions of families suffer through horrible health issues. We’re not going to outlaw bacon because of this, are we?
There are two main differences between “bad” foods and cigarettes. The first of course is second hand smoke exposure. I developed serious hearing loss in my 20’s due to constant ear infections from exposure to second hand smoke as a child. The second main difference is that cigarettes are manufactured to be addictive by the manipulation of the amount of the drug nicotine. And they are unsafe when used as directed.
Food products and alcohol are unsafe only when abused. But my point about the extra taxes on cigarettes is that now both cigarette manufacturers and the federal treasury are profiting from the sad addiction of cigarette consumers/addicts. If the government taxes the addicts in this way, I believe it should somehow benefit them directly by helping them to quit.
And if it works, Kate, and they all quit, where will the money come from to finance the expansion of SCHIP? There’s no Plan B to substitute for the funds that currently are projected precisely based on the hope that smokers will not quit, but rather continue to smoke and just pay more for it. When you promise health care to millions of children, largely at the expense of smokers, do you just later tell these children, “Sorry, kids, but since the smokers all quit, there’s no money for your health care, but nobody smokes anymore, so it’s all good”?
You didn’t read the actual article beyond the first line, did you?
That is exactly my point! It is immoral, in my humble view, for us to be taking advantage of addiction in this way to avoid the eventual pain of higher taxes. We are preying on smokers in the same way big tobacco is preying on them.
I’ll say it again. In my scenario, the ethical thing would be that the entire tax on cigarettes would go towards helping smokers quit. Thus, when they did all eventually quit, there would no longer be a need for the tax! I have an ethical problem benefitting from smokers’ addiction in any way.
Kate,
The issue isn’t whether you and I see a difference between bacon and cigarettes. The issue is whether politicians and activists will use the precedent of tobacco and the rationale of public health costs to prohibit or control other choices. It is clear that they already have and will do so more going forward. Outlawing stuff is less fun when they get to stuff you want legal.
I understand that you’re saying that if they are going to tax cigarettes anyway, at least the money should go to help reduce
smoking. But the goal here is to control more of the healthcare industry and have more voters dependent on their politicians and grateful to the leaders come reelection time. Taxing some to give benefits to others is one way to do that.
I just don’t buy the slippery slope argument when it comes to tobacco vs. food. You know, the one that says “if we outlaw tobacco next they’ll go after our cheetos and burgers and beers, oh my”. Again, there is in my view a bright shiny line between the two. The line would easily be drawn at tobacco(as far as any legislation goes) because of its danger to others and the smoker even when used as directed. The only reason it has not yet been done is $$ in the legislators’ pockets from big tobacco.
About the argument that legislators want our gratitude for providing healthcare, this is why they do everything they do. For our gratitude, votes and campaign contributions. And all taxes will benefit others on some level. But in the case of tax on smoking, I believe it should (ethically speaking)only benefit smokers if there is to be a tax at all. And there is. But it doesn’t.
Kate, they are already trying to pass these laws. The gov of NY wants to tax soda and he’s using the same arguments about healthcare costs. This isn’t some hypothetical.
Taxing is one thing. Outlawing is another. The tax code has always been used to drive behavior. Should it be? That’s another question. I have no problem with it, depending on the use of the tax dollars.An argument can be made for taxing just about anything. For instance, in PA there is no tax on food and clothing. But when I went shopping with my sister for her wedding dress here in good old PA, there was a big tax on it. Why the wedding dress? My guess is because it is considered a luxury item (an exception to the clothing rule). But outlawing or taxing certain foods is a much more difficult proposition than taxing or eliminating cigarettes. People need to eat. They don’t need to smoke. And moderation solves the health issues of eating, but not smoking. I suppose the tax code (in the NY soda situation) is being used to reinforce moderation. The ethical issue for me is not in the tax per se, but the use of the tax money.
Nobody needs to drink soda. There’s absolutely nothing good about it. If it has sugar, it’s fattening; if it has sugar substitutes, they have other dangerous side effects. Plus, the gas bubbles cause bloating. There’s zero reason for soda to exist. Sure, it should be taxed to the hilt. I wouldn’t miss it if it got outlawed.
That’s my personal opinion. I know vegans who can argue very convincingly that there’s zero reason for humans to consume dairy or animal protein of any kind, even in the smallest amounts. Many of them would like to tax those foodstuffs as unhealthy and useless. Perhaps red wine is good for the heart, and white for the lungs, but hard liquor and beer are not good for anything except getting smashed, and should be taxed even higher than it is already.
Sure, people need to eat, but they don’t, strictly speaking, need to drink soda or alcohol, or eat animal products. We can survive on protein tablets, on soylent green. We can drink spring water.
The trouble starts when people who hold these private opinions find themselves in the position of authority to turn their opinions into laws, preventing other people, whether by outlawing or overtaxing, from exercising their own choice to consume them.
And google Mayor Bloomberg (of NYC) and war on salt and you’ll see that this goes beyond taxing. His administration has threatened to regulate the amount of salt allowed to be used in food, justified by public health costs and public health.
I agree with you on the soda. No one needs to drink it. But no one is harmed by it who drinks it in moderation. And no one is harmed by standing next to someone drinking soda. Thats the crucial difference between soda and cigarettes. That’s not to say I have a problem with taxing either of them. Again, the only problem I have is with the use of the tax dollars from nicotine addiction.
As for the salt, hooray! You can add salt to your food, but it is hard to take it out.
People have been known to be irreparably harmed — emotionally and/or physically — by living with people who consume alcohol in what they believe are moderate amounts. Consuming sugar in what some believe to be moderate amounts has been known to lead to diabetes — a very expensive disease, and also frequently extremely hard on people who have to live with diabetics.
When “moderate” is defined by a governmental decree, problems begin. Whether you personally buy “the slippery slope” argument is not really relevant, because the slippery slope is already in action.
Up next (give it 50 years or so): taxing wedding dresses into a complete unaffordability, then outlawing them altogether, because a president of the United States decrees that big weddings are wasteful and silly, and nobody needs to have them. By a new federal law, personal wedding budgets will be capped at $2,500 total, to prevent people from making bad decisions to take on a debt for a one-day party nobody needs. You can have a moderate wedding for $2,500. I did, for less than that.
Kate, your last comment at least clarifies your position. First you say you don’t buy that slippery slope stuff, that there’s a clear line between an obvious danger like cigarettes and food, and all that. Now you’re cheering because the government may make it illegal for chefs to use the amount of salt they determine to be necessary.
You may prefer there to be less salt. But should your preference, or the preference of doctors, or the mayor, translate into law? That is what we’re talking about with regulation. Not just a tax to guide behavior, which you don’t mind, but a requirement to do things as the mayor wants them done. The result in this case is to your benefit — less salt, hooray. But on the one hand you dismiss the slippery slope as being BS and on the other hand you take clear evidence of it, of the government extending itself way beyond taxing tobacco, as a good thing.
Some people like salt in their food. They want their chef and not some health czar to determine what goes into the recipe. You see nothing ominous in the government moving so rapidly from smoking to soda and salt, in a matter of years? You don’t have to be a conspiracy buff to be troubled by this direction and to at least agree that it is not going to end with salt. As long as they only regulate against what you want less of, I guess you continue to cheer. I wouldn’t cheer for having my personal preferences enforced by law and imposed on the entire society.
I cheer only because I like less salt in my food. And because salt is easily adjusted with the salt shaker. I don’t like corporations deciding how much salt should be in my food either. I prefer to add it or not as I like. Now in my opinion, going too far would be to remove all salt from food and remove the salt shaker from the table. It’ll never happen.
So if the government decreed regular Coca-Cola to have too much sugar and regulated it into a shadow of its former self, that’s not going too far as long as sugar itself is still legal? Great. I’m sure new low-sugar Coke will taste just delicious after I ladle my homemade corn syrup into the can.
Since it’s not possible to adjust the amount of sugar in soda to my personal taste, the argument does not hold. I suspect that is why the law is about added salt which is easily adjusted, and not added sugar which is instead being taxed. Again, my only objection to that is the use of the tax money. In the case of sugar, since we are not taking advantage of addicts, I would not have an objection to the use of the tax money for health care. But I would love it if at least some of the tax money could be used to invent or develop a really excellent sugar free soda.
Coke has sodium, too. I don’t think it is easily adjusted. There are lots of packaged food products that wouldn’t be the same if you just shook some salt on them.
Again, that’s probably why soda was being delt with by a tax. I suspect the NYC proposed law deals with food prepared in the city, or there would be interstate commerce problems.
The War on Salt in yesterday’s New York Times. Pretty clear from context and other articles that the proposed regulations would be for processed and packaged foods as well as restaurant food and not just things you can shake salt on. But that’s not the point of the article.