Fuckers taking away my cigarettes! I used to order them online but now I cannot since the Eliot Spitzer is on a “make a name for myself” role.
Well screw that shit, Now I am just going to get into my car and travel the 12 hours away to the Indian Reservation and buying them.
Many of you non-smokers may be saying “so what” but sorry if you are a fatty, then it is not so what. You will be the next target to fill in the budget gaps left wide the fuck open do to overspending by your state elected officials. Slippery slope cliches aside, this is how it started on the smokers just a couple of loons trying to make a buck off the tobacco industry. Now you have just a couple of loons trying to make money off of the fast food industry.
It’s not surprising if you know that cigarette sales are dropping, the fuckers in office are going to try to find another way to fund themselves.
I always loved my time lurking here, reading how so many attack smoking but defend obesity. When both are choices one makes, that lead to health problems. Yet rather than stick together tobacco is lumped with “bad things” and obesity is linked to “not my fault”.
Don’t come looking for smokers help when the next fucking twinkie someone buys doubles in price due to lawsuits. After they attack the fats maybe they can concentrate on the vehicles because you know they cause a lot of medical expense as well.
No one is taking away your cigarettes; they just want you to pay the fucking taxes on them. If you get them from the reservation, you still have to pay the taxes.
I think it’s more of a choice than a lot of people care to admit. Yeah, I know. It isn’t always a matter of diet and exercise. But I don’t care to hear people who give up on those two elementary things complain about weight gain and the related health issues.
They can tax my smokes. I’ll probably pay the money because I like smoking. They can tax the junkfood too, because I hardly ever buy it.
If they start over-taxing my beer, however, I’ll start stocking up on torches and pitchforks for distribution.
Anyway, before the mauling begins, and at the risk of pandemonium being unleashed on my head, buttonjockey308, being obese is at some point a “choice”, inasmuch as you “choose” to eat the thing/s that make your daily calorific intake greater than your calorific outlay, in the same way that the smoker “chooses” to spark up. Both are generally driven by an uncontrollable compulsion, though I acknowledge the compulsion has different mechanisms.
Being obese can absolutely be a choice. Unless you have a thyroid condition, if you are obese, it’s because you’re eating too much and exercising too little.
Just the other day I was at a shop when one of the employees said he recognized me from high school and introduced himself. I didn’t realize it was him - because in high school he had been very fat. He had not only lost a huge amount of weight, he was also lean and muscular - he looked like a million bucks.
I might have missed it. Pay unfair fucking taxes on them. Whether you agree or not, if they are that bad make them fucking illegal. Don’t use them to fix your fucking roads with.
I am a firm believer that calories in/calories out matter. No one on a deserted island with just water and minimal food will gain weight.
You don’t think beer will have to come next? Something will have to replace the fat foods when they stop selling so well.
I am not trying to have courage, it just pisses me off when smokers are lumped as unhealthy fuckers and obesity gets a free ride because of some politically correct bullshit. I wouldn’t be on about fatness at all if I haven’t see with my own two fucking eyes numerous times a hugely overweight person walks by me while I am outside smoking like I am the only one with a fucking problem.
Not sure where your “quote” is coming from - in the link you supplied I don’t see the Surgeon General calling for fatty/high calorie food taxes. Instead, he says:
*"Some people want to blame the food industry for our growing waistlines. The reality is that restaurants, including many fast food restaurants, now offer low-fat, healthy choices.
For the meals we eat at home, and the meals we eat out, it’s still our decision what we eat, where we eat, and how much we eat."*
And while eating too much and exercising too little do increase our overall health care bill, I have yet to eat out at a restaurant and be forced to inhale someone else’s fat and have an increased risk of cancer and heart disease because of it.
While you’re doing marathon drives to teach Eliot Spitzer a lesson, why not come out to Ohio? We have Smokes For Less outlets and drive-through liquor stores. It’s a dream come true for legal addiction.
Wrong quote for the link the one above is the correct one. Many articles on google will show that recently it was announced that some scientists called soda pop the next cigarettes.
Given the extreme hot button nature of this issue, I do feel like I need to add a disclaimer to the question that I am about to ask. So, going in, can anyone that feels like answering this keep in mind that I am just looking for information?
Simply stated, I don’t “get” how your weight can ever be anything but a calorie input/output issue. Is it the case that you can have a glandular condition that means that you burn calories so slowly that even if you eat the bear minimum amount of food to get the vitamins and minerals that you need you still gain weight? Is that the deal?
And we have a winner. Being around overweight people doesn’t give me trouble breathing. I feel bad for smokers who have to stand outside in the cold, I really do. But not as bad as I feel after inhaling smoke. Sorry, SomeOneMusical. I don’t like the government getting involved in music, entertainment, or many other things. If I didn’t consider breathing so important, I’d probably agree with you.
Go figure. I can’t think of any tax fairer than taxation of cigarettes. Demand for cigarettes are relatively inelastic with respect to price, so taxing the hell out of them creates very little deadweight loss. Fairness and utility all around.
We discussed the legitimacy of sin taxes here, and this very issue here.
I happen to agree with the concern over “sin taxes” (and stated so in the first link), but it is painful to find myself allied with someone who uses this as an argument.
Marley23, you have a good point, but is that the reason the tax exists?
Anyway, we pay £5 a pack here - that’s $8.65 at today’s rates. And we’re on an island so we can’t drive anywhere to buy 'em cheap. How d’ya like them apples?
They are not taxing cigarettes to protect you from second hand smoke, they are taxing them to make up for shortfalls created because they are inept money handlers.
They can do what they do for anything else they deem bad for us, ban them. They don’t because they want the fucking money. The day enough people stop smoking to make it profitible for them to tax, is the day they ban it.
