Death and Cigarette Taxes

Today I was having a conversation with a friend and the topic came up of the new cigarette tax. I personally think that it is total and complete bullshit. I am not a smoker, but I don't believe that the idea behind this tax is noble. Sure the money is going to help childrens healthcare, but on the same token they say that they want smokers to quit. And raising prices will assist in getting them to quit.

That makes no sense at all. They are making it darned near impossible to smoke ANYWHERE in public, and NOW they have a fairly hefty tax on it, that does NOTHING to help these smokers quit. If they REALLY wanted to help them quit then the money raised from taxes would go to funding programs to help smokers quit. Because as it stands now, most states are cutting funding to programs that do just that.

But really, when you think about it, getting the smokers to quit was never the governments intention. Do you really think that they would be financing a program with the funds from cigarettes if they thought that they would be making people quit? What would happen to that program if smokers actually DID quit? Will the government just say, oh well, tough titties, kids with health issues are just gonna have to suck it up cause the funding ran out?

NOPE, this notion of getting people to quit seems to be just a way to not 'look' bad, hiding their real agenda of fleecing these poor smokers for every last dime. And now that the FDA has been given permission to REGULATE tobacco products, expect to see further price hikes in the near future. I pity the person that smokes... as it soon will be unaffordable to do so.