| Subject: Smokers are an easy target, but are they a fair one? |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 11:18:25 03/10/04 Wed
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "no no no, you can have her, she's too fat for me" on 10:16:27 03/10/04 Wed
Seeing that health risks or overeating & no exercise will outweigh smoking by 2006, maybe we should outragously tax food, ban eating in public places, & say poo-poo to those caught eating outside their home or around children... after all, that's what they did to cigarettes & smokers.
I've seen plenty of people 70-100 y/o who smoke a pack a day most of their lives & continue to do so. I hardly see any fat people over 70, & none over 80.
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Smokers are an easy target, but are they a fair one?
February 16, 2004
BY DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Michigan smokers were feeling a bit put upon last week.
After suffering mostly in silence for a decade as the cigarette tax quintupled -- from 25 cents to $1.25 a pack -- they heard about Gov. Jennifer Granholm's plan to fill a hole in the state budget with more of their money. And many said: "Hey. Enough already. Why don't you pick on somebody else?"
Good question.
Just don't expect an honest answer. The real reason they're picking on smokers is because they need the dough and this is the easiest way to get it.
Oh sure, in the weeks and months ahead we'll hear a lot about the socially redeeming value of high taxes on tobacco. We'll be told that adding 75 cents a pack will mean thousands of young people won't become slaves to nicotine and adults will be motivated to quit. We'll be encouraged to imagine vast sums in medical care costs that will be saved in a world with fewer smokers.
We will not be urged to consider the obvious. This isn't a health care proposal; it's a tax increase. Forget the self-righteous pose. The reason we're talking about it is because the government wants to spend $300 million next year that it won't have otherwise.
So is it fair to take it from smokers?
Granholm and the antismoking zealots seem to believe that smokers currently don't shoulder their share of public health costs associated with tobacco-related illness.
This is a dubious claim, based among other things on the false premise that nonsmokers don't get sick and never die or consume medical care. It also discounts the enormous levy already placed on Michigan smokers through various government markups -- $1.5 billion a year, according to one estimate. That's in addition to the taxes they pay as ordinary citizens (smokers are people too!).
Besides, if we think smokers should be paying more so we don't have to subsidize their health care, shouldn't they also get a cut rate on Social Security taxes since so many will die before they can collect?
For that matter, how closely do we want government to look at these questions in the first place? Do we want to calculate the precise public costs associated with eating a high-fat diet or the failure to exercise regularly? And fashion a tax code to account for them?
Of course, measuring fairness in taxation is always dicey. It is human nature to believe the fairest tax is one that falls on somebody else. While 25 percent of Michiganders smoke -- one of the highest rates in the nation, the tobacco scolds regularly remind us -- they're still vastly outnumbered.
Which points us a little closer to the ugliest truth of all about raising cigarette taxes: Smokers don't matter much politically. They are, on average, poorer than nonsmokers, closer to the margins of society, further from the centers of power. They don't have lobbyists. Many don't even vote.
Granholm suggested last week she would be doing poor people a favor by raising cigarette taxes, since fewer will smoke and get sick. Maybe.
More certain is that some of them won't quit. And they will stay poor.
In the end, the governor's proposal may well win approval. The options -- cutting spending or raising taxes on somebody else -- are close to unpalatable.
But it would be nice if they saved the moral preening for a more appropriate occasion.
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