December 17, 2001
Dear Governor Pataki, Senators and Assemblymembers,
I'm asking you to oppose further taxation without representation heaped
upon adults who choose to smoke, including
numerous senior citizens on a fixed budget who are begging for financial
relief from this burden. Believe it or not, they're still
alive and still smoking. The "for the children" charade must
not be allowed to continue. There are laws on the books to stop
"children" from gaining access to tobacco. How about enforcing
those?
Raising taxes to impose personal moral agendas about what is correct
behavior and what is incorrect behavior is alarmingly
close to abuse of power with a puritanical slant. It is not yours
or anyone else's place to punish and strongarm adults into
quitting a legal product. You can care about others' health,
certainly, but when laws are passed to bring about conformity then
that goes beyond care and into control.
So far we have been the victims of the Master Settlement Agreement,
federal tax increases on cigarettes and state tax increases
on cigarettes, all in the name of restitution for the care of sick
smokers. Now Governor Pataki entertains another payout for
the care of sick smokers. Don't you think that's been covered
already? Our own Congressional Research Service stated in
their report, The Proposed Tobacco Settlement: Who Pays for the Health
Costs of Smoking?, "In general, smokers do not
appear to currently impose net financial costs on the rest of society.
The tobacco settlement will increase the transfer of resources from the
smoking to the nonsmoking public." You can read their full report
at
http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/crs/ascii/97-1053
And that's not counting federal and state/city taxes also to cover
alleged health costs. Currently, the health organizations are
lobbying the federal government to increase taxes to cover health costs.
How many times are we supposed to cover costs they
say we incur?
If newspaper accounts are correct, the governor actually intends this
tax hike to soften the increased budget deficit brought on
by the attack on NYC. How fair is it to tax only one third of the population
to the benefit of all?
Fleecing adults who choose to smoke has degenerated from good intentions
to simple greed. Smokers are now not only
paying their own way but every other individual's way who gets sick
- or the roads they drive on or the schools their children
go to. Pick one or all, they all apply to the redistribution
of cigarette taxes. I'd honestly like to know when the fast food
and
dessert eaters will be hit with taxes to cover the costs that obesity
causes to health.
On December 14th (only a few days ago) Surgeon General David Satcher,
calling for changes in policies from schools to the
fast-food industry, warned that the nation's obesity epidemic has gotten
so bad it soon may overtake tobacco as the leading
cause of preventable deaths. Some 300,000 people a year die from illnesses
directly caused or worsened by being overweight.
The toll threatens to wipe out progress fighting cancer and heart disease,
and could even exceed cigarettes' harm he warned.
You can read his statements in an article at:
http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/193532p-1878670c.html
I am only 103 pounds. Why am I paying for those that stuff their
face to excess and end up with a coronary? Besides that,
this is the slippery slope your forced good health policy concerning
legal cigarettes is on. If you find you are willing to obstruct
my choice to smoke cigarettes through behavior modifying taxation techniques
then what will stop you from attempting to
obstruct my choice of what food I (or you!) will put in my mouth.
The notion has already sprouted into calls for action.
Satcher said, "A key is treating obesity not just as a personal responsibility
but one shared by the community and industry."
And health and nutrition specialists from all over Maine have taken
aim at two factors in the current obesity epidemic: soda and
television. They agreed soda and other sugar-loaded drinks are a leading
cause of obesity. Maine’s state health officer, Dr.
Dora Anne Mills, summed up by saying that the war against soda is about
where the war against tobacco was 15 years ago,
when “people thought you were nuts if you fought tobacco.” She suggested
an advertising campaign, but subtler than just telling
people “Pepsi is bad.” She advised a drive to make it unacceptable
for schools to accept the money and free sports scoreboards that the soda
promoters use as an incentive. She thought fattening snacks should be taxed,
but not like the old “snack tax,” which was a revenue measure, not a health
measure. Oh, a "health measure." Sound familiar? What next?
(This article is at: http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/article.html?ID=47132)
Keep saying it's okay to tax cigarettes to cover healthcare costs and
next your meal and your snacks will be taxed next to
cover half of the nation's population that is overweight (they consider
over 20 pounds to be overweight). If Dr. Mills has her
way she'll be legislatively mandating next how many hours of TV you
can watch. In the end, the entire alleged healthcare costs
are a wash across the individual lifestyle board. We all get
sick eventually (85% of the population dies from disease) and need
healthcare. I'm not here to encourage taxing anyone for anything
they do. I am here to discourage the unfair proportion of
costs, ergo taxation, legislators are alleging on an unpopular group.
It's time to find another way to pay for healthcare in this
nation that is not based on an individual lifestyle basis calculation
because that calculation all works out even in the end for
everyone. I pay for you and you pay for me.
One last thing to consider is that while taxes are considered as a way
to cover health expenses for the "poor," it is the lower
and middle classes that smoke the most. If we ascribe to your notion
that they cost society in general then you are taking
money from those who will need it later, no? Or who could use
it for general health pre-screening? Note in SG Satcher's
statements concerning obesity that he blames the poor most for a bad
diet. Let's tax snacks to save healthcare costs later,
sure! Then the poor again will be victimized "for their own good,"
leaving them only enough to afford McDonalds. Accepting
cigarette taxes as acceptable means of "recovering" costs will spill
over into all facets of our lives.
To take an excerpt from a recent Walter E. Williams (1) column regarding cigarette taxes:
"Some states, such as Washington and Michigan,
have taxes that make a carton of cigarettes cost as much as
$48. Why is the smuggler my hero? It's easy.
People want to and have the right to engage in peaceable, mutually
agreeable, voluntary exchange, and a third-party
– government – tells them no.
"The smuggler thwarts the government's mission
of interference. Before we go bad-mouthing smugglers, we might
consider that a number of the men we celebrate
each Fourth of July, including John Hancock, the first signer of
our Declaration of Independence, were smugglers.
At that time, it was the British Parliament imposing
confiscatory taxes – today it's federal,state
and local governments.
"Confiscatory taxes are an abuse of power regardless
of what government levies them."
In closing, what anyone does, as long as it's legal, including smoking
and eating junk food, is none of anyone's business to
interfere with, especially with intolerant laws by those in power.
Ethics and integrity should be your guide, not an imposition of
your personal will or a dependence on a one-sided argument about costs
to society.
Sincerely,
Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment
(NYC C.L.A.S.H.)
P.O. Box 1036
Brooklyn, NY 11234
(917) 888-9317
http://www.nycclash.com
Note: NYC C.L.A.S.H. has no ties whatsoever to the tobacco industry.
We are a grassroots organization operating under a
"Doing Business As" (DBA).
(1) Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of
Economics at
George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.