…which is why it’s such a good thing that these extra taxes go to stop all of these awful problems.
I’ve looked at (blue) clouds from both sides now. Once, I was happy to support any anti-smoking/anti-smoker proposal social engineering and a strapped treasury could devise. Then I smoked for twelve years. I haven’t smoked in about eight months: the atropine/scopolamine injection method worked for me.
My only real objection to special cigarette taxes and fees is that they’re basically regressive, affecting mostly those who can least afford to pay. Then again, that’s true of all direct and indirect costs associated with smoking, from the price of a pack to the bill for a transplant, simply because smoking tends to be a poor man’s habit. And it’s hard to get around the fact that, no matter how unpleasant withdrawal can be, feeding an addiction is a voluntary behavior. But it’s still a tax that is mostly imposed by the well-to-do mostly upon the least advantaged, and that always smells bad to me.
I’m not at all persuaded by the “the tax is fair because secondhand smoke threatens my well-being” argument. I think it’s impossible to assess the incremental increase in risk, avoiding secondhand smoke has become easy enough (as smoker segregation has increased) to make it partly the burden of the person who wishes to minimize his/her exposure, and no one even wants to try to assess such burdens fairly: if my smoking increases risk to you, and therefore I owe you money, what do you owe me for your habit of changing lanes without signaling, or for the groundwater contamination related to your pork consumption, or the chemical exposure attendant upon your personal beautification regimen, or any of the myriad other ways each of us subtly impinges upon the safety/solvency/satisfaction of everyone else. There are ways to share these costs and burdens (though there may not be a way to get people to agree on one), but targetting individual behaviors is about the worst method I can think of. That goes for behaviors that cause or maintain or increase obesity as well.
I mean, if the fat guy, the chimney and the drunk can’t live together in harmony, the abstemious will join up with the heroin addicts to rule the world. And we just can’t have that.
You really should stay away from cigarettes that were soaked in motor oil. 
Sounds like the OP is throwing a tantrum because his smokes cost more than he wants to pay. “Goddamn taxes! I have the right to smoke, and while I’m at it, FUCK THE FATTIES!”
Not grasping for straws much, eh? Grow up.
I guess that I don’t really have a problem with just taxing the companies and then the companies passing the cost on to the consumer. That at least strikes me as somewhat honest.
The real issue that I have is that, at least in my experience, the justification that the State uses for the so-called sin taxes is that the “sin” costs society in terms of healthcare or what have you but then the income generated goes into the general fund to pay for whatever bloated pet projects are in vogue.
I have a similar issue with gas taxes. Basically, what I am saying is that if we are going to tax specific goods to pay for the impact that they have on society then 100% of the revenue generated from that tax should go to solving that problem.
Hear, Hear!
I’ve smoked. I’ve quit. I’ve smoked. I’ve quit. I’ve smoked. I’ve quit. Currently back on the nicotine. Never minded paying the taxes. Seriously torqued that those taxes are just put into the general fund to put marble in the “Halls of Injustice” and into the butts that reside therein.
Okay, that’s one I’ve not heard of.
Fight my ignorance, if you please …
Lucy
Well the OP’s dead on to the extent that the same weapons that were built to take down the tobbacco companies are starting to be directed at fat people. And to the extent that people are incorrectly applying the constructs they learned in the anti-smoking crusades to fat. But he’s buying into the false analogy. Smoking is manifestly a behavior, and fat is manifestly a physical condition which is at best only partially related to any behavior. If two people can behave in precisely the same way and one becomes fattie and the other a hottie (and by the way simple math will tell you that this is so), then it’s nothing but simple bigotry to discriminate against people based solely on the appearance. It’s not good enough to claim that people predisposed to become fatties can become thin if they work harder. That’s putting an extra burden of ascetism on a certain group of people solely to justify your initial discrimination. As long as there is some theoretical level of deprivation that would make all fat people “normal” then you claim your bigotry is justified, and furthermore it’s now incumbent on them to deprive themselves to that extent. Otherwise they’re engaging in bad behavior. This is utterly bogus logic.
If someone were to pass a no “krispy kreme” legislation or enforced exercise bill, then there’d be a reasonable basis to compare to anti-smoking discrimination. But discriminating against fat per se is more akin to discriminating against lung disorders than it is to discriminating against smoking.
Let’s see here, you are calling me names when you where the one who attacked my position. I finally realized what the problem is. The government has spent enough time to make people scorn smokers. The good news is, they are starting to work on fat people. And that means soon, I will not be allowed to smoke anymore, but it will be PC to point and laugh and make snide comments about fatties.
And then when people complain about it, I hope to see this same attitude expressed here toward smokers, toward the fat people. The “So what you are the cause of etc”
This just means in the very near future, I will not be a smoker, I will be PC again. And pick on the obese. You let us hang out to dry, don’t expect any help when the government targets your fat foods with taxes to make up for the loss of our income. Or when your employer fires your ass for not losing weight, and straining there insurance premiums. Fucking unfair, but it will happen. But you do not care that’s happening already, to us.
I am not just angry about taxes on cigarettes, I am angry because jackasses think they are doing it for the peoples health. Usually it’s the same jackasses that weigh more than some smaller elephants, do not realize they are just as much if not more of a strain on the healthcare system themselves. But it’s easier to point at smokers and mock them.
Someone in this thread said about eating fatty foods occasionally so why should they have to pay? I may only smoke a pack a month while out at the bar, I still have to pay the fucking tax. So should you.
What the fuck, we might as well start extra taxing AIDS, Cancer etc drugs, people live longer taking them, yet the longer they live the more they can strain our health care system. Lets make this form of taxation fair. Tax everyone and everything that increases any healthcare costs. I for one welcome our nanny government. Now I can be like some of you, no need to be responsible for myself the government mommy can do it for me.
Well people are working on bills, but right now there are no “No smoking” or enforcing a “no smoking” legislation. The similiarities are more then not.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=100718&ran=184478
Next target is already acquired, its just a matter of time before public pressure increases.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/03/10/1141701644562.html
If people like Indiana Representative Charlie Brown and the World Health Organization (WHO) have their way, your next bag of chips, candy bar or soda pop may cost a lot more.
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=030806C
I ask you to join me in our new war on bad things.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
LucyInDisguise, I’m a little handicapped because it’s hard to find information on this method that isn’t put out by the people selling it. This page mentions it (about two-thirds of the way down): http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_10_13X_Guide_for_Quitting_Smoking.asp
Here’s an abstract of about the only clinical study I can find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3781691&dopt=Abstract
And here’s the commercial: http://www.quitatlast.com/onetime.htm
The effect on me was that it just killed nicotine withdrawal dead dead dead. It was like being perpetually in a state of having had a cigarette about forty-five minutes ago: I’d kind of like to smoke, but I didn’t mind waiting a while. It took a couple of months to quit patting my pockets on my way out the door, but that was it, and then it was over. It was so easy and painless that the only real danger would have been kidding myself that I must not have really been addicted after all, and picking up a cigarette again: once you do that, you’ve wasted your time and money. At this point, if I do start smoking again, it will be stupidity, not addiction. One additional advantage I had was that I didn’t have a bunch of friends who smoke, places to go where I was in the habit of smoking, or other triggers to overcome.
Well now you tell me. After I struggled and strained to quit using conventional means (patches/gums/rubber bands snapping on my wrists and many more methods)
Still smoke free almost 6 months later though! 
Speaking as a fatty, I have absolutely no problem with the concept that unhealthful foods (fast food, sodas, candy, chips) should be subject to higher taxes. It would just be better for me. And unlike the unfortunate nicotine addicts, I won’t suffer from the same levels of craving or withdrawal.
Why is it that the most accessible and cheapest foods are the highest calorie and fat foods? Why is the vending machine full of junk instead of fresh cut carrots and celery? Why is it that if I want to buy something from a street vendor, I’m pretty much limited to hot dogs, candy, and soda? Why can’t I get anything at the movie theatre except sodas, nachos, hot dogs, candy, and buttered popcorn?
Why is it that I can eat a fast, tasty, convenient, unhealthful meal at McDonald’s for well under $10, but I can’t get a more healthful turkey breast sandwich with enough veggies to fill me up for the same price?
Why is our food economy so fucked up?
As a smoker I wouldn’t mind as much paying all those extra taxes that non smokers don’t pay if only I could get a lump sum settlement on my old age security pension. Non smokers are a real burden on the pension fund.
SomeOneMusical, I’m wondering why you’re lumping obese people with the politicians. I think it really hurts your argument. There an argument to be made against the high tax on cigarettes and definitely an argument to be made against the use of the funds garnered by those taxes. Why not make that argument? Why start hurling invectives at fat people?
Why not try to bring them around to your side, rather than basically saying “Fuck you you non-asswiping fat bastard. I’m going to point and laugh at you when they tax your donuts.” Seriously, you’ve got a good argument. Make it and quit fucking up your credibility with conflated arguments.
For the same reason that they use high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar in regular pop (that’s soda for you east coasters). Money. If you can take a pound of chicken parts, and turn them into ten pounds of saleable “food” for less than it costs to sell ten pound of the chicken, you’re gonna do it.
No margin, no mission.
I believe that obesity is more often a choice these days than not, but that’s not to say it’s never a choice, not even close. Things like Hypothyroidism, PCOS in women, insulin resistance, and a host of hereditary issues play a large part in a certain percentage of obesity that’s greater than the assumed 99% (though I have no cite but my personal family experience).
King of Soup Taxes on both tobacco and fatty foods effect, as acsenray points out as well, the poorest cross section because the large corporations that employ hundreds if not thousands of people needs to make a profit to stay in business to pay the taxes that feeds the hog that is the government.
Unfortunately, there’s no way around it. A tax on fatty chow would lessen the purchases by a small margin, but as we’ve seen with every other large commodity thus far, (gas, cigarettes) Americans though they may bitch, will continue to pay.
I was amazed that a lifetime of compulsive eating could be completely altered by a medication that is used to treat seizures. Our individual brain chemistry may make the difference in our ability to “choose” more often than we know. What’s true for one person is not necessarily true for another.
You mean that some day fat people will be discriminated against in society and employment? People will stare at them in public and make oinking and mooing sounds as they pass as if they weren’t human beings? People will laugh at them if they go to a gym to work out and yet criticize them for not exercising more? People will make comments about how fat people smell bad? There won’t be enough room for fat people to walk between tables in a restaurant or squeeze into a booth? Comedians will make fun of fat women? Guys won’t want to date fat girls? Airplanes won’t have any special accomodations of the morbidly obese? Do you think that fat people will just have to pay twice as much for an airline ticket?
What can you be thinking?
I used to be obese. If I see you being a jerk about people’s size, I will steal your ciggies and blow smoke in your face.
Oh, you’re a Guest…Cigar? Cigarette? Tiparillo?
(Bolding mine)
Not directed solely at you acenray…but
On what planet is McDonald’s food “tasty”?
I really think that is part of the problem right there. Some people have no appreciation for good food.
$10 isn’t all that cheap. Considering I can go to the restaurant down the street from my work and get a steak with grilled peppers, onions, and mushrooms, salad, and roasted potatos for $9 CDN.
You can buy a box of 4 large Bison burgers, which taste better and are better for you for around $8 CDN.
It still stuns me when I can see somebody turn down fresh mozzarella, or cacciocavalo, or even real aged white cheddar, for a slice of processed cheese.
McDonalds food is far from being tasty OR cheap. Fast, yeah, convenient sometimes.
I think that when more people begin to appreciate real food, people will naturally make better choices, and therefore become healthier.
Maybe I’m out of touch…
<End of hijack/rant>
Not to repeat myself or anything BUT I am calm kiwi, I am a smoker. 
What irritates the FUCK out of me about smoking tax is this;
Children in cars unsecured may die!
Problem solved! Carseats become compulsory.
Marajuana is a bad nasty drug that will lead to addiction of higher drugs…its illegal! Problem solved! Send them to jail.
Children drown in pools! Problem solved! Make fencing pools compulsory.
Asbestos will kill people! Problem solved! Remove all asbestos and make it’s use illegal.
Driving drunk is bad and will kill people! Problem solved! Make driving drunk illegal.
Glue sniffing is dangerous and stupid! Problem solved! Make selling glue to under 16 yr olds illegal.
Making "P’ is stupid and illegal! Problem solved! Make all those pharmacy medications used to make “P” prescription only.
SMOKING KILLS SMOKERS AND OTHERS! Solution? Make smokers pay more for it???
If if smoking is that fucking bad (and I’m sure it is) why not BAN it, make it ILLEGAL! That is the ONLY way some of us hardcore addicts will give up. Why don’t the govt ban it? Because of the BILLIONS of dollars they get from smokers. You non addicted types need to realise that when you pass that sad, sad fucker smoking on the footpath in the pouring rain they are paying for YOUR healthcare as much as they are causing you harm. I would personally congratulate the first counrty that had the balls and the financial reserves to fucking ban smoking…until MY country does I am a smoker. I don’t give a shit how many MILLIONS they waste on ads telling me I may be killing myself (DOH-really) until they make it illegal I am financing my health care and that of many others.
*all laws are NZ ones but I’m sure smokers fund others healthcare everywhere.
And a “fat-tax” was debated here and rejected. They prefer to keep the health budget afloat by us chimneys.
Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, and it would be even less effective for something more addictive like cigarettes. You’d just get massive criminal activity to continue the cigarette pipeline.
If the taxes are that onerous, best to quit and really stick it to the Man.