Published: November 17, 2006 11:33 pm            

Reflections on the Great American Smokeout

This is, without a doubt, the biggest example of “Political Correctness” that one could ever witness.

Now I don’t smoke anymore, and am probably a poster child for what happens to one’s lungs after breathing Agent Orange for several years and smoking for 30 years and breathing industrial pollution for 25 more years. My lungs are shot!

However, I am forced to ask where, if the states and nation want everyone to quit smoking, are the states and nation going to get the tax revenue that they will no longer collect from tobacco sales and tax on the major cigarette and tobacco companies, which would eventually go out of business? Where are they going to tax us to death to make up the short fall in taxes?

The same people who push this day upon the smokers would have a coronary if 75 percent of the smokers suddenly quit! When Illinois raised its cigarette taxes a couple of years ago, the Illinois merchants had an economic disaster in that convenience stores and gas stations that also sold cigarettes at high prices due to high taxes lost about 40 percent of their business to Iowa, cause if you can’t buy cigarettes without paying higher taxes and gas is higher, then it is easier to cross the river and buy it all where it is cheapest!

If you think that this ploy by the non-smoking coalition is legitimate, you simply haven’t learned to follow the money!

Another thought is that if one really wanted to make a difference in the mortality rates in this country from recreational activities, and by that I mean unnecessary habits, then why not go back to the era when bars were closed all day on Sunday?

That’s right, no sale of beer or alcohol in stores or bars or private clubs on Sundays, and a really strong enforcement policy on drunken driving. No pleading down the charge … if your blood alcohol level says you are drunk then you don’t drive. The state pulls not only your driver’s license but also your license plates!

After all, I can sit next to a man or woman who smokes 15 cigarettes and be relatively sure that their habit is not going to result in my immediate demise, but 15 beers and I want him or her off the road before I get on the road because his or her vehicle is a death dealing device looking for somewhere to happen!

        

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