So our legislators decided enough is enough and to go easy on the tobacco companies who coincidently made some generous contributions to their party coffers. But that is how you get things done in St. Paul and Washington. You bribe people. Statistics prove out that sin taxes work and less and less people have started smoking and many have quit but apparently that doesn't mean anything to legislators. Campaign contributions do.
I was married to the most wonderful women you could ever want to meet for 49 years but she had one flaw. She smoked. She started like most smokers, in her teens, raised in a household where both parents smoked. She became a lifetime smoker. Had cigarettes not been a quarter a pack back in those days and more expensive, she never would have started. She was just too frugal for that. But she did and she paid for it with her life.
I bought gas the other day and the person in front of me at the station bought a carton of cigarettes. They were $80. That would fill my gas tank four times. It would buy me groceries for a week. Eighty dollars to ruin your health? Eighty dollars to maybe burn your house down some day. Eighty dollars to ruin not only your health but also your family's health. Eighty dollars to ostracize you from the public with a habit that is socially unacceptable.
It's not easy to quit but there is help available and most people who don't smoke would applaud you for it. If the money from the tobacco tax went for more cessation programs it would be easier but it doesn't. The tobacco companies couldn't care less about your health and apparently there are legislators that agree with them.
Mike Holst
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Crosslake
