Why say YES to higher taxes on cigarettes and tobacco....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 5-8-2012

This topic is so important I postponed the post I planned for today in my vitamin & mineral series to this Thursday.

Here in California, we will soon have a chance to vote on a Proposition 29 to add a dollar a pack fee or tax to each pack of cigarettes and a comparable amount to other kinds of tobacco.

When it passes as it deserves to do, some smokers will succeed in quitting.  Most of those who can’t quit, don’t want to, or have no clue why they should will smoke less though.  And there will be a smaller number of young people who become new smokers.

Here is a fact to get a hold of believe and understand.  Even if the funds raised were flushed down the toilet, the people in the state of California will be money ahead.  They will be safer, have better health, and live longer.

A.  It’s hard to understate the economic costs that smoking causes. 

1.  If you have health insurance, you pay extra each month directly or in money your employer pays that you could have gotten otherwise or both.

Smokers cause an average of $1400 a year of extra medical care costs.  So far everyone pays that extra cost—including you even if you do not smoke.

So, if there are less people who smoke once such a tax is passed and the ones who smoke or use tobacco use less, these added health care costs will go down.

2.  The money that pays these extra costs that you are deprived of cannot be spent on the other things you might buy with that money.  So there is less demand and businesses need fewer employees.  That means there are less jobs.

So if you do not smoke, Proposition 29 not only will spend NONE of your other tax dollars, you will be money ahead if it passes!

B.  Both smokers and nonsmokers will be healthier, safer, and live longer if Proposition 29 passes.

1.  All tobacco products that people use put a radioactive element, polonium, into the bloodstream of the users a recent study revealed.  Tobacco products cause at least 30% of all cancers.  This explains why the cancers caused can be anywhere in the body and are.

Since breathing tobacco smoke delivers this element into the blood stream of the people who breathe it, even if you are a nonsmoker, you can get cancer from second hand smoke.

This risk is dose related.  So if fewer people use tobacco and those who do use tobacco use less, it will cause less cancers.

AND, if you are a nonsmoker, you will be exposed to less second hand smoke and YOUR cancer risk will go down.

2.  And cancer is the LITTLE risk from smoking.  Some smokers escape it. 

But what few smokers and most doctors know is that tobacco smoke begins to cause heart disease and narrowed blood vessels with every single exposure. Repeat, with every single exposure they have more heart disease risk.

NO smoker or person exposed to second hand smoke escapes this effect.  Even teenagers who are brand new smokers begin to be harmed by this.

(As just one example, a recent study found that smoking just THREE cigarettes a day increases heart disease risk by something like 70%.)

This risk kills at least twice as many smokers as cancer does.

This risk too is dose related.  So if fewer people use tobacco and those who do use tobacco use less, it will cause less strokes and heart attacks and other circulatory problems.

AND, if you are a nonsmoker, you will be exposed to less second hand smoke and YOUR risk of strokes and heart attacks and other circulatory problems will go down.

But there is even more.  In people who have some blood vessels problems that might cause a heart attack but have escaped it so far, if they are exposed to tobacco smoke, it will often trigger a heart attack they otherwise would have avoided.

So even if you are a nonsmoker, and if you haven’t been perfect at eating right and exercising, if Proposition 29 passes and there is less second hand smoke in your life, YOU will be safer.  Your chances of avoiding a heart attack triggered by tobacco smoke will go down.

That means regardless of whether you smoke or not, you will be safer, in better health, and likely live longer if Proposition 29 passes.

THE ONLY LOSER IF PROPOSITION 29 PASSES WILL BE TOBACCO COMPANIES.

So they’ve made disinformation ads that make it sound like Proposition 29 will waste tax money.

Since you and almost everyone else hates paying taxes and hates having that money wasted, that SOUNDS like a problem.

But this reality behind this argument is about as substantial as an airplane wing made out of toilet paper.

No taxes from sales tax or income tax or any other tax you pay will go to what the money raised by Proposition 29 goes to.

So this is a total smoke screen designed to make people who hate taxes or having their tax dollars wasted vote against it out of reflex.

It’s totally bogus.   It’s deliberately trying to fool you into voting against something the argument does NOT apply to.

No taxes from sales tax or income tax or any other tax you pay will go to what the money raised by Proposition 29 goes to.

Worse, the money raised will go to research ways to undo or prevent the damage already caused by tobacco.

Their ads say that some of this money might get spent outside California as if that was a horrible flaw.

Ridiculous!

If you have lung cancer caused by smoking you did or second hand smoke you were exposed to, do you really care if the research that saves you was done in San Francisco or Sloan Kettering in New York or Cambridge, England or in Taiwan?

Of course not. 

But without Proposition 29, that research might not get done at all.

How about jobs for Californians?

They lose that argument too.  If  Proposition 29 passes, Californian will pay so much less than they would have in health care costs, California companies will need to hire more workers or at least cut back less.

Do NOT, repeat NOT be fooled by the tobacco company’s ads.

They do NOT want less profit from tobacco in California and a smaller number of people buying it in the future too.

THAT is all they care about.

Don’t fall for their slick lies that the facts are otherwise.

If you are a California voter, vote for more money and better health for you and vote for Proposition 29.

And, if you live elsewhere, do everything you can to support having your state increase tobacco taxes that much.