I get that the tax creates a "dependence on smokers." What I don't understand is why you think it's bad. If smoking declines and there is less money for children's insurance, then that doesn't seem like a problem. Its better than what we have now, which is no money for children's insurance. If smoking goes to zero you've got a vast improvement in public health and we have no money for children's health insurance. So which is worse, having no money for children's health insurance and a 20% smoking rate (which is what we have now). Or having a very low smoking rate, and no money for children's health insurance? (which is what we'd have if the tax drastically lowers the smoking rate)
Quilogn Mondack wrote:
"If smoking goes to zero you've got a vast improvement in public health"
Public health? So when I smoke you're the one who coughs? When I eat a Twinkie you get fat too?
Whoever thought that public health crap up was either a mindless twit or a G-D liar.
If you really believe that crap, you stay out of the sun because I don't want skin cancer.
As far as taxes, why don't you tax yourselves if it's that big of ^%$# deal?
ASH call for 10 year plan for complete ban on smoking.
Do it now Doc, full prohibition, immediately. Stop the incremental persecution, derail the gravy train. Spread the tax burden among the non-smokers.
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news...?
storyID=123716
GreatScot
Isn't it interesting that the same machine, the AQE F62 Electronic Smoke
Eater, is recommended for both bowling alleys and industrial welding
shops. If this machine can handle the smoke from welding galvanized steel that can kill a worker in an hour, why can't it handle the stray cigarette smoke some claim will otherwise kill 220 bartenders in 40 years?
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/d...uments/
f62b.pdf
http://www.smokeeaters.org/bowling/
http://www.smokeeaters.org/welding/
Questionable Monicker seems to think that if ongoing programs are financed by smoke, if smoking stops, so will the programs.
Sorry, buddy, but the next round's on you. (And so are the costs of futily attempting to bust the black market.)
:
GreatScot
A complete prohibition has been discussed before, have a look here:
http://www.davehitt.com/may99/mo...y99/
modest.html
I can almost see the logic of commiting the "sin tax" money to specific programmes (unlike in the UK where it all dissapears into a big black hole), but that may just be my morning semi-conciousness (the coffee machine is broken, so I'm at least 14 carcinogens short today).
The important thing to remember is that if you use the "sin tax" money for something like SCHIP then aren't we morally obliged to keep on sinning, after all, it's 'For The Children'?
Here we go again,it's ALWAYS the anti activists who DEMAND a change in society.As a % of the population THEY ARE THE MINORITY.Using that concept there should only be a black american president and an Islamic REPUBLIC OF BRITAIN.I can see it coming,being accused of the race card again,but how else can the muppets of the world get a grip on reality ? Conservative to Anarchist in less than 2 years.
What I don't understand is why you think it's bad.
Maybe because it is outright discriminatory to demand 20% of the population pay for 80% of the population? On top of the fact that YOU would balk at YOUR taxes being raised to fund "healthcare for the children". Hypocrite.
The governor here in Arizona had been trying to get an early childrens education program off the ground for several years. What stopped her was NO ONE wanted their taxes raised to pay for it (especially those WITH the children who would benefit). So last year, it was put on the ballot once again, only this time, it was to be funded by a new 80-cent per pack tax on cigarettes (and ONLY cigarettes). Suddenly it passed. That's when I finally got it and stopped buying ready made cigarettes and now make my own, and will be growing my own next so I won't be paying for your brat's healthcare either.
If smoking declines and there is less money for children's insurance, then that doesn't seem like a problem.
How is that not a problem? You'll be back to square one with "the children" NOT having healthcare. Are you truly so ignorant that you believe if smoking declines so will children's illness and need for health care? Someone needs a shot of reality here, and it's not me.
Its better than what we have now, which is no money for children's insurance.
BS There is plenty of money for healthcare. Look at all the money the politicos raise for campaigns alone. Look at all the money people waste on sporting tickets to pay athletes millions of dollars every year. Look at the raises our politicians give themselves every year. More importantly, look at the profits of the corporations producing the most pollution that is the real cause of these illnesses. There IS money, the problem is all you do-gooder, holier than thou types, don't feel YOU should have to pay for anything for anyone else. Hypocrite.
If smoking goes to zero you've got a vast improvement in public health and we have no money for children's health insurance.
Prove it. Do you honestly believe that if smoking goes to zero that all the world's ills will disappear and no one will ever get ill again? Are you really that blind or that stupid?
By the way, give up your car yet? I believe car pollution has been PROVEN to be a major problem for asthmatics.
Well said Lynda F. Sure hope Mondack will beable to understand it. Unfortunately, he seems to have a problem with comprehension if it is something he doesn't care to hear. Same with all of TC. This kind of reminds me of an article I read a few weeks ago when someone in Chicago wanted to charge a 25 cent tax per bottle of water, so to fill the gaping hole in the City budget. Water drinkers were outrageous over the prospect and suggested they tax the smoker instead. Then they say that the smokers are from the poor to lower middle class. I don't think so, as to buy 1 pack we would need to be in the higher income levels, so maybe it really is just all about jealousy as TC really just craves what we have. Instead of busting our doors down and robbing us at gun point, they silently steal our money.
Diane
Well, the good news is that somebody in Connecticutt appears to be paying attention.
The bad news of course is that nobody is listening,....as usual, and least of all not the governing bodies responsible for suggesting, implementing, and collecting these "sin taxes" These bodies will do whatever is necessary to keep that revenue stream alive.
It's a matter of routine, and most people are universially in favor of any tax they are personally exempt from paying. (Gee, what a shock!)Whether it's because they're not in the impacted taxpaying group due to geography, income level, age, race, sex, or even exempt by choice (as in non-smokers), the reality is the same.
"As long as it's not me,..sure, go ahead and tax the hell out of 'em, it doesn't affect me"
This is incorrect of course, but it's the typical shortsighted "all about me" mentality currently in vogue throughout the country, maybe even the world.
Unfortunately, the shortsighted mentality also means that if you couple this lack of desire to pay taxes with the propaganda disseminated that a specific group for which you are not a member SHOULD pay, then this is an easy sale by those seeking that tax.
If denial really is a symptom of "addiction" then clearly those states that are collecting the obscenely exhorbitant MSA payoffs have to be considered for what they really are: FULL BLOWN JUNKIES.
They are nothing more than Legislative crack-heads strung out on tobacco money, and will do anything they think they can get away with to keep their source alive while always looking for their next fix.
It is simply shameful behavior.
I forgot to add to my list of BS on the "lack of money" for QM's benefit.........the millions, if not billions, spent on TC advertising. The media advertising dollars alone, would be more than enough to cover the healthcare costs "for the children". Hell, the money RWJF spoon feeds these special interest groups would also cover the costs.
So, QM, your "lack of money" crutch is utter BS.
OT, but, while most companies (if not all) have in-house rules regarding no drinking during working hours, most also don't enforce it. Too many people, executives mostly, have luncheon meetings and order at least one drink. This however is the start of a new trend, and of course, does not apply to the politicians who are also "civil servants".....a good read and this will be a good one to watch:
Health and safety zealots at the Welsh Assembly are banning thousands of civil servants from lunchtime pub visits, even for a swift half or a glass of wine with their lunch, stipulating they do not want the safety of non-drinkers to be “compromised” by colleagues working under the influence.
The “no drinks during the working day” policy will mean around 5,500 office employees could face the sack for having a lunchtime drink under plans drawn up by their bosses.
It's suggested the ban will be enforced by breathalysing suspects and having spies posted outside nearby pubs. A list of hostelries that will be out of bounds to staff has already been compiled.
Amazingly the alcohol ban, the first of its kind in a UK government body, will not apply to Ministers or other Assembly Members.
The 'antis' have tasted blood and they're going for the jugular. Did anyone really believe that having achieved just one pub-wrecking ban they would quietly disband and fade away?
Don't assume because this will currently apply to just a few thousand Welsh pen-pushers you and your pub will be safe. Trust me, this is the thin end of the wedge.
http://www.thepublican.com/
story...storycode=56829
OT again, sorry. This is heartwarming , and should help QM see that there really IS enough money to go around.
Cancer Society Focuses Its Ads on the Uninsured
ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies.
Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention from presidential candidates (bold emphasis here mine) in both parties.
With nearly $1 billion in revenues, the cancer society is the wealthiest of its peers and has spent about $15 million annually on advertising since 1999.
But others called the campaign misguided. Valerie C. Robinson, a longtime board member of the Jacksonville, Fla., chapter, said expanded access to insurance coverage was “not our fight.”
“To me, it’s throwing away money that we could have put into providing free mammograms or free PSA tests or free colonoscopies,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/3...ogin&
oref=login
The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped,
Probably because they are so busy blowing money on ADS instead of on cancer research....nah, couldn't be that!
Anyone know how they split up the money they receive? How much goes to ads, salaries, meetings in Tahiti compared to cancer research and treatment? Last I heard the amounts were hugely in favor of ads/salaries/meetings, and disgustingly small for research and treatment.
Jalestra,
Take a look at this.
http://www.preventcancer.com/
los...hiest_links.htm
Here's amother:
http://wellnessnow.us/index.php?...d=89&
Itemid=124
And another:
http://wellnessnow.us/index.php?...d=78&
Itemid=109
"Amazingly the alcohol ban, the first of its kind in a UK government body, will not apply to Ministers or other Assembly Members."
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
A lot like the House and Senate exempting itself from the laws they pass on the rest of us.
Think about that for a minute and try to say with a straight face that all is right in America.
I read an ACS IRS 990 form. Out of around $1.1 billion aprox $650 mil wnt towards operations. $120 mil went for research with half for studies and the other half with partnerships(pharma,bio-tech). Around $200 mil long term investments. Another $9 mil for 2nd party lobbying and around $30 mil for families which was mostly counciling. There may be a confounding error due to some recall bias but the CI should put me within an RR mistake of 2.0 which is not siginificant because it is not the subject of tobacco smoke.
"While I think it would be important to expand children's health insurance coverage, I think there are far wiser ways to generate the needed revenue. Using cigarette taxes to do it is the least sensible option."
But this is what makes it all so much fun! isn't it? 
The TC/Public Health/Government philisophy of "We hate smokers, but we need them, but we hate them, but we need them,.....taste great, less filling, taste great, ....
(it's not so much that they really hate us, it's just that they love our money so much more!)
The T-Shirts are ready to go, just waiting on the press release.
"Smoke More, it's for the kids"
Wow Lynda, 2 jaw dropping posts in a row. The ACS becomes the American Lobbyists for the Uninsured Society and the Welsh government confirms that the insanity knows no bounds. Sheesh!
Yes, GDF it's been a jaw-dropping morning here today...........I won't even discuss the GM (genetically modified) food list I just discovered and now have to trash my cabinets and refrigerator...................Though I think the lists were put out with much bias based on the "GM free" food sources (whole foods and wild oats) that they listed as safe.....hehehehehe
I'm just about ready to go find me that cave, away from civilization to go live in so I can maintain my health and sanity...........LOL
The first problem is lumping in tobacco with alcohol and gambling revenues. To get a full picture of what's going on you would have to find out the number for tobacco taxes alone, then compare it to the government's losses from health care costs to treat smoking related illnesses, disability and employment insurance payments for smokers who get sick from smoking, and so on. I'd be very much surprised if the government is making any money off smokers. I can tell you that in Canada (where we have publicly funded health care), revenues from tobacco taxes don't even make up for health care costs from smoking, never mind disability, EI, and lost productivity.
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/
engl...co_revenue.html
In any event, if tobacco disappeared tomorrow it would take them less than 10 seconds to think of another way to get the money from you. So this is much ado about nothing.
The real problem is for tobacco companies. Cigarette taxes reduce smoking, especially among kids, and the cigarette companies know it.
http://tobaccofreekids.org/resea...ts/pdf/
0146.pdf
I have yet to see a tobacco control measure Dr. Siegel actually supports, with the exception of indoor public smoking bans which he championed before his magical tranformation to tobacco defender (yet he still undermines even those efforts whenever he can). So here's what I see at this blog: home smoking restrictions BAD, car smoking bans BAD, tobacco taxes BAD, FDA regulation of the tobacco industry BAD, R ratings for movies showing smoking BAD, employer freedom to hire non-smokers BAD, groups that oppose tobacco advertising BAD, groups that oppose marketing to kids BAD (tobaccofreekids a bunch of liars, just can't help themselves), banning smoking on college campuses BAD. I mean it just goes on and on. Anything that could negatively affect tobacco sales, BAD.
I have no idea why Dr. Siegel is behaving this way. I can only say that it's very sad to see a medical doctor work so hard to defend smoking and the tobacco industry.
http://www.geocities.com/
corpora...rate_opposition
And they wonder why we make no inroads on cancer...of course we won't, when you're not really interested in making them! They are blowing their money on cokes and candy every week and then wondering why they can't pay the bills!
Scamhead, tobacco taxes do nothing to stop kids from smoking...hell, when I was a kid none of us bought our own cigarettes, we either stole them or our parents bought them. The cost of cigarettes didn't bother us at all, we didn't pay it anyhow. I'm not condoning stealing, but you people have NO idea what smoking kids do. Probably because YOU NEVER SMOKED. Hell, if I walked up to the kids with a cigarette in my hand, I'd get more honest answers than you do. And they'll say the same thing, they steal them, buy them off the street (which is much easier now thanks to you guys), or their parents buy them for them. They aren't going to be honest with YOU. No kid "cool" enough to pick up smoking likes a goody two shoes.
Actually Cathy, I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns. This proposal would do far more to lower tobacco use than the FDA legislation which the bulk of the tobacco control community in the U.S. is supporting.
Why am I supporting the basic idea of this proposal (and I actually think it needs a few changes - one is that fines should be assessed based only on youth smoking, not adult smoking --> if it's a legal product, I don't see how we can fine companies if people choose to smoke; kids are different)?
Simple: because I want to see whether the tobacco companies will stop funding my blog if I take a position that opposes their well-being.
As for my "magical transformation," it all stems from a bungled transfiguration charm.
LightningBoy wrote:
"(it's not so much that they really hate us, it's just that they love our money so much more!)"
They need an enemy to exist. I'd say deep down they love smokers.
tobaccoscamalysis wrote:
"The first problem is lumping in tobacco with alcohol and gambling revenues...I'd be very much surprised if the government is making any money off smokers."
IOW, you don't know. Why don't you go find out?
"I can tell you that in Canada...revenues from tobacco taxes don't even make up for health care costs from smoking"
That's odd. The numbers I've seen were opposite. I guess it depends on which economist you want to believe, huh?
"In any event, if tobacco disappeared tomorrow it would take them less than 10 seconds to think of another way to get the money from you. So this is much ado about nothing."
Almost true.
But a politian's first job is to get re-elected. People (here at least) don't like being taxed. So what group of people can politicians tax that is large enough to rake in that kind of money, but small enough to not risk losing re-election? The rich come to mind, but you can only hit them up so many times.
"The real problem is for tobacco companies. Cigarette taxes reduce smoking, especially among kids, and the cigarette companies know it."
You sure have a real hangup with tobacco companies. My God. And yet look at the name you go by. That's half their name.
"I have yet to see a tobacco control measure Dr. Siegel actually supports...before his magical tranformation to tobacco defender..."
Remember, you too are a tobacco defender. You have stated previously you don't care if people smoke.
"So here's what I see at this blog:...R ratings for movies showing smoking..."
And once again, look at the name you go by. You are imprinting the word tobacco into the brains of everybody who reads this blog. You should be rated R.
"banning smoking on college campuses BAD. I mean it just goes on and on. Anything that could negatively affect tobacco sales, BAD."
Good grief, you don't even want college students allowed to smoke on campus? How do you square that with not caring if people smoke? Maybe you never went to college, but they are a like a little city. You're effectively saying, No smoking within city limits.
"I have no idea why Dr. Siegel is behaving this way. I can only say that it's very sad to see a medical doctor work so hard to defend smoking and the tobacco industry."
LMAO
Michael -- you are SO wicked! You know you just made Cathy choke on her lunch!
Jalestra - so true. AS IF surveys reflected anything close to reality when it comes to adolescents. (That WOULD be a problem with associating fines with reduction in adolescent smoking, Michael because you couldn't measure it through sales --aside from the fact that it's a well... terrible idea).
Lynda -- want to be roomies? I was mentally decorating my cave this morning too. Though we'll have to use only leaves and sticks -- since we'll have nothing left after they finish taxing us...
And Cathy -- maybe, in most instances, he believes that some higher principles trump "tobacco control." Now, if only he understood that part about property rights and worker choice...
tobaccoscamalysis AKA Cathy Bell - I have no idea why Dr. Siegel is behaving this way. I can only say that it's very sad to see a medical doctor work so hard to defend smoking and the tobacco industry.
........
Cathy,
Most of us on this blog find it sad that a supposedly educated person can be a PUS Bag...a supporter of Progress Under Socialism.
We find it sad that Control is more important than truth: That humans cannot be allowed choice; That the corruption of science is okay with PUS Bags; That non-smokers will not fund children's health insurance.
And, you have not answered our questions. Why? Tobacco surely is not the only "great evil" you would like to see controlled.
The purposeful crushing of freedom is far more deadly than any perceived abuse of a harmful substance.
Perhaps a healthy self-dose of your hatred, applied where the sun don't shine, would relax your nethermost alimentary tract. Obviously, I am speaking of reverse peristaltic action.
Actually Cathy, I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns. This proposal would do far more to lower tobacco use than the FDA legislation which the bulk of the tobacco control community in the U.S. is supporting.
I'm sorry, exactly HOW would you determine IF youth smoking levels did or did not drop? Seriously, in today's climate of hatred, do you honestly expect teens to be stupid enough to admit to you that they smoke (unless of course you catch them red handed)? OR is part of the plan to make everyone who purchases cigarettes (we are talking ONLY about cigarette makers here) going to have to sign a log, complete with proof of age, in order to determine who is smoking? Remember, in most states anyone UNDER the age of 18 canNOT legally purchase cigarettes, so I doubt there will be any record of anyone UNDER the age that a person is considered a legal adult (eighteen). So how exactly will you determine the level of youth smoking?
And as to the fines, how nice. I notice you are completely ignoring the fact that the tobacco companies will NOT pay those fines out of their profits, but will simply raise the price of cigarettes so that LEGAL AGED ADULT SMOKERS WILL PAY. Just like they did with the MSA.
How bloody generous of you.
I hope to one day repay your kindness in like.
This business of slapping 'fines' on tobacco companies is just another tax on smokers. Where do suppose the money for the 'fines' come from? And what if the smokes the 'children' are buying are black market?
Perhaps we should slap Big Pharma with fines when heroin sales increase.... It's a drug, isn't it?
Come to think about it, some of the best cigarette commercials are the childish anti smoking campaigns. Maybe we should slap a fine on TFK when adolecent smoking rates increase. After all, aren't THEY supposed to be in the business of 'reducing smoking rates'?
tobaccoscamalysis says: “The first problem is lumping in tobacco with alcohol and gambling revenues. To get a full picture of what's going on you would have to find out the number for tobacco taxes alone, then compare it to the government's losses from health care costs to treat smoking related illnesses, disability and employment insurance payments for smokers who get sick from smoking, and so on. I'd be very much surprised if the government is making any money off smokers. I can tell you that in Canada (where we have publicly funded health care), revenues from tobacco taxes don't even make up for health care costs from smoking, never mind disability, EI, and lost productivity.”
Again, I am glad not to be a Canadian. However, since smokers are not expected to live as long as non-smokers up until perhaps dementia sets in, I am guessing a smokers cost the government less. This is especially true if smokers have the courtesy to die some after retirement, thus never collecting on any government pensions (like social security or Medicare in the US). Those who live the longest are likely to cost the tax payers more. Most smoke related diseases take 20 or more years to develop and to not usually occur until one is older than 50.
“In any event, if tobacco disappeared tomorrow it would take them less than 10 seconds to think of another way to get the money from you. So this is much ado about nothing.”
I not sure if by ‘you’ you mean smokers. But they certainly can go after the obese next by taxing non government approved foods. But if you attitude is similar to smoking, which I believe you like to see banned (prohibition), then my guess is that you would also seek to ban all non-government approved foods also.
“The real problem is for tobacco companies. Cigarette taxes reduce smoking, especially among kids, and the cigarette companies know it.”
As someone else mentioned, the solution is that kids will begin to steal.
“I have yet to see a tobacco control measure Dr. Siegel actually supports, with the exception of indoor public smoking bans which he championed before his magical tranformation to tobacco defender (yet he still undermines even those efforts whenever he can). So here's what I see at this blog: home smoking restrictions BAD, car smoking bans BAD.”
So in Canada having the government intrude in your private space is fine. Here in the US it is not. But I agree, the good doctor should be for this, as he has no problem taking the property rights from small business owners.
“, tobacco taxes BAD,”
Increasing the taxes to a point will increase crime. Otherwise law abiding citizens will turn to the black-market. Others will become the black-market. From what I understand this is already a significant problem in Canada where profits can often be greater then selling illegal drugs. The Canadian government is already complaining that this is draining it of much needed funds.
“FDA regulation of the tobacco industry BAD, R ratings for movies showing smoking BAD,”
No comment on the FDA (really do not care other then the tax increase to fund child medical insurance. But we in the US have something called the bill of rights and I think it is ridiculous to have R movie ratings when you see smoking on TV on the time. The show Buffy the vampire slayer comes to mind and the just released game BioShock. I believe in will cause parents to start thinking of R-rating like the new PG-13.
“employer freedom to hire non-smokers BAD,”
Here is the US that is allowed as well as only hiring smokers. I believe the doctor does not believe in hiring discrimination which is a good thing. This is also why small business owners (for bars) can hire smoker and then there is no need to protect employees from themselves.
“groups that oppose tobacco advertising BAD, groups that oppose marketing to kids BAD (tobaccofreekids a bunch of liars, just can't help themselves),”
Again here in the US we have something called the 1st amendment. The government is powerless to ban gun advertisements, alcohol, and even ad advocating the use of marijuana.
“banning smoking on college campuses BAD.”
As already stated large universities are like large cities. Those on campus are adults and of the behaviors you will find on campus (binge drinking, illegal drugs, etc) tobacco is the least of their concerns. After all students are no longer kids who need to be protected.
“I mean it just goes on and on. Anything that could negatively affect tobacco sales, BAD.
I have no idea why Dr. Siegel is behaving this way. I can only say that it's very sad to see a medical doctor work so hard to defend smoking and the tobacco industry.”
I do, Dr. Siegel is a learned man who is (at times ) capable of reason. You need a healthy bit of skepticism in you life. May I suggest the following site:
http://www.skepchick.org/
Actually Cathy, I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns. This proposal would do far more to lower tobacco use than the FDA legislation which the bulk of the tobacco control community in the U.S. is supporting.Sorry Dr Siegel,but is this really the response of a sane person or that of a brainwashed dictatorial controller of smokers ? Why shouldn't it be the case that you are FINED for every person YOU FAIL to dissuade from smoking ?The chip you always have on your shoulder for the Tobacco Companies is weighing you down and warping your analytical skills .
Smokers' contribution to health costs
As noted in the Overview and Background: Tax revenues, the most recent figures show that smokers pay about $9 billion a year in direct tobacco taxes and sales taxes, compared to the $3.5 billion to $4 billion a year Health Canada estimates smoking costs the heath care system.
This is not a recent phenomenon.
Health Canada’s own study into this issue released in 1997, stated that when all factors were taken into account, smokers cost the health care system $5.4 billion less than they paid governments in tobacco tax revenues.
Meanwhile, in a 2000 study, the Fraser Institute calculated smokers paid, through their tobacco taxes, $6 billion dollars (including GST but excluding PST on these products), which represented 8% of all federal-provincial government health care funding. Fraser Institute Study
In other words, 17% of the adult population, through taxes on one category of consumer products, contributed the equivalent of 8% of the total federal-provincial tab for health care. Since the number of smokers has continued to decline, but the tax revenues they contribute have soared, it seems fair to suggest this burden is even greater now.
In the above study, Filip Palda, an economist and senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute, argued that the taxes smokers pay have more than repaid government losses for smoking-related disability and health care.
Palda suggested taxes are aimed more at raising revenue than reducing smoking and said smokers have for decades long paid far more to governments than they cost the health system. For example, he reported that:
• In 1978, smokers in Ontario cost the government an estimated $21.5 to $39.1 million (Canadian dollars) but paid $485 million in taxes, or between 12.3 and 22.2 times what they cost the health care system
• In 1986, Canadian smokers paid an annual tax amounting to a $363 subsidy to each nonsmoker in the country
• Between 1985 and 1991, as smoking rates fell, governments in Canada managed to raise real revenues from tobacco taxes by 39.8 percent
source - http://www.mychoice.ca/en/taxes/
...alth_costs.aspx
---------------------
"For example, in justifying four tax hikes during its first 30 months in office and a province-wide smoking-ban law that came into force May 31, 2006, the Ontario Liberal government claimed cost of smoking to Ontario’s health care system had soared by almost 50% since 2003 – from the $1.2 billion stated by the Ontario Medical Association to the $1.7 billion cited by the health minister. In fact, some recent claims have suggested the figure is now $1.9 billion.
However, these claims simply do not make sense – and the government’s insistence on using these health cost figures has been further undermined by its own recent statement that smoking consumption has fallen by almost 19% in the same period. Press Release." source
There is now growing media and public awareness that Ontario smokers pay at least $2.5 billion a year in tobacco taxes alone to the two governments that fund the province’s health care system – roughly $1.5 billion to the Ontario government and at least $1 billion more to the federal government (2003-04 figures).
We can't forget the "scientific study" that they are using for the "smoking related costs" has many assumptions, guesses, averages, abouts, and mays in it. Yet they come to a concrete # every time. Now thats what I call science.
We also can't forget that the tax amounts the province uses doesn't include federal tax on cigarettes, so actually that # is actually low any how.
I also have to agree that with "denormalization" campaigns the kids are told that they are stupid, that they are killers, etc if they smoke. Now even if it was a phone survey (not the school time survey), why would you want people to think your killing your brother, stupid, etc? Come on Cathy we both know that it's easier to lie to a stranger then your parents, and we know that "fitting in" works better then anything else as a reason to lie.
I think its time you went and looked at the school as they get out at 2:15 PM to see for yourself how many of them gather, and light one up between classes. It would be more then the touted 15% of kids smoking. You rely on mights maybes, etc to forward your agenda girl, I'll talk to the kids who are out having a cigarette, and ask them. I know I don't tell people who survey me that I smoke. How is a teen going to give you a straight answer? Do you have that headband on too tight or is it the bobbysocks that you use to wear that has harmed your ability to see reality? {shaking head}
* sorry for the long quotes, but I am not sure if everyone could enter the mychoice site. Its a exclusive Canadian forum I use. PS Tobacco scammer I will only debate facts, cause the #'s are from outside sources, so not a mychoice bias.
Another thing Tobacco scammer doesn't want people to see is todays paper!
Teens smoke more pot than cigarettes, report says
By the time they're 14, many Canadian youth have done it all -- cigarettes, drugs and alcohol -- so a new report on substance abuse and addiction should serve as a "call to action" to change that, the organization behind the research says.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse says Canadians need to pay closer attention to the facts that the average age when a child smokes a cigarette for the first time is about 12, 13 when he or she uses alcohol and gets drunk and 14 for first-time drug use.
In a report released Wednesday, titled Substance Abuse in Canada: Youth in Focus, the centre outlines gaps in Canada's overall approach to dealing with these worrying statistics and it suggests several strategies to plug the holes.
------------------------------
Now compare this situation to What was said in 1994:
Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): Let me begin by congratulating the minister on a job well done. I think this is an important bill and I look forward to seeing it made law in this province. I'm pleased to rise and speak in support of it.
I want to also indicate that I've had a personal interest in this issue for quite a while. In fact, when I was first admitted to the bar some 11 years ago, my first job, as a volunteer in fact, was to work with our non-smokers' association in Ottawa-Carleton.
Also, I introduced a bill, Bill 118, in this House. Now we're talking about Bill 119. Bill 118 was my private member's bill. I take comfort in knowing that even though it died a natural death, it has, for all intents and purposes, been incorporated into Bill 119, the minister's bill, and I'm pleased with that.
As the minister has indicated, this bill is essentially designed to attack a very serious health problem in the province, one which is entirely preventable and one which I think we all have every obligation to address.
Three thousand kids a month start smoking in the province of Ontario. The Addiction Research Foundation tells me that between 1991 and 1993, smoking for kids in grade 7 increased from 6% to 9%, and 13,000 Ontarians die every year as a result of smoking-related illness. (grade 7 is 13 yr olds) -House Debate June 22 1994
Doc said: "I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns."
We're back to this nonsense again?
You have no idea how asinine an idea this is do you?
Lets just pick some other industries at random and penalize them for sales of their products as well.
Hewlitt Packard should be fined for excessive Laser Printer sales. They're extremely reliable, and we simply can't have that.
Nabisco is probably looking at prison time for way too many cookies sold.
Oh the horor of all those poor little fat kids, tsk, tsk, tsk the shame.
Toyota has far too many Corollas on the road and must be forced to pay!
Asian technology, warranty, guaranty, and workmanship, is just too competetive. FINE 'EM ALL!
You seriously think that penalizing an industry because their product is TOO popular is a credible position to take? You can't possibly be serious.
Did you skip 10th grade economics class or something?
Do you have any understanding of the concept, or term "Free Market"?
OH, WAIT,....
Sorry, ..my bad, ..the key word here is of course something that TC has quite the demostrated aversion to, ...that would be anything that contains the word, or promotes the concept of "FREE"
Of course you think it's a good idea. What was I thinking?
lynda Duguay wrote:
"[T]he most recent figures show that smokers pay about $9 billion a year...compared to the $3.5 billion to $4 billion a year..."
Time for tobaccoscamalysis to change her name to tobaccoparasite.
Just to be clear, the proposal to fine companies for failing to decrease *sales* of their product is Enzi's. Michael's twist on it is:
"...and I actually think it needs a few changes - one is that fines should be assessed based only on youth smoking, not adult smoking --> if it's a legal product, I don't see how we can fine companies if people choose to smoke; kids are different"
Can y'all imagine the stats such a proposal would generate?
Addicted to taxes! Here in PA the legislators passed a reg that surgeons had to carry certain amounts of medical malpractice insurance. They then gave surgeons a state rebate to help cover costs. Source of rebate is an additional 25 cents a pack cigarette tax. Average rebate $64,000.
GDF, one has to wonder how they would spin those stats. In order to fine the tobacco users (not BT) if kids smoke more? They would have to admit that raising taxes did not get kids to quit. Hmmm...another paradox. Then again all good "Science Fiction"always seems to find a way out of the paradox. Maybe they can get Rob Reiner to write the script.
OT, but we've got our work cut out for us.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...0300933_pf.html
Wow Nemo -- so smokers are already subsidizing M.D.'s in PA. Gosh -- maybe all the PA M.D.'s want to get together and pay my auto insurance --where can I send the bill?
As for the stats -- exactly. (Don't forget TC's own youth anti-smoking efforts, sucessful? or not?) They'd be running in circles trying to figure out what they WANT to demonstrate.
Doc said: "I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns.
Why is it so difficult to understand when you fine the Tobacco companies it doesn't affect them?
They will always pass those increased costs along to consumers most of the time with a markup added.
Michael if you want to have an effect charge the execs personally which takes the fine out of the businesses ability to pass it along.
Similarly the taxing of cigarettes is an unfair tax in so many ways;
Primarily the tax is targeting a well known demographic while the majority who do not smoke will not also be taxed for their decisions or the use of other legal products they decide are "appropriate" or "right headed" [Skateboards,parachutes, Rock climbing gear and cars to mention but a few].
If the product increases health care expenses and it is an addiction why are smokers being punished or charged? It seems much more appropriate to charge those making Billions in profits every year selling the products, certainly claiming the consumers are at fault holds little credibility, unless your intent is to actually punish the use of a legal product, simply because you do not have the courage to ban a product all of you swear causes so much destruction.
If intelligent thought decries smoking kills hundreds of thousands every year allowing the killing to continue is tantamount to direct involvement, Depraved indifference and murder by those who call themselves professionals, who not only participate in the killings but prescribe we tax the survivors.
Smokers who are although not officially a protected class they constitute a legal class all the same and there is no denying they are being targeted not with assistance as claimed but with inexcusable abuse.
The taxing of an addiction is reprehensible and has no redeeming qualities despite what you may have heard. If you believe it to be an addiction and as we hear the most potent addiction known to man; targeting the weakness of others and the promotion of hatred in society to moralize it [particularly in use of children] is horror show science fiction, certainly not a place we should be forced to live.
"Whatever the price" has a limit, when we become a community so far below ourselves and so ignorant of the horrific lessons of our past, the cost is far too high.
As for the Enzi-Siegel bill, LB and GDF have beat me to all the answers. Except maybe this one: Since "kids" can't buy cigarettes, there's no way to count them except by questionnaires for which the kids will know the premise: Say you smoke and the cost of your cigarettes will go up. And then otoh, since there IS no way to count them, anyone can make up any number and pass it off for fact.
Headline today: Teen suicides have increased suddenly and exponentially in America. (Maybe if, instead, they chilled out with a cigarette....)
:
Finally! some news I *wanted* to hear!
Depression more damaging than some chronic illnesses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/
20070...b2NdypZtDZa24cA
Early rising no good for the heart: study
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/
2007...8PDZRHy.21a24cA
So... the moral? Don't worry... be happy -- and sleep in!
But yes Walt -- the anti's are creating an awfully dour world in which to live. I think it's up to we happy folk, who still know how to laugh and enjoy life, to remedy that.
Cathy >>
I can tell you that in Canada (where we have publicly funded health care), revenues from tobacco taxes don't even make up for health care costs from smoking, never mind disability, EI, and lost productivity.
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/
engl...co_revenue.html
A have a rather hard time taking this at face value. For example, with this claim:
result in more than $2.6 billion in productivity losses
The referenced study bases the large majority of productivity loses (1.7 billion) on smoking breaks. However, it includes the following assumption:
The time smokers formerly spent smoking will then be spent on productive activities [...] These employees will then pay a portion of their higher incomes back to the government in the form of income and sales tax revenue
http://www.oma.org/phealth/
tobac...accocontrol.pdf
First of all, assuming that smokers will suddenly have higher incomes because they stop taking smoking breaks is an unbelievable leap of faith. Increased productivity does not necessarily equivocate to increased income, and there is no data presented to support this.
Second of all, this infers that smokers taking smoke breaks are taking more "off-time" than non-smoking employees. This is not necessarily the case as well. It's quite possible that smokers are spending off-time smoking rather than say, surfing the internet and catching up on gossip, which is estimated to be a wasted 1.7 hours a day for the average employee.
http://www.boston.com/business/
t...ot_alone_survey
Once again, the complete total "off-time" for both smokers and non-smokers hasn't been illustrated.
Finally, this claim assumes that smokers are never, ever, productive during smoking breaks which I know from experience to be false. I personally spend my time working out problems I need to fix that day. I also spend it making business decisions with my colleagues. This doesn't necessarily mean that every smoker is always productive on their smoke breaks all of the time, but assuming the complete opposite is just as problematic in my opinion.
One more quick point:
The loss in productivity estimated in this study is the cost of time spent on smoking breaks based on average wages. Even assuming these numbers are correct, this would be a PRODUCTIVITY loss, not an INCOME loss. The income the smoking employee is receiving would be the same regardless, and thus also the taxes he pays on such. The actually loss in taxes would be, um, zero.
So what on earth does this have to do with health care costs again? From what I can see absolutely nothing at all.
Productivity is not measured by the time you spend at your workplace. Productivity is the amount of output created (in terms of goods produced or services rendered) per unit input (human and material resources) used.
Remember the little story about the two persons who were asked to calculate the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 100?
While one person would sit down for about 30 minutes to manually add all the numbers, another person goes for a cigarette break and comes back 10 minutes later with the correct result.
Headwork works sometimes better than footwork. And headwork can be done without being at a desk. In fact, many good ideas are inspired by social interaction and change of the (mental) environment. As a former programmer, I know what I'm talking about ...
OT---
Seems the people at this site don't want a slander suit anymore than the doctor:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/
index...nt_Encroachment
Go to the very bottom of the page to see who has created this little upset.
From Michael's link to this article we find another link with a much more powerful message, in respect to smoking ban technologies and the integrity issue in evaluation of the route they chose to travel.
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2...nion/
275775.txt
GDF wrote:
"Early rising no good for the heart: study"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/ 2007...8PDZRHy.21a24cA
Good one.
I certainly wouldn't change my sleeping pattern based on this article. LOL
"The study...found that early risers had a greater risk...However, the study also noted that early risers were usually older."
Well, so which is it, early rising or age? Wasn't it age-adjusted?
"The study is being presented this week at the World Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and..."
Did they churn out this (possibly worthless) study just so there would be something to talk about at this conference?
"A separate study released in June by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that chronic sleep deprivation adds stress to the heart..."
Why is this reporter bringing up sleep deprivation? That has nothing to do with early rising, assuming the subjects were early to bed, early to rise which is what this story alludes to.
This story sucks and possibly that study does too. Just like most of them.
From the link provided by anon it appears Cathy Bell is receiving a long overdue critical review of her hateful opinions;
" Anti-smoking paid activists accuse anyone who questions their agenda of being front groups for the tobacco industry (see http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/), so therefore "Cathy Bell" is a paid lobbyist." A very poor strategy that attacks the person rather than what they are saying, often employed when what they are saying has merit. The effect is to stifle free speech, especially the most important kind of free speech -- that which contradicts the self-righteous causes of the day."
Self righteous? Who would that comment be referring to? LOL
GDF said; Just to be clear, the proposal to fine companies for failing to decrease *sales* of their product is Enzi's. Michael's twist on it is: "...and I actually think it needs a few changes - one is that fines should be assessed based only on youth smoking, not adult smoking --> if it's a legal product, I don't see how we can fine companies if people choose to smoke; kids are different"
It doesn't really matter who's idea it is, it's a bad one, and screams SOCIALISM.
Penalizing the industry for the popularity of their product is
more shortsighted, quickfix TC BS.
Adult smokers will simply be forced to pay even more to offset the penalty. Welcome to the USSA.
United Socialist States of America.
You're right about one thing, kids ARE different. Kids are already prohibited from BUYING tobacco.
Yet they get it anyway, and your answer is to penalize the industry because kid's that are determined to smoke, are obviously more resourceful than TC cares to account for.
How is this the fault of the industry?
Seems to me, TC is really to blame since all that money wasted on the sophomoric innuendo and platitudes used in "educating" the kiddies was for nothing.
If we hold the Tobacco industry accountable for the popularity of their product, it seems only fair to hold the Tobacco Control industry eqaully accountable for failing in their mission to make cigarettes as unpopular as access to hundreds of millions of dollars in "educational" revenue would infer that they should be able to.
You're right about one thing, kids ARE different. Kids are already prohibited from BUYING tobacco. Yet they get it anyway, and your answer is to penalize the industry because kid's that are determined to smoke, are obviously more resourceful than TC cares to account for. How is this the fault of the industry?
That was my point exactly. Since kids can NOT legally buy cigarettes, HOW are they going to find out how many really smoke? With the hatred spouted today, any kid who admits it, is obviously mentally impaired on a serious level.....and probably shouldn't be walking the streets alone.
If we hold the Tobacco industry accountable for the popularity of their product, it seems only fair to hold the Tobacco Control industry eqaully accountable for failing in their mission to make cigarettes as unpopular as access to hundreds of millions of dollars in "educational" revenue would infer that they should be able to.
I agree. AND while we are at it, lets hold the automobile industry accountable for all the pollution their popular product produces not to mention the injuries and deaths from accidents. Also lets fine the airlines for polluting our air, AND NASA.........have you seen the crap that is produced everytime they launch a rocket?
OH, and let's also fine ALL the food manufacturers for every obese person, and the pharmcos for every overdose and additional ailment brought on by THEIR popular products.
Which means I should be able to have my old doctor fined for causing me extreme pain from a kidney stone that was pure calcium since my doctor TOLD me to take calcium supplements (no testing that I needed it) because I was now 50 years old.
And we can also fine Ski Resorts for every injury that occurs on their very popular grounds.
The list could be endless based on your logic Doc. Why pick on smoking only?
What's your favorite thing? I'm sure we can fine the industry when something goes wrong OR it becomes more popular. You wouldn't mind paying extra for that, would you?
Good point, LB. How can you blame the entity selling the product and NOT blame the people supposedly advertising for the elimination of the use of the product? Seems to me that the tobacco companies are doing their job while tobacco control is slacking off. Tobacco control should be the ones being fined.
Of course, TC is lazy, they can't even provide proper science. It's no surprise they want everyone else to do their work for them....as usual. It also helps when kid smoking rates rise to have someone else to blame than their own failing policies.
No doubt Michael and Bill will really enjoy this article;
http://www.canadafreepress.com/
2...llpop090607.htm
Over the past 45 years, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) has cast 15,000 votes, nearly all of which have been against the interests of the American people.
In retrospect, allowing Osama bin Laden to vote in Kennedy's place would have resulted in far less damage to America's democracy, economy, and freedom.
The fact that he's even on the senate sure proves a lot about the folks of Mass. that keep voting for him...
If nicotine dependency tax revenues were used to help educate youth as to the true power of this most amazing chemical or provide meaningful assistance to the 70% who want to quit but can't seem to pull it off, they would actually be working toward destroying their very arrival. The more effective we were at prevention and cessation the less revenues we'd have and the less we'd need in order to serve declining demand.
But as Dr. Siegel points out, that isn't what's happening. Smokers are now being looked upon as a dependable source of general revenues for every cause but theirs, as government itself has become dependent upon nicotine.
Worst of all is government's developing conflict of interest in treating nicotine dependency on par with other drugs of addiction. Because the nicotine addict's dopmaine high is alert, instead of drunk like the alcoholic's dopamine high, or numb like the heroin addict's, or fast like the meth addict's, for the most part they go unassisted. Their government robs them then turns its back as earth's dirtiest drug delivery device gradually destroys them and they die in record numbers.
Like it or not, we've become the tobacco industry's partner in needing them to remain nicotine's slaves. These dollars are as bloodly as they get and that blood is on the hands of "We the People."
Where did you get the "70% want to quit"?
You're suggesting that approximately 30 million smokers thought it was a good idea to tell Tobacco Control that they would like to quit, ...but just can't help themselves?
Puhlleeeze, ...get serious.
Percentage of Smokers Wanting to Quit
1991 73%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr//preview...ml/
00035836.htm
1993 69.7%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...ml/
00035110.htm
1994 69.3%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...ml/
00042976.htm
1995 68.2%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...ml/
00050525.htm
2000 70%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/...tml/
mm5129a3.ht
2005 70%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/quit_..._quit/
alone.htm
Now before anyone starts to claim that all the smokers are low income; I have a question here.
Why is the cruise line that is more expensive then anyone else saying that in 2 months of a ban they have lost $ 3 Million in sales due to the proposed smoking ban?
Now I don't know about any of you but I find it difficult to spend $2500 on a 14 day vacation, and I'm not "lower income". It just makes you shake your head that with so few of the population smoking, and the people who are the most resistant are "low income" (according to reports); yet here we have a perfect example of a situation that doesn't meet the "dogma" of smokers being poor, low class etc. These people (their customers) shouldn't even be that large of a group (smokers low income) to worry about I would think since the surveyed smoking rate has "reduced" also.
PS did anyone hear the attorney this week on Jeopardy? She said in her description she likes smoking, drinking and having fun. I was thinking of Bill having a heart attack because the "denormalization plan" hasn't reached everywhere yet. I guess she must be part of the "low income workers" as well.
(1) http://www.venturacountystar.com...smell-of-smoke/
or provide meaningful assistance to the 70% who want to quit but can't seem to pull it off,
See, this is where the BS shows. It is a known FACT that IF someone really wants to quit doing something (anything, smoking, dieting, not drinking, not doing drugs) they WILL be able to do it and they won’t be needing your “meaningful assistance”. It takes the personal desire, that comes from deep within a person, that allows them to succeed. Far too many people have managed to quit smoking cold turkey, and stay smoke free. And they will all say the same thing…………THEY WANTED to quit. They didn’t quit because of any external pressure, they quit because the desire came from within, and when it does, the strength is amazing.
Their government robs them then turns its back as earth's dirtiest drug delivery device gradually destroys them and they die in record numbers.
Less than 1% of the population dying qualifies as “record numbers”? Better yet, since when does dying after the age of 70 constitute a premature death, when the life expectancy is around 75 anyway?
I found this over at the smoking lobby. It’s from 1998, but of all the reports I’ve seen, this one is at least written in ‘english’ so the common lay person can actually understand it. And to ward off what I know will be coming, just because someone dies from Lung Cancer does NOT mean it was CAUSED by smoking or SHS.
” Here's something very plain and simple (from most recent completed tabulations of the US National Center for Health Statistics: year 2003) which you'll never hear from Anti.” In the USA the average age at death from lung cancer (sexes combined) is 71. Lung cancer accounts for 6% of all deaths, or in other words, 94% of Americans die of something else. The average age at death from all causes is 73. ("Life expectancy at birth" is reported by the NCHS as 78: "life expectancy" -- at birth or at other ages -- derives from complex calculations, involving projection, based on relative probabilities: it is not the same thing as the plain and simple average age at death.)
http://www.edcallahan.com/web110...moking/
cato.htm
Lynda F, a German publication seems to confirm your figures:
Average age at death from lung cancer: 69.4
Average age at death from all causes: 76.4
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/quit_.../quit_..._quit/
alone.htm
And WHERE did the funding for these come from? Seriously, you expect us to believe an agency that is known for exaggerating and lying (as is ANY government agency)?
Unless all the reports they used were funded by parties who had absolutely NO vested interest in the results, I simply refuse to believe it.
You see, your sides constant attack against tobacco funded reports works both ways. NO WAY will I believe anything that is funded with ANY money from any of the so-called "health" organizations, charities, foundations, pharmaceuticals, etc.
Show me a report with NO vested interest in the outcome and I'll start buying into it. Until then, YOUR evidence is no more true than evidence from a group funded with tobacco company money is to you.
Perhaps a good book is just the thing to quell John's apprehensions in respect to children's needs;
I might recommend the following;
http://www.mcclelland.com/
catalo...n=9780771087080
In respect to making descisions for adults in "preventative medicine", "tough love" or what ever promotional statement which makes your conscience feel better, "protecting them from themselves" your absolutely on your own there.
If I truly wanted to quit, I would, and if it required assistance I would seek it. I am certainly not a part of your 70% who apparently afforded you bus loads of proxies to speak on their behalf.
The statement 70% of smokers want to quit can be judged entirely in how many of them do quit or seek the help being provided. In the absense of requests actions afforded to all smokers regardless of their wishes certainly needs a lot more justification.
If even one smoker enjoys smoking and has no intention of quiting then what is being offered is not assistance and could more accurately be described as coercion and bullying to attain the lobby goal first.
The numbers actually asking for help, fall far short of allowing the much more obvious liberties taken by lobbies making the claim who seek justification for the abusive acts we see every day.
Lynda F. I have asked this question a number of times of Gov officials and have yet to receive a response.
Public Transit was the first target of the anti smoker lobbies, yet if you think about it, in the drive to move commuters into public transit in dealing with growing environmental concerns adding to the rising costs of infrastructure, to acomodate the growing number of vehicles on the road. A large number of commuters could be encouraged to use public transit much more often if smoking accommodation was provided, particularly on trains and buses making the trip much more comfortable and economical with increased use.
Commuters, in recognizing a large percentage among them who smoke, could be avoiding the use of public transit seeking more comfortable means.
Is the anti smoking movement actually reducing ridership while increasing environmental and infrastructure deficits?
kevin said; "If even one smoker enjoys smoking and has no intention of quiting then what is being offered is not assistance and could more accurately be described as coercion and bullying to attain the lobby goal first."
Ummmm,..that would be me.
I'm that one, and yeah the mental stress caused from bullying by TC is oh so traumatic. Clearly there is a recognizable pattern of abuse even to the dumbest among us.
We should file a class-action suit.
Not on Constitutional grounds which unfortunately have a rich history of being ignored by the courts and fail.
Not even on claims of Health Fraud, though clearly this will be the only real resolution to the hate campaign.
A Claim of pain and suffering as with any auto accident is the way to go. It's much harder for the respondent to prove that I'm NOT suffering. Clearly inflicting discomfort, and making a smokers life harder is the tactic preferred by TC in coercing people of free-will to comply with the religion of health.
Prove I'm not suffering, and I'll consider settling out of court.
According to Schick Shadel Hospital, which has been in the addiction treating business since 1935:
"Nicotine, like alcohol, is addictive for certain people. Some smokers can turn their habit on and off - smoke or not smoke - at will. Others, about 25 percent of smokers, find the addictive powers of nicotine impossible to control. For these people, smoking is not a habit, but a true addiction."
http://www.schick-shadel.com/nic...om/
nicotine.asp
If they're correct, and if it's true 70% of smokers say they really want to quit, then I'd say there's an awful lot of liars in that bunch.
Like the tremendous variance in the two sets of lung cancer death age figures quoted above, nicotine dependency rates are all over the map, often depending on whose agenda is being served but primarily the way DSM III or IV dependency standards are framed as questions. We actually have one study discounting dependency if you don't awake in the middle of the night to smoke nicotine.
Dr. Henningfield found an adult DSM III dependency rate of 90% and a recent teen study found a youth DSM IV rate of 87% among students smoking at least 1 cigarette daily. Link to full text of study: http://
www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov...bmedid=15863429
Kevin - Is the anti smoking movement actually reducing ridership while increasing environmental and infrastructure deficits?
........
Kevin,
I can only speak for myself and those I know who smoke: The answer to your question is yes.
Previously, we'd fly to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, etc. Not anymore. Smoking banned on airport shuttles, in the airport (remember 1-2 hour in advance of flight), during the flight and after the flight until we arrive at a hotel. Now, we drive.
As you know, our twice yearly, three week stays in Hawaii are verboten now.
And, it looks like cruises will be crossed off the list.
We'll spend our resort money in Mexico from now on.
John;
"We actually have one study discounting dependency if you don't awake in the middle of the night to smoke nicotine."
Unfortunately the only TC or PC thought plugged into the public psyche of late would be the "irrefutable fact" [cough] smoking is more addictive than any of the most well known illegal drug addictions. Repeated ad nauseous until the ears begin to bleed.
Addicted to ONE cigarette a day!?
Geeze, these sound like some terribly needy people. (By any chance, did these subjects have multiple scars on their wrists?)
What are the results for people of normal mental capacity, and not "emo-goth" teens too depressed to get out of bed?
I talked with a representative of SmokeEaters today. He explained that they can fit any bar or restaurant with a redundancy of measures to take smoke out of the air that will get in his words ".999 percent of the smoke." He said the company did not consider removing bar smoke a particularly difficult challenge compared, for instance, to meeting restaurant exhaust standards in New York and California, which involves removing the natural gas.
If SmokeEaters can protect welders from smoke that can kill in an hour and make the air in a bar cleaner than the air outdoors, why specially burden the bar and restaurant industry with unwanted regulation and restriction?
http://www.smokeeaters.org/
The problem with smoke eaters and many other companies that like to hype up their products is when you ask them to put it in writing, that their machines make the air as safe as it would be without smoking, they won't do it. While their machines remove a lot of the smell, they don't remove the carcinogens. They know it and that's why they won't back their ads up in writing.
Yromuni: While their machines remove a lot of the smell, they don't remove the carcinogens.
You forgot to present the facts and figures. Probably just an oversight?
Benpal, That's the problem exactly. Their ads say shout stats like 99.999% purity, but then you ask them for proof their machines clean carcinogens out of the air and they won't do it.
"MiracleAir model CM-12 is the ultimate solution for indoor air pollution capturing both particulate and gaseous contaminants. Odors, tobacco smoke, dust, vapors and many other irritants are removed by high efficiency, long lasting disposable filters."
http://www.air-quality-eng.com/d...ments/cm-
12.pdf
How do the carcinogens manage to get left behind?
yromuni
Here I always thought that if you advertised something you could be taken to court for false advertising. Why aren't they stuck in court right now?
Why are advocates and HVAC professionals allowing them to make a mockery of the science? It does seem funny though that they can take out all the dangers from any medical lab, and take out smaller microns. I would like to even see proof of this by extremists taking the hvac industry to court for not being able to take out common carcinogens in any products.
Tell us whats so special about tobacco smoke that you can't treat like any other carcinogen or chemical. Do I now have magical powers, like the TV commercial in Canada where all the cigarette left a window, went 10 feet outside and all of it (undiluted) did a u-turn and went on to grip around grapes (still the same thickness) , and finally gripped a cuddly bear still looking the same look(even though it had gone through 3 rooms)?
Second Hand smoke ADS
Glantz's group has been bullying the filtration companies. Yromuni, when you ask for written performance specifications, they might suspect they are being set up for a lawsuit. I'll bet I could get them.
http://no-smoke.org/document.php?id=231
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=1799
http://www.no-smoke.org/getthefa...facts.php?
id=57
http://no-smoke.org/document.php?id=267
The fact is that no system protects 100% against anything. Those same cos products do not protect workers in bars and resturaunts from carcinogens from cooking, cleaning products, gasification from construction materials and just plain old germs. Now that ASHRAE is now lowering its standards because of no smoking and many venues now not updating systems. I wish everyone good luck with all these others. Judging what happened on airliners when smoking was banned. TC will have managed to get more people sick or dead than SHS ever has. Although SHS won't be hard to beat because the real life number (not computer generated) is 0 for death and the vast unknown for illness. My headline reads: NON-SMOKING VENUES MORE DANGEROUS THAN SHS ALLOWED ESTABLISHMENTS!
LightningBoy wrote:
"Addicted to ONE cigarette a day!?
Geeze, these sound like some terribly needy people. (By any chance, did these subjects have multiple scars on their wrists?)"
LOL
This reminded me of an actor who was on tv telling the audience he was an alcoholic. The host asked him how much he drank a day. The actor answered with something like, "Oh no, I only drink on New Years Eve, but I drink until I black out."
The truth of the matter is that a properly designed ventilation system can make any room safe from SHS. Remember the threat is not that significant otherwise research should show that a non-smoking spouse living with smoker has a significant higher incidence of lung cancer. To my knowledge this has not been shown. However, even in a smoke free environment that includes smokers, carcinogens are likely to be brought in by those clinging to the smokers. But any environment with materials made of hydrocarbons will have carcinogens. Are these a risk to others? I think not. If the technology exist for scientist to deal with viruses in a clean room and keep them safe, there should be no reason to think that this cannot be done with SHS. Today my wife and I went out to eat and the place at a very good filtration system. The side stream smoke went in the direction of the filtration system. And even though we sat in the smoking section, the smoke in all directions seemed to go for the filters. Almost better then smoking outdoors on a sticky wind free day. While our smoking ban in Maryland is still not in effect and this new restaurant only opened last year, before any ban legislation had passed, it is clear that they have a well designed system. Unless we consider the risk of SHS indoors to be equal to that by simply passing by a smoker outdoors, then the risk is not worth considering. However, even when no smoking is around, smelling smoke, for example on a smoker, is the the a hazard according to Dr. Glantz. If I were living in a city, like NY, and smoking outside I would be more concerned about the hydrocarbons released into the the air then any SHS.
OT: Remember the story about global warming causing heart problems? The link is here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2...ming-
Hearts.php
See it being taken apart here:
http://scienceblogs.com/
denialis..._increase_h.php
Dr. Siegel,
The tobacco angle to all this has been discussed and we all get it. I'm curious...
Two questions:
1. As a physician, are you in favor of Universal health care?
2. Have you read the full SCHIP funding bill? i.e. do you know who it covers and up to what age and income limits?
I have. Fascinating attempt at backdoor single payer Canadian/European healthcare cloaked under PC terms like
"it's for the chilruns!"
"How can you side with the evil big tobacco companies instead of the wee little chilruns?"
I'm sure you realize that under the plan, a 25 year old loafer who lives in his parents basement and whose parents make $75,000/year would be considered one of those chilrun.
So would a newlywed couple who are say 23 years old.
Once again, left wing Socialists and elitists assume that the sheeple are too stupid to read the fine print and just hear their scripted talking points.
Unfortunately, their disdain and low opinion of the unwashed masses in the proletariet is often true.
"Saying" you want to quit is the politically correct and medically and socially acceptable thing to "say." And when asked by a "Health Professional" it's almost de rigeur. At least for most people whose goal is to seek approval or, conversely, not to be hassled. Then too this kind of cant is the fruit of "denormalization." If smokers are now equated with murderers and pariahs, or at best with self-mutilators, internalized guiilt or the craving for absolution will demand such an answer.
During the Inquisition, non-Catholics, when asked by the minions of Torquemada if they'd like to quit their heresies, undoubtedly said they would. More recently, a CNN (?) reporter held hostage obediently told his nabbers that he'd like to convert to Islam. In fact, I'm going to bet you that easily 70% of all non-Muslim captives would have said the same thing.
:
There's no debate but that zealousness causes many health advocates to knowingly or unknowingly overstate or exaggerate the problem. I'm as guilty as the next but I try to keep an open mind and correct errors when the weight of credible evidence teaches me I've been wrong. But isn't it also true that chemical dependency, by its very nature, causes the mind to invent rationalizations, minimizations and engage in blame transference in order to explain the inability of the conscious mind to say no to the primitive impulsive mind, whose pay attention dopamine pathways have been taken hostage by an external chemical?
Apparently unlike most here, I battled to break free my entire life but the irony was that even while doing so I deeply deeply believed that smoking nicotine defined who I was, gave me my edge and that life without it could never be as good. It was like quitting meant that I'd be leaving massive chunks of me behind, yet some deep inner part of me screamed to be free and not primarily due to some seemingly remote health problems but simply to again walk free.
Within two weeks of quitting you have no choice but to begin to realize that drug addiction is about living a lie. You can't help but ever so slowly start to realize that not only is life without nicotine entirely do-able but that in most cases it's vastly better. We leave absolutely nothing behind. Yes, even the love in our heart, we get to bring it with us. It's just that there's a temporary period where our brain neuro-chemical sensitivities experience what is often a horrible and mangled train wreck and it takes developing a couple of weeks of patience skills in order to allow us to get to a point where neuronal sensitivities are for the most part restored.
I'm not sharing this to be critical of anyone or make you feel bad or guilty. I do so to invite you to do the same as you often invite many of us, to re-evaluate the situation under new light, to consider giving yourself just two weeks to see what it feels like to have life again controlling the flow of the more than 100 neuro-chemicals nicotine now commands. It's an amazing experience. What I'm confident you'll discover is that the human brain can easily be duped, taken hostage and convinced of serious falsehoods. I'm not suggesting it will change your core beliefs about perceived liberties associated with smoking. In fact, I highly doubt it. I am suggesting that if you are chemically dependent upon smoking nicotine, it will dramatically alter core beliefs about nicotine's value to you.
Sincere regards,
John
Bill, that's the ventilation people's sales info. Ask them to put it in writing that it removes carcinogens and their confidence about their machines seems to wither away. Then they'll say that they can't actually guarantee that the machine will remove carcinogens. If you want proof, try it, send them a letter asking for proof of all their advertising claims, actually just ask them for a letter stating they stand by their claim that the machines will remove carcinogens. They've been asked many businesses before and they won't do it.
Mr. Polito I appreciate your insight on what de-normalization has done for you but no thanks for me. I prefer to stay normalized and be a sheppard of my own choice. Health fascism is a state of a sheepl mind set.
I have an IQ multigas air cleaning unit.
It has a variable speed setting to clean aobut 250 cubic feet of air per minute.
It has a hepa filtration unit that removes particulate down to 0. 001 microns with 97 % removal efficiency.
It has carbon filtration to remove most volatile organics (carcinogens) and what the carbon doesn't get, the potassium manganate does. There are 4 such filters with 15 lbs of filter media.
I use it in the area where smoking takes place.
If I have guests and everyone is smoking I also have:
I have a kitchen range hood that removes 300 cubic foot of air / minute to bring in fresh air and dilute air pollution
And yet health units would like to say that smoke from my unit can seep into someone elses unit (through sealed contrete walls).
I should sue my neighbours for allowing the dirty air in their unit to seep into my unit!
michelle
John, while I understand and appreciate your point of view, it is just that: a point of view. You are trying to rationalize behaviors and that's certainly valid. But if we rationalized everything in life, we would take the fun out of it, life would become nothing more than a struggle for survival.
Biological life is based on chemical "(inter-) dependancy". And our biological system has features built-in that go beyond the urge to survive.
Why do we drink coffee, tea or wine, eat chocolate? Why do we insist (against the catholic dogma) in our right to have sexual relations other than for reproduction?
These are not life-sustaining behaviors, we could easily free us from these urges. But on the other hand, they trigger feelings of well-being, satisfaction, pleasure. They also play a role in social interaction.
"simply to again walk free"
Free from what? Free from the continuous moralistic harassment by peers, free from your own feeling of guilt spurred by social pressure? If this is the case, how can you pretend being "free", when you gave in to the pressure of others?
Who exactly told you you were not free? You did exactly what you wanted to do, didn't you?
Again, you are rationalizing your behavior under your very personal conviction, influenced by opinions, hear-says, cultural influences and moralistic beliefs that "it's bad to do this". In my view, the only objective (non-tainted) rationale for not smoking would be the potential health hazards.
Imagine you lived in an other cultural environment were smoking was attached to a social status, such as with the American Indians. Why in this case would you, as a chief, stop smoking, other than for the potential health hazard?
I'm an avid coffee drinker - not American coffee, but real coffee with the famous thick foam called "crema". I drink a lot. I frequently hear that too much coffee is bad for my health, I also know that coffee contains a number of carcinogens. Should I free myself from this bad habit and give up the pleasure? Would I then tell the world that i'm FREE?
John, I tried quitting once back in the 90’s. Managed to quit for about 2 months. I went back to smoking, fast, for I didn’t like how I felt while NOT smoking, couldn’t stand the taste of food while being smoke-free, and more importantly couldn’t stand all the odors I was smelling from everywhere. I expected that in the first couple of weeks, but by week 8 it was worse than ever. While my sense of taste and smell while smoking are fine, I found that being smoke-free had me smelling everyone’s dirty hair and bad breath even from 10 feet away. The city streets smelled like filthy urinals. While smoking I can still smell these things, just not to the nauseating level that I was when not smoking, and I can at least like the taste of my food again. No thanks, I’ll stick with smoking, I actually feel better when smoking. Remember, we are NOT all alike and what works for one, will probably not work for another (and I have a couple of doctors from my past who can back me up on that statement as I drove them nuts because I didn’t react to certain things the way I was “supposed” to).
Yromuni, just because they won’t put in writing something they cannot guarantee, does NOT mean the system does not work as advertised. They are NOT advertising that it removes cancer from the air, just that it cleans and clears the air to the best possible level. And let’s be honest here, there are NO magical carcinogens in SHS that do not exist everywhere else. Therefore, the system cannot also clear the carcinogens from the air that are constantly present from the grill in the kitchen, the burning candles on the tables, the car exhaust that filters inside from the street through windows, doors and the fresh air exchange many systems use. Your argument is lame and weak because you demand a level of action for one product when the same “dangers” exist in the general air all around you from many other sources that you don’t make demands for. The word hypocrite springs to mind here.
Michelle, if you can smell your neighbors meal cooking you should sue her for assaulting your senses with her odors. I agree.
Yromuni, this is the ventilation/filtration exemption of the Chicago smoking ban. This exemption is the reason the Chicago ban passed 46-1. Chicago businesses and aldermen knew that SmokeEaters could fit any venue with sufficient filtration measures to make the indoor air of any smoking establishment cleaner than Chicago air. But the passage of the Chicago ban ensured the passage of the Illinois ban, which took this very reasonable compromise away.
"Any public place or place of employment otherwise subject to this Chapter whose owner or operator can demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the commissioner of public health and the commissioner of the environment, that such area has been equipped with air filtration or purification devices or similar technologies as to render the exposure to secondhand smoke in such area, notwithstanding the fact that smoking may be occurring in such area, equivalent to such exposure to secondhand smoke in the ambient outdoor air surrounding the establishment. The commissioner of public health and the commissioner of the environment are jointly authorized to promulgate regulations specifying what types of technologies, when and if available, and taking into account any applicable Federal and/or State standards, satisfy the requirements of this paragraph."
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/
we...1.html#7_32_080
Yromuni is that "you are a moonie" i would have thought no-one in America answers a straight question since the fear of litigation is ridiculous,such is the paranoia occuring nowadays courtesy of money grabbing scumbags who practice a form of legalised mugging.John P,you are obviously well pleased that you are no longer a nicotine user,i have no problem with that and congratulate you on stopping smoking since that is what you wanted to do.But if smoking tobacco is merely to obtain nicotine then smokeless tobacco would clearly fit the bill.I used nicotine replacement therapy in the form of a nasal spray and enjoyed the sensation of having my skull launch into orbit.The effects were far greater than smoking a cigarette or pipe but i consciously decided that i missed the smoke and the social aspects,so i returned to smoking.I presently suffer a far more serious and greater addiction to Tramadol (Ultram) though it is not stated as being habit forming.My choice is to move to a more addictive painkiller or reduce my consumption.Neither is an option and my Doctor heartily agrees.Nicotine is enjoyable and in my view a great addition to my life,perhaps if more people partook of the habit, society may be a far more relaxed and pleasant place to exist.
Lynda's comment reminds me of my hero when I was a teenager in the 70s, Carlos Monzon. Monzon was one of the strongest middleweights ever. Yet Carlos smoked 5 packs of cigarettes a day while he was champion, though he had the discipline to cut back to 2 and a half packs while training for a fight. This ringside writer claims Monzon was never out of breath. You are right, Lynda, we are all different.
http://www.ringsidereport.com/
Sm...mith5182005.htm
Doc said: "I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns.
Well, how about all te kids abusing prescription drugs....
let's fine big pharma.
AND
John, are there any totally nicotine free cigs I can try for a few weeks?
If there are, whthin hours, I will begin to feel nic withdrawl if I am truely addicted to the nicotine. If a totally nic free cig satisfies me, them I have a behavorial compulsion, not an addiction.
Any studies like that been done to date? I'd really like to know.
Dave K
John R. Polito wrote:
"But isn't it also true that chemical dependency, by its very nature, causes the mind to invent rationalizations, minimizations and engage in blame transference in order to explain the inability of the conscious mind to say no to the primitive impulsive mind, whose pay attention dopamine pathways have been taken hostage by an external chemical?"
I think you make WAY too much out of this. LOL
The only reason one would even need to make rationalizations is when someone like you asks them to.
I know way too many people who've quit smoking and I can't think of one who ever mentioned being happy to be free from nicotine's effects. Health or money has always been the reason for quitting.
"...consider giving yourself just two weeks to see what it feels like to have life again controlling the flow of the more than 100 neuro-chemicals nicotine now commands. It's an amazing experience."
I just got off the phone with my younger sister who quit smoking some years back. I asked her about this amazing experience. She never heard of it. LOL
John--
I do truly believe that you're a man of good will, but I think you're doing quite a lot of projecting. Assuming that all smokers not only feel as you do, but are as you were.
Then too when you say this....
... isn't it also true that chemical dependency, by its very nature, causes the mind to invent rationalizations, minimizations and engage in blame transference in order to explain the inability of the conscious mind to say no to the primitive impulsive mind, whose pay attention dopamine pathways have been taken hostage by an external chemical?
... you're also presuming. Because the answer to that is basically: Sometimes with Some substances for Some people. I hardly feel either enslaved or obsessed by my (uncannily consistent) 13 a day.
Your presumption here too is that anyone who doesn't quit smoking cigarettes is too addled or controlled by the grip of the evil weed to be making a sane decision. That's contemptuous too. And again, it's projection. As a smoker, you yourself may have felt it was true for you (and it may have been true for you) but to generalize is solipsism.
In a way, you're comparing a person who regularly has wine with his meals because he finds it's relaxing or finds it adds savor and a meal's not the same w/o it-- to an out of control wino. Yes, Mr. Wine Connoiseur could quit wine, but why the hell should he?
Which also ignores the fact that cigarettes, like wine, in moderation are beneficial. And mankind seems to have known this for rather a long time.
:
John R. Polito;
" I'm not sharing this to be critical of anyone or make you feel bad or guilty. I do so to invite you to do the same as you often invite many of us, to re-evaluate the situation under new light, to consider giving yourself just two weeks to see what it feels like to have life again controlling the flow of the more than 100 neuro-chemicals nicotine now commands."
First, I believe your reflections were honest and very well described. Your request may very well be a journey many of us would have consider much more seriously in the past. Your approach would no doubt have been much more effect had it not been for the methods taken of exclusion in the denormalization campaign. To be quite honest here, something more than cynisizm will drive most to dismissing your request entirely simply because of the level of trust which was lost as a consequence.
I have seen the advantages we could have similarly enjoyed in the promotion of moderation which could allow less medical effect and a much easier route in breaking a [Want or need]cycle with lowered usage.
Freud discusses projection as the protection of something very personal. We seek to protect our visualization of self, being the most significant justification of the balancing act we do as individuals in our own minds, to clarify an increasingly complicated world.
Some of us do create prisons which only we can release ourselves from, however others simply confuse the meaning of the words want and need.
The thoughts promoted by the current TC ideology did nothing less than solidify those prison bars in the expression of an impossible task relating significant addiction to cigarettes as a universal fact, described in such exaggerated terms, which for many will create bars they cannot escape. The taunting and torturing of those imprisoned, further takes them away from a place of confidence it will require to break free.
The research you provided in establishing what constitutes addiction walks the thin line of want and need with no consideration for the graying of that line, in both presenting it and the wide acceptance of the decidedly tenuous conclusions provided.
Anyone who smokes will describe the meaning of a born again non smoker, who seems to make it their life's mission to educate others, who may also benefit from what they personally consider a personal triumph. These are individuals not driven by the benefits of healthy lifestyles in consideration of others or in reducing costs. These individuals rise every morning and as with an addiction seek out new ways to spread the gospel. In your own inner reflections which empowered your walking away from what could be either want or need depending on your own weighting of the habit, you personally wished to break. Is it at all possible you simply replaced one addiction for another?
The effects we see as a result of denormalization and social engineering are always evident even in weighing the value of studies which mix age groups, all with different levels of manipulations in their past. Manipulations defining their internal balancing acts and directing their answers when asked research questions.
If we took two groups for study and offered them three portions of the same product to sample to give the illusion they were all from a different source, we could predict a certain amount of the groups would find preferences and describe the reasons they preferred one over the others. Now what would be the effect of telling one group nothing about the product and simply asked them to taste and order their preferences, while group two were told they were doing market research for a great new product and were asked to identify which product they liked the best. We would no doubt find preferences in both groups however group two would have much less of those who would say they all tasted the same.
Social Manipulations already in play for many years produce unintended effects. Without consideration of the damage we do, in order to redesign a social norm by employing HIA health interventions, many are sold in expressing one norm over the value of another. The group with the most resources affording influence usually wins out in the absence of discussion, and careful consideration of both.
We find in high society a love for great wines and acceptance of the wisdom of those who train their pallets to define the superior product. Similarly cigars and many culinary creations are judged and awards given for excellence. Now our tinkering defines one of the group no longer acceptable and the cynical awards become a lot less sought after as the new cycle of dragon slaying is encouraged.
Do we find it acceptable the award winning individuals who excelled in their fields to provide superior products, should now be described as monsters. Or the employees who helped maintain the professional and consistent product quality be similarly be driven from their jobs branded as baby killers? It goes beyond belief we would even consider demonising the consumers of those products, in our zeal to drive that product off the shelf in an effort to promote a new or improved replacement.
Yes we do build prisons in our own minds, however the raw materials have to come from somewhere and TC at the moment is providing a lot more of those bars than anyone else.
No safe level
More addictive than crack
The largest cause of morbidity and mortality.
A filthy disgusting habit
selfishness
Killing babies and innocent non smokers
Costing community much more than smokers are worth.
All bars built from barbs which will drive sensibilities apart.
Walt;
It is uncanny how similar our responses and references were, I had not seen your response prior to writing mine. Could we find a consensus of views developing here in response to the manipulation process, or simply as a result of the benefits found in discussion?
The description of a UN conference I provided in an earlier post demonstrates clearly where the dangers lie in continued unrestricted use of denormalization strategies.
Radical Islamic fundamentalism has it's roots in Hitler's politics, which were allowed to fester for so many years, because the media refused to allow discussions or even mention of the word Fascist in reference to others.
We saw, to Churchill's credit a simple but profound observation, which now has a significant opposition, effectively denormalization of a statement which was once an irrefutable truth.
""Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." "
How far removed is society from the wisdom of that statement, and how much effect the use of the term McCarthyism had, in promoting it's unintended opposite effects. McCarthy drove fanatical bent beyond reason, in his idealized reduction of discussion and dismissal of alternate opinions. In the long run the acceptance of socialism today finds it's strength in his denormalization campaign aimed at the socialists.
The creation of the homophobic disease of the mind, similarly enshrined Gay rights as a new norm.
Now we see in a UN sponsored conference to address racism, a new disease being promoted Islamophobia seeks to extinguish the effects of anti-semitic revulsions, described now as a symptom in the denormalization of it's defense.
Extremists seek to defeat from within, our most obvious symbol of society's revulsion for Fascism. The undermining of the UN, already corrupted by industrial partnerships which should be seen, and were it not for self serving political support, we would be taking preventative actions already.
The UN now sits at the ready, to promote any political flavor or social norm money can buy. How much damage will that instill on world unity, once the message of it's undermining and corruptions gets into to the public psyche.
Kevin's Truth table;
Elimination of discussions promotes centrist politics and forward going strategies by definition the third Reich[direction].
benpal, Walt and Kevin,
Thanks for the above posts to John Polito.
Kevin this article is exactly what you discribed in your post. Different subject but all the same process and outcome:
http://www.spiked-online.com/ind...e/article/3798/
.
Thanks Sunz;
A sign I spotted recently on a Church lawn sign says it all;
Don't be so open minded, you allow your brains to fall out.
LOL
"Doc said: "I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels, and to use that money for anti-tobacco media campaigns."
A question Doc;
Would you support a bill allowing the testing of every child in America and any who were found to be smoking as a result, we could assess fines against their parents.
It hardly seems appropriate to punish industries for the failings of individuals and the effects of bad parenting.
In either your solution or mine who will be punished, no matter how you frame it politically?
Industry and government make increased profits either way, and the pockets those funds come from remain the same, while the effect of tobacco reductions is not addressed in the least.
My way will affect smoking and non smoking parents alike allowing a much broader pool of resources.
Do you believe if TC thought they could sell it, my proposal would not be front page headlines as we speak?
It is all about the money, now isn't it?
OT entirely, but just was watching a NASCAR event. Two of the sponsors of cars are
Nicorette
Scott's (Weyco)
(They were one of the first company's to ban smoking and smokers from their employ)
I guess it all depends on the risks one is willing to take, right Doctor?
Kevin quotes a Church sign--"Don't be so open minded, you allow your brains to fall out."
This maybe what we are experiencing lately. With all the brains that have fallen out we now have SHB-Secondhand Brains polluting the planet!!
"Second hand Brains Polluting the planet"? I am sure the scarmongers can create a whole new industry around that bio-hazard. Just imagine the headlines and the tape from the MSM cable networks. I am sure Waxman, Kennedy and Nanny Hillary would propose a whole new round of funding for the studies. Funding it would be no problem. Just tax all the free thinkers. Hmmm...the brain tax! Thats to obvious. The Cerebral Recovery Safety Act and Trust--CERSAT
CERSAT-----L 
L
.
Dave K--
If you're serious about your herbal experiment, this is what's smoked by actors on "smoke free" sets and stages. I once tried them for a couple of days in California and actually think they're good. As I recall, I smoked more of them (but then, what the hell) and smoked only 1 or 2 "real" smokes a day.
http://www.honeyrose.co.uk/prod3.html
It's a Brit cigarette but the site tells you how to buy in the US.
;
Walt,have you ever tried smoking large leaf tea,it tastes better than a burning condom aka honeyrose LOL.
Fallen Brain syndrome is significantly linked to the sale of alternative addictive products to replace smoking.
The sale is largely dependent on encouraging smokers to believe they have a physical need when for the majority that need does not exist, above a level of a want.
For most who smoke particularly those who smoke less than a 25 pack a day the ability to quit is not necessarily a painful break through physical barriers like we hear about in the funny papers, it is simply a matter of convincing yourself you will enjoy life much more without the negative effects or costs of your habit.
For a smaller proportion of smokers there is a physical dependency which will require a much more determined effort.
These people are being deliberately tortured in the promotion of smoking bans and lifestyle restrictions sold by TC. The unchallenged promotions of hatred for which TC stakeholders deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law, for knowingly inflicting human rights violations in openly punishing addiction.
TC sells us on "the most addictive substance know" in order to promnote replacement products in compliance with their conflicted funds of groups like RWJF who profit from the unethical advertising provided by their paid stooges. If tobacco reductions were actually the target sought; It makes no sense to educate your victims they have a lessened ability to quit, if they do not feed their addiction with other addictive products now does it?
The use of replacements is well known to lessen your chances of quiting yet the media continues to promote the lunacy which will only extend the consumer markets to the peril of those they tell us they are helping.
What I meant by graying the line between want and need in the previous post, I was referring to the promotion of research which deliberately wide brushes the use of cigarettes as all smoking is addictive, when they know for most; smoking appeases personal satisfaction [want] much more than it feeds a chemical dependency[need].
Moderation reduces the risk of dependency and lessens the grip of dependency[need] for those most affected. If you want to quit the best strategies are in reducing the automatic smoke, the unconscious ones we smoke, without realizing we are even lighting one up. If you only smoke as a conscious decision when you really "want" to you reduce one third to one half of your consumption in very short order.
The patch and gum salesmen get away with expanding their products consumption in unethical advertising, convincing smokers the want is actually a need. They target children with cartoon devils and exciting new flavors. Convincing many of them, the alternative products sold over the counter are safe.
When used as directed, smoking patches and gum are with a consumer throughout the day without a break. A continuous drip method, which will no doubt lead to mass dependency levels, when for many the want would not necessarily equate a physical dependency.
How many of the so called health care professionals had their claims to superior intelligence surgically removed, Or brains simply fell out, in allowing the unrestricted over the counter sales and promotion of the alternatives.
If you wish to launch a successful campaign to counter the Health scare movement you need to focus on what will hurt them the most, their pockets.
The seal of approval for the continuous drip methods, promoting chemical dependency, by the charities, leaves them wide open to litigation.
The politicians who tell us we can chew gum or put on a patch, when watching a movie or on a long air flight, needs some substantial public evaluation in what is actually being promoted by social engineering initiatives.
When you teach a child the first cigarette they smoke will set them up for a lifetime chemical dependency, you convince them they are addicted whether that addiction actually exists or not.
If we had a way of evaluating the dosage level sales figures, of patches. Comparing the highest nicotine dosages, to the graduated lower quantity patch products, we could easily establish an argument to prove if the higher dosages are being sold most often, the continual drip method promoting chemical dependency is a real risk.
The highest dosages are supposed to be used for a substantially shorter period if the patches are being used as directed. If they are being used simply to replace cigarettes for convenience the higher dosages would be much more popular.
The claim to cessation devices and medical protections would then be known to be false advertising. The devices would then be in the realm of consumer protection as a competitor in the addictive nicoitene marketplace where they belong, scrutinized in the same way as we evaluate cigarette use and promotion.
As they are the new product on the block they likely would be removed from the shelves with little public complaint, based on their track record which reduces the chances of quiting, not as they advertise, meaning there is no reason to sell them at all.
I wonder if this is the tornado James Repace said it would take to clear the secondhand smoke:
http://tornex.com/datasheets/
Tor...leDataSheet.pdf
State wants anti-smoking group to repay $7.7 million
http://www.clarionledger.com/app.../709080362/
1001
.
Fred Thompson: Al Qaeda smoking ban pushed Iraqis to U.S.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/
..._ban_pushe.html
I know dear BillG already has his daggers out for this candidate, this should send him reeling.
~snip~
"They said, 'You gotta quit smoking,'" Thompson explained to a questioner asking about progress in Iraq during a town hall-style meeting.
Thompson said the smoking ban and terror tactics Al Qaeda used to oppress women and intimidate local leaders pushed tribes in western Anbar Province to support U.S. troops."
Sadly these people did not seem to know what the Senators point was as they have all been convinced that smoking is a worse evil than any terrorist organization.
.
Walt, they have developed nicotine free tobacco plants by genetically modifying the nicotine producing genes. There is a farm in IL growing sufficient quantities to conduct such an experiment with otherwise real cigs.
I didn't know this, but Rep John Conyers, MI had just introduced a bill offering universal healthcare for everyone.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bd...6:@@@L&summ2=m&
and it does not employ additional cig taxes to fund the bill. What it actually does is regulate what the healthcare industry can charge...
Refreshing, for a change!
You see, the bill identifies so much waste in healthcare practice which could be done away with, that once accopmlished, there is already sufficient funding to mostly cover the program.
The small amounts of additional revenue are a small increase in income tax on the WEALTHY, not smokers who are mostly lower socioeconomic status, and a small tax on stock and bond transactions, and a few other measures, outlined at the link.
Oh ! and one other thing, this bill does not just cover children, it covers everyone. and adults are more likely than kids to have health problems anyway, so why do other bills cover kids , and not adults?
AND it draws a distinction between health insurance, and health care. Under HR 676, health insurance companies are not enriched. and why should they be? health insurance never protected anyone from a disease. It is only health care which can do that...
an important difference, and one widely ignored up to now. With health ins, parents probably will still have Co-pays. and if the parents, simply don't care about the kids or are completely broke, the kids could still not get HEALTHCARE under these other bills anyway.
So, will common sense prevail? that's anyone's guess. but atleast one member of Congress is thinking.
Dave K
Dave K---"So, will common sense prevail? that's anyone's guess. but atleast one member of Congress is thinking"
He is thinking they can control the entire population all at once instead of the smokers, then the overweight and on and on and on.
That any one group is singled out to pay for others is plain wrong, IMO.
That includes the WEALTHY. Even if they have more means to pay for this, why should my or your healthcare be the responsibility of anyone else?
With respect, Dave K I hope your brand of common sense does not prevail.
.
.
Sunz - (re: Conyers' universal healthcare for everyone) With respect, Dave K I hope your brand of common sense does not prevail.
...
Sunz,
I agree. Excerpt:
"United States National Health Insurance Act (or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) - Establishes the United States National Health Insurance Program (the Program) to provide all individuals residing in the United States and in U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, prescription drugs, emergency care, and mental health services."
........
"Free" health care? Amazing! Conyer has found a way to provide a free lunch?
Also, judging by the date of the last action (and the paucity of co-sponsors) no one else thinks "manna from heaven" is going to provide the funding.
Sorry, Dave K., I'm not into Socialized "free" health insurance/healthcare.
Sorry Dave K., but count me in with Sunz and Rod.
Things like what Conyers proposes is antithetical to what drives many of us to oppose the anti-smokers. It's one issue but it also revolves around one principle: Small government (aka The Scariest Words: "We're from the government and we're here to help.")
Excellent points, Kevin.
And 8 thumbs down to socialized medicine.
:
Sunz,perhaps if you looked at health care as you would insurance,it may alleviate the feeling that you are paying for others if you never need to call upon it yourself.Insurance premiums include the possibility of you claiming,cover other peoples claims and also go towards the companies profit margins.We all know premiums are high,but would anyone want to chance not having any ? Yes,of course i am biased,but ........
Growing up in Canada and always having universal health care, it is hard to imagine not having it. We hear the political rhetoric here planting suggestions to solidify support for the current system in the horror stories depicting someone being the victim of a long term disease and the financial burden placed on their life savings as well in most cases the burden shared by their families. One illness could cost more than the life's savings of an entire family.
The offset in Canada we are entitled to have necessary treatments and surgeries applied equally regardless of income because we all pay into a common tax base and no one is able to point fingers and claim others cost them more in taxes. Unless of course you are pointing fingers at those who are not as healthy as they could be, such as those who smoke, those who are obese because they eat too much or live sedentary lifestyles, In addition to all health scare targets yet to be named. Those identified groups of course are now fair game, for a criticism which we have always been told could never exist.
Insurance companies support smoking bans because they allow an excuse to collect higher premiums from those who smoke in the absence of any new expenses which are already paid for in their existing cost estimates. The same insurance companies would oppose universal health care because it would compete with their product, driving the costs down with less demand.
In Canada the most vigorous opponents of universal health care were the doctors who launched National protests attacking the advocates. The primary complaint was, they would be forced to live under price regulation, as they all get paid the same amount for services they provide according to amounts defined as fair by regulators.
Rod Guilmette wrote:
" "Free" health care? Amazing! Conyer has found a way to provide a free lunch? "
I hope Conyer's next project is free beer.
Believe it or not, i agree with all you "sorry dave K' posters.
But it's a hell of a lot better than a 61-cent tax increase which also burdens one group of people to pay for another group, and if ya think conyer's idea is bad, all I ask is do you think Kennedy's idea is worse?
at least the conyer's idea puts some of the burden for solving the problem squarely on the shoulders of our inefficient greedy, and wasteful healthcare system where it belongs.
There has never been, nor will there ever be, any perfect solution to an imperfect problem.
Can any of you think of any other govt program which spends money which does not tax one group to the beneift of another? Medicaid certainly does, and this bill can be veiwed as just extending Medicaid to anyone who is uninsured.
Dave K
Universal Health care does not necessarily involve paying someone else's expenses. The idea is, we all pay much less in a group purchase and the services are always there when you need them regardless of your current financial position. Private rooms and specialized additional services are still available for those who can afford them, it just brings in a gurantee all will be taken care of regardless if they can afford it or not.
In real numbers American Government expenditure per capita without universal health care in place is among the highest on the planet. Much more is spent per capita than the Canadian Government spends with the health care system in place.
All things being equal and with 10 times the buying power your taxes should actually go down. The payment is tied to percentage of income as with other government services all drawn from the same tax base paying the health care expenses right now.
"Government is not about solving problems - but administering them - about process, not solutions."
[I don't remember the source of the quote above so I cannot give attribution.]
Socialism prizes mediocrity because it rarely produces excellence. Perhaps Socialism is better defined as Mediocritism.
Others have posted Churchill's famous observation:
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel or envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
This morning I glanced at one of our bookcases and a book title caught my eye "Empire of the Ants."
Socialism, Mediocritism envisions paradise as an ant colony. Maybe today's aspiring Mediocrats are building the "Empire of the Antis."
The way it used to be, before all this health insurance crap is we could get what you called "Catastrophic Health coverage". Which means that if you got a serious illness with large bills, you got help. All minor health care was paid out of pocket, and I have to admit, I NEVER heard my parents complaining of health care costs when this was ongoing. Now though, health insurance prices, through the roof. Hospital costs, through the roof. EVERYONE is having trouble getting their bills paid,not just some. Nowadays instead of a nest egg with "just in case", you get the mafia tactic. No health insurance, well it'd be a shame of ANYthing happened to you.
Personally, they need to go back to that sort of thing in my opinion. And go after hospital price gouging. As far as I can see, if you put your hands into tax paid health care, that just opens the door to "well, we as a nation are paying for it, so you need to stop doing these things to make it cheaper on us". And after watching how far they take everything, does anyone really think that's NOT going to happen?
I'll admit, I was a kid, and maybe I didn't see some problems back then that there were. We also weren't hospitalized or sick a lot when we were children. Maybe one of you older folk *grins* can give us an idea of the comparisions. I just know, no one in my family ever complained and believe me, I'd have heard. The ONE time I had to go to the er (cut myself on glass), my mom didn't hesitate and off we went. Believe me, if the bill would have been a large concern, she'd have tried anything that didn't cost money.
Kevin, AMEN! that's what this bill is all about, and places which have it have longer life expectancies too
jal, and in those days, hospitals were actually charatable institutions, affiliated with religiuos orders , etc. that's why the old system worked back then,
What's going on right now, is healthcare is becoming big business. it's more like emron than mother teresa.
The UK national health has become an out of control monster. They are wasteful in the extreme. More managers than workers. Doctor's make up a small percentage. The work ethic is shocking, much more standing about and chatting than actual health care. Overpaying for drugs, desperate cuts in service and beds due to budget overruns and on and on and on. Check out the NHS on google, (warning it will take a long time)
And today we have another call for more cash and a strategy of targeting lifestyles,particularly obesity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/healt...lth/
6987695.stm
GreatScot
Claiming that government has become financially dependant upon smokers (via cigarette taxes) is nothing more than cigarette industry propaganda to oppose cigarette taxes.
Folks who oppose property taxes similarly claim that government has become dependant upon home owners.
And folks who oppose income taxes similarly claim that government has become depandant upon workers.
But unlike property and income tax increases, cigarette tax increases significantly reduce the number of cigarettes consumed and the number of people who are addicted to cigarettes.
And unlike property and income, cigarettes impose many financial burdens on government.
While Mike and the selfish smokers who post on this blog want to continue forcing nonsmokers to subsidize the many governmental costs imposed by cigarette smoking, the vast majority of people support higher cigarette taxes to hold smokers accountable for the enormous governement expenditures caused by cigarette smoking.
Besides, smokers who don't like to pay cigarette taxes can refuse to pay those taxes by no longer buying cigarettes. Governments are not forcing people pay cigarette taxes, but rather it is a voluntary tax.
"I am one of only a few anti-smoking advocates who have publicly supported at least the general idea behind Senator Enzi's proposal to levy fines on tobacco companies if smoking rates do not fall to prescribed levels"
In other words, you support a proposal that has little chance of succeeding, while you oppose or strongly criticize every tobacco control measure that could actually do some good -- the very same measures, in fact, that would allow those smoking rates to come down faster.
To maintain current profits, tobacco companies have to get young people smoking before they develop the common sense not to (and by then they're physically hooked, making quitting difficult). That's why it's important to keep teenagers and young adults smoking on college campuses, to name but one of the many tobacco control measures you oppose.
So characterizing yourself as an "anti-smoking advocate" seems rather comical, at least to me. One could even say, a bit of a scam.
http://www.geocities.com/
corpora...rate_opposition
Damn, Doc--you must have struck a nerve today
Claiming that government has become financially dependant upon smokers (via cigarette taxes) is nothing more than cigarette industry propaganda to oppose cigarette taxes.
BS…..the government themselves prove the truth of this with all the programs they impose cigarette taxes to fund….and they advertise it.
The governor of Arizona had been trying to get a program for early childhood education passed for several years and couldn’t because NO ONE wanted to pay for it, especially the parents it would benefit the most. She got it passed last year by putting it on the ballot to be funded by a new 80-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. Once it was advertised that cigarette taxes would pay for it, the majority was all of a sudden all for the program.
Folks who oppose property taxes similarly claim that government has become dependant upon home owners.
Yes, and those folks also still expect the government to supply their home with electricity, water, sewage, police/fire protection, etc. Property taxes make sense, though I suspect they too are way too high.
And folks who oppose income taxes similarly claim that government has become depandant upon workers.
Well they are, but I also know I expect government to do certain things and they need money to do that. What I oppose are UNFAIR and EXCESSIVE taxes of any form.
But unlike property and income tax increases, cigarette tax increases significantly reduce the number of cigarettes consumed and the number of people who are addicted to cigarettes.
You really are delusional, aren’t you? The only thing that cigarette tax increases do increase the blackmarket and force smokers to finding other, reasonably priced markets for their product. OR as I do, making my own, soon to be growing my own.
And unlike property and income, cigarettes impose many financial burdens on government.
You have yet to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt that this is true. You have NOT provided irrefutable evidence to back up your statements. NO one has.
While Mike and the selfish smokers who post on this blog want to continue forcing nonsmokers to subsidize the many governmental costs imposed by cigarette smoking, the vast majority of people support higher cigarette taxes to hold smokers accountable for the enormous governement expenditures caused by cigarette smoking.
Excuse me………………MY paying health insurance for some brat whose parents make over $80k per year is beneficial how? And why hold us accountable for some non-smokers health problems that more than likely were caused by your car’s exhaust?
Besides, smokers who don't like to pay cigarette taxes can refuse to pay those taxes by no longer buying cigarettes. Governments are not forcing people pay cigarette taxes, but rather it is a voluntary tax.
OR they do like I do and make their own while looking into growing their own. Taxing legal products IS force. Either force to pay the tax OR force to NOT use the product. Hardly voluntary Bill.
The same could be said for property taxes…………just don’t buy a home. Rent instead. Or even income taxes, just don’t work and go on welfare (that you will be taxed to pay for) or work under the table. ALL equally as voluntary as your cig taxes.
Claiming that government has become financially dependant upon smokers (via cigarette taxes) is nothing more than cigarette industry propaganda to oppose cigarette taxes.
Of course it is. But supposing the idea had any merit, wouldn't the government also become financially dependent on the fines levied on tobacco companies under Senator Enzi's proposal? You see how crap perpetuates itself: one cynical argument only generates the need for another and another.
Cathy and Bill, are you two really THAT dumb? Or just being deliberately obtuse?
Of course the government is addicted to cig tax money. It didn't take the tobacco companies saying anything either. It is quite obvious, for if they weren't............then all tobacco would be prohibited. If they weren't, they wouldn't be raising cigarette/tobacco taxes to fill in the holes in their general budgets and to fund special interest programs.
You two really need to get a dose of reality, if you truly think that this is tobacco company propoganda. Just because you resort to propoganda doesn't mean everyone does. TC and the government needed no help from anyone, you all did that yourselves.
Now, kindly go and get lives of your own and stay the hell out of mine. I personally find your morals and ethics to be so far beneath me it makes me ill.
“While Mike and the selfish smokers who post on this blog want to continue forcing nonsmokers to subsidize the many governmental costs imposed by cigarette smoking, the vast majority of people support higher cigarette taxes to hold smokers accountable for the enormous governement expenditures caused by cigarette smoking.” BG
The vast majority of people DO NOT support higher cigarette taxes. The vast majority of people have been fed fraudulent information regarding issues surrounding the tax.
Millions of real kids and adults alike are crushed by these high taxes. Its not a question of will people still buy cigarettes despite the tax. Rather the question is; do those who support the higher tax believe that people will still by the product? The answer to that question is yes. Do those who support the higher taxes; understand that low income families will suffer real harm because of the tax? You bet they do. And they could careless. So long as it is not the supporter of the tax who will be footing the bill for the politically fraudulent agenda driven program the tax money may-be used to fund.
However taxpayers in general will foot the bill for the harm caused by the enormously excessive taxes that anti-smokers foist upon the poor and middle class.
Bill Godshall wrote:
"Claiming that government has become financially dependant upon smokers (via cigarette taxes) is nothing more than cigarette industry propaganda to oppose cigarette taxes."
1. That doesn't make it false.
2. The people using Bill's argument use it because they don't want their taxes going up.
Their must be dozens of lifestyle choices that make your taxes go up Bill. Why don't you devote your time against government policies which impose those costs on you instead of spending your life going after just one? Kill a dozen birds with one stone, so to speak.
"Folks who oppose property taxes similarly claim that government has become dependant upon home owners."
Idiotic.
"And folks who oppose income taxes similarly claim that government has become depandant upon workers."
Further idiocy.
"But unlike property and income tax increases, cigarette tax increases significantly reduce the number of cigarettes consumed and the number of people who are addicted to cigarettes."
Yet you're against prohibition which would bring about the greatest decline in smoking. Could it be you're afraid of your taxes going up? You've stated previously there's no right to smoke and you certainly don't give a damn about property rights so that leaves...
"And unlike property and income, cigarettes impose many financial burdens on government."
Which are less than the financial gains and savings seen.
"[T]he vast majority of people support higher cigarette taxes to hold smokers accountable for the enormous governement expenditures caused by cigarette smoking."
That's what people like you have fed them, but they would support a tax anyway because you're all a bunch of parasites anyway.
"Governments are not forcing people pay cigarette taxes, but rather it is a voluntary tax."
Thank you Bill (the Jesse Ventura) Godshall for yet another idiotic statement.
Tobaccoscamsomethingornother wrote:
"[Y]ou oppose or strongly criticize every tobacco control measure that could actually do some good...that would allow those smoking rates to come down faster."
Says the schizo who's publicly stated she doesn't care if people smoke or not.
Bill: Folks who oppose property taxes similarly claim that government has become dependant upon home owners.
And folks who oppose income taxes similarly claim that government has become depandant upon workers.
No Bill. NO one has said this. Cite sources/quotes.
Just like an anti to make things up. Or as it's been put otherwise: All antis lie all the time.
More of Bill: While Mike and the selfish smokers who post on this blog want to continue forcing nonsmokers to subsidize the many governmental costs imposed by cigarette smoking
You know what? Bill's right. The only people that get sick in this world are smokers. The only people who don't pay one cent in taxes or for private health insurance are smokers. Everyone else pays and pays, never gets sick -- not even one case of diabetes or a broken bone -- and live forever. Indeedy-do... nonsmokers subsidize EVERYONE and no one subsidizes them because even if they ever do die they did it healthily.
Thanks for clearing that up, Bill!
Hi, guys.
Coming in a loooong time later:
if smokers honestly cost the health-care system so much money, the taxes imposed on smokers would go directly toward this expense, not fund a myriad of unrelated whatevers - typically new expenses requiring a funding source.
That 'smokers costs form a burden to society' myth is disproven by the very actions taken, apart from everything else.
It's comparable to a supermarket cashier insisting that you haven't yet paid, when you already had, and blatantly tucking your second lot of money not into the till but into her pocket, with a smirk.
Second point: there is an incalculable difference between a socialist/communist-type state where people exist and are maintained/controlled to be used for state purposes and a socially responsible society, of, by and for the people, where people as a nation look out for each other in preventing disaster, privation and desperation from damaging/limiting/destroying lives each viewed as equally valuable beyond and above monetary worth.
Forming a universal, national insurance pool (paid through taxes according to ability to pay) for healthcare supplied on demand on a universal basis across a country makes perfect sense, is cost-effective when run by reason and in the public interest, and certainly worked very well in Canada.
We merely ensured that no-one would suffer unduly when bad times struck as they so often do to so many, and doing so reduced costs - and the incidence of health conditions and life quality/survival worsening because neglected due to unaffordable expense - to a great extent.
Any group of herd animals looks after its own, especially the most vulnerable, to the extent of its capacity, as when elephants, highly intelligent and social mammals, have banded together to assist sick or wounded herd members to eat and move.
Dolphins are well-known for helping even other species, specifically man, when necessary and possible to do so, as when a drowning person has been sighted and helped to shore by one or more of these highly intelligent and social mammals.
This mutual aid law of survival is naturally despised by solitary predators as thwarting their aims in feeding on the powerless, but among such social animals, only humans adopt the enemy view - essentially inimical to themselves both individually and as a species/civilization - when convincingly presented in PR campaigns.
The Canadian health-care system was owned by, and existed for, the people on an entirely equal basis as a basic right, with no nonsense about 'owing' anybody else 'rights over' one's choices, health, body or 'lifestyle' until the propagandists moved in, expecting to suck an additional $5 billion annually from a system already covered by taxes disappearing into the black hole of (relatively recent) extreme governmental secrecy initiated by 'sell-'em-up-the-river-and -lie' Mulroney and carried to cone-of-silence lengths by 'Bush's Mini-Me' Harper, thereby showing he has (one would once have thought impossibly) even more to hide.
The problems appearing here and elsewhere, most notoriously in Britain, have been artificially created as the publicly owned health-care systems are starved and services limited in preparation for privatization, with the notion of equal treatment, universal availability and citizen entitlement progressively attacked and destroyed, together with the consideration, the empathy, the humanity, the concept of fairness and the willingness to share, that once formed our ideals.
A selfish, grasping denial of all rights and realities but our strategically implanted and destructively demanded 'own' is to replace civilization with the egocentric rationalization of the classic psychopath, devoid of the very capacity for the human and civilized values denormalized through 'social marketing', i.e. brainwashing.
'If you don't fall into our category of 'healthy living' - demand private health-care facilities be permitted that jack-boot in the doorway to take-over under Free Trade laws, so that you - and eventually everyone - can pay extra above heavy taxation for whatever medical care you - they - may need.
'You have no other choice, you fat-headed loser.'
It's the for-profit health insurance and health-care companies demanding extra payment from/behavioural control over smokers, the overweight, and increasing ad lib et cetera others under such excuses; in countries previously unaffected such as Canada and Britain through PR-generated 'public demand' media/political campaigns in order to create a 'need' for their expensive (and often notoriously more cost/corner-cutting, less efficient and more hazardous) private health-care industry additional to - and ultimately replacing - tax-paid public facilities once equally available to all.
I hardly need add that taxes won't reduce as a result...
For-profit 'health care' provides employers, as well as insurers and the health care industry, with the rationale to relegate human value, independence and individual quality of life to a monetary cost system to suit themselves, in demanding totalitarian control over human actions, transactions, wants, needs and desires on these grounds.
Under the original Canadian system, as with Britain's, nobody could logically claim to be 'paying for your disease' because no perceptible increase (or potential reduction) in their tax costs would occur as a result of individual behaviours/diseases, and the percentage of cost for any individual, regardless of injury or disease, would hardly affect any other, being divided among millions and unnoticeable and unidentifiable among the taxes paid.
True Canadian public outrage regarding such matters has been traditionally reserved for large-scale/chronic fraud/waste among government officials/departments, corporate welfare and tax-cuts, etc.
This unCanadian, selfish, vindictive and endlessly letter-to-the-editor-repeated 'why should I pay for any else's illness/misfortune' - theoretically potentially regarding perhaps pennies individually overall anyway paid in tax instead of protest, in example, to the additional hundreds of billions of dollars drained from Canada/Canadians by multinational industry in areas ranging from created toxin-related health and environmental issues to tax breaks and monetary 'incentives' to foreign corporations to buy out/drive under Canadian business translating also to higher general taxation of the progressively lower-paid public, gifts of public property and wide-ranging and continuing wage cuts by these conglomerates - is a uniquely industry, profit-oriented viewpoint represented as that of the public so victimized.
Those of us who are childless could say the same of maternal, infant and child healthcare; those not suffering from auto-immune disorders could say the same of diabetics - an enormous and radically increasing health issue and cost - or of any number of degenerative disorders also continuing to snowball together with industrial pollutants...
We could all reject accepted societal protections involving others - and accept hateful industry lines as written - if in fact any real Canadian people actually wrote such shameful letters in purely coincidental force.
The public is being distracted from the smoke-screened issues they are - and need to be - worried about.
Health costs have been admitted to have increased predominately because Big Pharma has increased drug prices and, where applicable, because for-profit health industry - not only direct health-care but health insurance as well - demands progressively larger profits each quarter to increase stock values, CEO bonuses, etc., situations which cannot exist under a publicly owned, non-profit system obligated to provide the best possible care for the lowest reasonable cost to all citizens, regardless of circumstance or disapproval.
Tax money paid for public programs has long been increasingly diverted to corporate welfare, the most powerful of the multinationals crushing/swallowing small and mid-sized privately owned/operated business in monopolistic expansion, with - obviously - no altruistic urge to sustain or encourage competition or public input in any important form.
Now, the giants more rapidly consolidate in multi-billion dollar purchases of each other, as with Pfizer's of Monsanto, (among many others,) followed by Johnson and Johnson's take-over of Pfizer.
The last one existing may hold all the toys (win-win-win-win-win) in a death-clutch...
(Con't)
Wealth-wise, the top few percent of the global population increase their percentage of global income and ownership on an annual basis as (inadequate) regulations for corporate giants are removed only to be tightened into a stranglehold regarding the public and small business.
In whatever country we reside, we, the people, don't need 'smaller government' - we need legitimate democratic government - rule by the ruled, with all entitled to equal rights, treatment and opportunity - acting in the interests of the people.
We don't 'need fewer business regulations' - we need to reject the 'globalization' set-up secretively arranged with giant industry and government in sympathy with only their concerns, whereby democracy and independent, local business are slated for destruction in serving global corporate aims.
Regulations which are truly burdensome encroach only on us, 'we, the people', and any independent business we personally may have, from family farming to hospitality and even home-based business, so that response to such tactics in the form of calls among the public for less government and regulation/protection may be cited by the very interests using this strategy to further increase their control over us while removing the final hope of any public control over global corporations already having more (annually/quarterly increasing) income and power than various small countries, due to long-term governmental backing and control.
This perpetual increase in corporate income is achieved because progressively drained from us all, in each cumulative category as worker, (lower wages, benefits, job security, etc.) consumer, (higher costs, taxes, toxins, lower product durability/effectiveness, etc.) taxpayer, (higher taxes, fewer public services at higher cost in the interest of corporate welfare, profit, expansion and control, reduced taxes for the wealthiest, etc.) citizen, (decreasing rights and protections, greater stressors and threats, including pollution, health and environmental damage 'acceptable' in saving industrial costs, etc. resulting in victim blame techniques long perfected on high-risk asbestos/chemical and other workers being widely exerted in (illegal) law against the population in redirecting attribution and liability from toxic industry, etc.) child, (subjection to pharmaceutical and other industrial toxins from time of conception affecting physical, mental and emotional development and potential as well as more general health, educational funding and parental and other protections reduced, [I.e. mandatory profitable but toxic vaccinations and behavioural/mind/brain-altering drugs, industry indoctrination through media, school, etc., including illusion of 'right of forcible control' over legal parent and other adult behaviour based on propaganda and a damaging and socially disassociative sense of 'elite category' given through alliance with industry goals as taught in schools, etc.] strategy of prevention of independent thought and learning, especially regarding essential decision-making and personal risk categorization and management skills [can't play tag, too dangerous; pharma drugs fix everything and are worth side-effects of brain and nervous system damage, depression, dementia, etc.] necessarily developed throughout early life on a gradual basis, etc., in the interest of not only maximizing industrial profit and minimizing corporate costs, but of forming youth from infancy onward into industrial renewable human resources incapable of questioning the new order status quo, and identifying/sympathizing not with their own - public/human - but with their 'betters' corporate interests, outlook and priorities) as are to be drained away from the public all expectations of the human/democratic rights accurately regarded, by the only beneficiaries intended, as impediments to 'inexorable' Globalization progression, as democratic Constitutions and principles were enacted in perpetuity specifically to prevent such totalitarian abuses from ever again occurring in the countries involved.
Virtually every human advance has been fought for and hard-won against those who wanted it all and often resented 'lesser' others having any of what 'should be' only theirs, beginning from the point of conditions of literal slavery/serfdom imposed on 'the masses' by the powerful in previous centuries.
We see more recent human advances in the workplace, achieving such mutually beneficial essentials as some form of living wage, 8 hr. working days in 40 hr. weeks with paid vacations, and breaks every two hours throughout the workday - despite increasing productivity as a result, a major reason for their ultimate acceptance, adoption and retention by business - attacked as 'selfish' because these corporate giants with now-standard annual/quarterly record profits 'can't afford' to treat workers as human beings.
Corporations are not human beings and lack humanity in all senses: where profit forms the only accepted motive and main responsibility, only regulation and effective control by and in the public interest can ensure ethical corporate behaviour.
The same holds true for government, as we see world-wide, this lack of public oversight enabling the industrial control of democratic governments, countries and people, spreading through media, education and research facilities now virtually all influenced/financed/owned by such commercial self-interests.
A democratic state - in both senses - consists of, by and for people, and cannot be obviated by the actions of such legal constructs anymore than human/democratic rights entailed for posterity can be voted, sold or given away by such stratagems as illegal alteration of Constitutions written precisely so as to stand against all traitorous attacks through all time.
And if we live by and at corporate desires and priorities, we'll die by them, at an ever more rapidly-increasing pace - as individuals, as a civilization, as a species, as a world.
Why are people arguing for commercial Big Pharma/health industry/insurance control which entails not only higher costs but additional payments to an unnecessary middleman (health insurance, requiring profit as well), over a publicly owned and (if properly) run system at far lower cost, cutting out the middleman, which diminishes industry control over their lives, wallets and choices?
Would, say, a farming area Co-operative store be considered 'communistic' as well, because run for low-cost efficiency in product purchase by a large group of people, rather than for massive profits in shares?
PR lines are so engrained within us we often fail to think - rather than react as intended - about the facts, about who profits and suffers in each case, about how and why.
It's been accepted - in both senses - in the U.S. that government does not work for the people and cannot be expected to do so.
It's not democratic government that's necessarily intrusive, inefficient and expensive, at least only to the degree that self-interests such as industry control, rather than the public of, for and by which such government - if legitimate - exists.
Such catchphrases as the 'Free Market' seem to indicate concepts which in reality prove to include our interests no more than did 'Free Trade', intended to provide global corporations with totalitarian global control at everyone else's expense.
The purpose has been demonstrated to essentially copyright the 'Free' right out of our lives.
And, rather than using the dirty-word 'democracy' we're more and more often calling for 'Free Market' conditions likely to have an assigned meaning we won't like at all.
A lot of industry/PR groups have a lot of agendas in process and plan: we know how deeply the world is manipulated by these.
We also need to examine how deeply certain certain, superficially appealing phrases, ideas and groups may be manipulating us.
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