As you probably already know, Ballot Measure 20 recently passed with overwhelming support, giving Oregonians a 60-cent tax increase on every pack of cigarettes they buy. This measure assumes that smokers can and should be penalized for choosing to do something that society looks down on.
People who smoke cigarettes do have statistically higher health care costs than the average citizen. So do people who overeat. According to the Surgeon General, obesity is responsible for 300,000 premature deaths every year, compared to the 400,000 attributed to smoking.
Obesity among adults has doubled since 1980. While smoking may be slightly deadlier right now, if current trends continue, there soon will be more fatalities from overeating than from diseases related to smoking.
Type 2 Diabetes increases the risk of stroke, blindness and may even result in parts of your body being amputated. This disease used to be referred to as adult-onset diabetes. That term no longer accurately describes Type 2 Diabetes. In 1993, children accounted for 5 percent of the diagnosed cases. Now, nearly half of new cases occur among children, with the national total for all age groups approaching 16 million. Hereditary vulnerability can be a factor, but this disease is primarily caused by overeating and poor diet.
The last time I checked, we lived in a free country. Smoking a cigarette should not make you any more a target for state-sponsored persecution than gorging yourself on Twinkies, or any other way of abusing your body.
Jean Celman passed away at age 122. The Guinness Book of World Records listed Celman as the oldest human to ever live. She also smoked a pack of cigarettes every day for 105 years. A beef rancher who lived in the Himalayan Mountains smoked two packs a day for 120 years and lived to the ripe old age of 141.
Smoking harms your body, but you won’t drop dead from it after one puff. In 1914, Popular Mechanics published a report stating that the element selenium, a popular dietary supplement, could prevent or even cure cancer in farm animals. In a recent study done by the University of Arizona, taking selenium resulted in a 48 percent reduction of the risk of contracting lung cancer.
Smokers’ inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness shouldn’t come with a price tag. Even if you don’t smoke, even if you hate the smell of people who do smoke, standing up against policies like this one that infringe on basic rights and attempt to make quality judgments on people benefits you, too. Next time, you might be the object of some overzealous socialist program telling you how to run your life.
Since before the American Revolution, our forefathers have refused to be taxed without representation. If people who smoke cigarettes, or any group of people, are specifically and exclusively targeted by a tax, then they should be given special representation in government.
Will we see a seat in the Oregon House of Representative designated for a smoker to help decide how the money being collected from his constituents will be spent? I don’t think so. Just because “sin taxes” like Measure 20 are passed by voters does not make them morally or legally justified. Our state government should not use popularity contests to vilify and exploit any segment of society.
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