Today, President Obama signed into law Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, leaving a bulletin of actions as followed (blatantly stolen from PolitcsDaily.com)
* FDA regulations will supersede weaker state laws, a major expansion of federal power;
* The bill bans the words “light” or “mild” in tobacco advertising, as well as any words that give the impression that one cigarette is less dangerous than another;
* It bans flavored tobacco products, like clove or cappuccino cigarettes (yes, they exist);
* It requires companies to submit a complete list of ingredients in the tobacco, paper, filter and other components, and allows the FDA to require the removal of any additive it says is dangerous;
* It requires this list of ingredients to be placed on all labels, which will itemize chemicals added to tobacco products;
* It restricts tobacco marketing to children, such as tobacco billboards near schools.
So. This law now allows the FDA to target not just your vices but your taste buds to boot and has implications of our freedom of speech by telling us what the word “light” means and where you can say it. The term “diet” has been misused for years, as has organic, yet we have not opted to come out against those in favor of a good soda pop or plausibly fatty brand of cheddar. But this is not as much a word play issue as a tax revenue. I’ll come out and say this early. I’m a Democrat. I don’t mind taxing things. I’m of the line of thinking that taxing things we want but don’t need is a stellar way to keep our heads above water. I’m also a smoker. To the best of my knowledge, everyone who reads my article is a smoker, everyone who writes for this site is a smoker, and after spending an hour with those of us here at QC, you will have gone through enough second hand to easily qualify yourself as at least a light smoker (ooh, there’s that word again). But this has nothing to do with our right to tax our bodies into futile submission, but our right to have a rational tax on irrational urges. No one needs to smoke, but that’s kind of the point. You don’t need to do much in life, but having the ability to indulge is something that hasn’t existed for humans for more then a few hundred years, and that’s if you were born lucky.
Look at it this way. We passed SCHIP, allowing in it’s first years to tax cigarette sales heavily to fund a 20 billion dollar shortfall. We’re ok with that. There is not one smoker on the planet who would come out openly against paying for uninsured children or pregnant women unable to get by. In 2006 alone, 6.6 million Americans were provided health care they needed but could not afford. This is a good thing. That being said, SCHIP doesn’t work. The number of uninsured continues to rise, the especially in those who don’t qualify for SCHIP and have the good fortune of being employed these days. But we have allowed ourselves to fall into a black hole. Smokers are paying for healthcare, one, but smokers are paying for the anti smoking campaigns in most states. Here, we have the Colorado Quit Line, a service to offer consolation and counseling for the poor, simple minded smoker. I pay for it. I, by procuring a pack of cigarettes, am paying to convince myself to quit. This is paradoxically retarded. Let’s just assume it works. I drive by “The Cigarette Is Dead” posters, see ads reminding me to quit, read the warning on the pack telling me that smoking has been proven to cause cancer in California (thank god I don’t live there, or it could be dangerous), and decide to cave and think of my health. I can save about five dollars a day, and might not get winded whilst walking up more then two flights of stairs. But when I stop smoking, who’s going to pay for SCHIP? Who’s going to pay for this said quit line? In the off chance that the ballpark 20% of Americans who still smoke all decided to give up, tomorrow, we will have a lot of revenue gone missing. What do we tax in replacement? Do we decide to follow Utah’s approach and tax caffeine? Maybe a tax on white bread because wheat is better, or something easy to judge like porn. The contradictions in this law are not replaceable.
This will end badly, either way you look at it. Our health might bet better, but our freedoms won’t. What you say and how you say it is no one’s business but your own. What you decide to drink and smoke, as long as you manage to not kill anybody in the process, you should be left t your own devices. Or vices. Either way. I’ll end on a good note, however. Menthols are still allowed, as the lone exception, and both Kretek and Djarum have announced clove infused cigars. More like cigarillos, actually. Oddly sized in a similar fashion to cigarettes. Huh. That’s odd.
