The Hoosier Pundit has a post entitled Mitch Daniels: “A Long Step Toward a Dream of a Healthier Indiana”. He notes that Gov. Daniels signed the cigarette tax hike (linked to the health care plan for low income Hoosiers) and that smokers and business owners who will lose cigarette sales to Kentucky are not pleased. But then he goes on to say:
That anger has to be placed and weighed against the 140,000 Hoosiers that will be helped by the plan, and any Hoosier that quits smoking or doesn’t start because of it, particularly teenagers and youth.
Growing up, my parents were smokers. My wife’s parents were smokers. I’ve seen how tough it is to quit once the habit has been established. While a tax on addicts is, perhaps, problematic; I’ll go along with the Hoosier Pundit’s hope that it serves to deter smoking. And, if it doesn’t, perhaps their addiction can at least do some good in the form of providing health care to those who couldn’t otherwise afford it. (There may be a fair amount of overlap, of course.)
I still want to know why we pick on smokers so much and not the “other” societal ills? Why is it that drinkers get a pass? Drunks cause more damage to society than smokers (through drunk driving deaths, property damage, etc) yet I don’t hear anyone yelling to raise the liquor tax to provide benefits to the indigent? So wold someone explain to me why smokers have become the acceptable targets of society? Ban them from buildings, tax them, segregate them. I hate to say it, but it’s beginning to sound like discrimination to me. Societally acceptable discrimination, but discrimination none the less. If we tried to do this based on skin color or weight you can bet there’d be a huge lawsuit. “Sorry sir, you’re too fat to frequent our restaurant”. “Sorry sir, no blacks allowed in here”.
Why smokers?
P.S. As a side note, I’m not a smoker but it does seem to me like they are getting picked on in a most unfair manner.
Well, smoking in buildings is different because… peoples’ “fatness” or “blackness” doesn’t get into other peoples’ lungs and cause them to have increased risk of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, etc. That’s the answer to “why smokers?” Also in regard to restaurants, smokers are segregated not only for the health reasons, but because their habit is unpleasant to non-smokers. If I’m paying for a steak, I want to taste the steak–not smell someone’s goddamn cigarette smoke.
Regarding drinking… the majority of people who drink alcohol do so in moderation. In contrast, most smokers are addicts who are in for at least 10-20 cigarettes/day, every day.
I assume that cigarettes are more addictive than booze. Is that accurate? Anyone know how much more addictive?
T’s point is accurate. Smoke is not contained and gets into everyone else’s air. Certainly alcohol has its by-products: drunks do bad things. But, the bad things are not as intrinsic to alcohol. You can drink in a room with someone without that other person having to ingest the by-product.
But, it’s also true that smokers are a fairly easy target and, with taxes being as demonized as they have been, it’s harder to tax the general public even for the general benefit.
.As fine as the dining culture is in France, they have not successfully tackled the ‘smoking-at-table’ problem.France has a highly centralzied goverment,and they have tried to get French smokers to not smoke at the table publically,but it still is a problem and a huge problem in many homes. The USA is a non-smokers’ paradise in comparison,and we have led the way in anti-tobacco.Our school did an exchange program with Germany,and the biggest cultural shock was that all the German teens expected to smoke in their American homes and all the American host homes expected they wouldnt.
Liquor is quite different. I don’t think France will ever try to stamp out wine,and by extension all alochol is safe. I think that’s the same in USA. In USA we’d have to allow the beer culture and the wine culture,just control it. There’s still a sophistication in knowing or offering just the right wine or just the right ‘aperitif’. When I taught all the teachers had anti-drinking posters in our classrooms.The poster read: ‘If you drive and drink kiss your mother good-by’ with a very stark picture. This campaign started in early 80s.The huge majority of teens now don’t smoke, and smoking is considered ‘really dumb’for those who do, but there still is a drinking culture,but greatly diminished over the last 30 years.This is my experience as a teacher.
Smoking, done at any level, is harmful to both the person using it and the people around that person. We ALL pay for that with the cost of healthcare. It really doesn’t matter if my work pays for it or the government pays for it, I’m helping pay for it and it pisses me off.
Wtih alcohol, light to moderate levels are not harmful. Some studies say that light drinking of somethings (red wine, beer) even has health benefits.
Heavy drinking has the same problems as smoking (drunk drivers, health issues of the user). However, heavy ANYTHING has issues. Driving a car is fine, driving it 100mph causes issues. Same can be said for thousands of things.
Overweight people usually only harm themselves, so there isn’t much point in going after them except for the community health costs I already mentioned. However, some places are trying to go after this as well, such as NYC banning all trans-fats.
Race should never be compared to any of this as it is NOT a choice, it is part of who you are. Making decisions based on someone’s race (be it for their benefit or to hurt them) is just flat wrong no matter what.
Doug–
The amount that either cigarettes or alcohol are addictive depends on the individual user. The observation I was trying to make was that the majority of cigarette users are addicts. You see them each morning buying a pack at the Shell station, or faithfully buying a carton every week or so. There are some “social smokers”. But a large majority of smokers are continually dosing themselves one to two times per hour, every waking hour of their lives. In contrast, most alcohol users are infrequent or moderate users, with a much smaller percentage being habitual users or alcoholics.
Cigarette users are easy to tax, because they’ll put up with a lot of taxation before they’ll quit. The same as they’ll put up with smelly clothes, expensive insurance, a nagging cough, and frequent illness. Since the majority of alcohol users aren’t addicted, if the tax got too high they would probably just curtail their usage.
Just what IS the death rate for second hand smoke? Is the threat of second hand smoke as ominous as global warming? As hazardous as cell phones while driving? As perilous as a misplaced sofa by an unlicensed interior designer??
Doug, having grown up in smoking households, shouldn’t you, your wife or I be on deaths door? Is the effect of second hand smoke in a nightclub for 4 hours honestly more detrimental than just walking around downtown?
The truly sad part about this whole thing is,
the money raised from the tax will never get to help those 140,000 hoosiers. We’ve just enabled another government bureaucracy to mire itself in red tape and mismanagement. I challenge anyone to follow this program all the way through, and a c-note says 10% of those so called 140,000 will actually see a doctor or a benefit from this if that. You won’t see any decrease in medicaid/medicare claims whatsoever.
Taxing the bejesus out of anything results in unintended consequences, which are usually not desireable.
Tim Zank
How can you say that Indiana is taxing the bejuses out of smokers?? Even at 99.5/end we are still below the national average. Smokers tax the bejuses out of us with higher healthcare costs………..
bburg, just because our rates are below the national average doesn’t make it reasonable or right. If you want to provide health care for poor people, tax EVERYONE equally and provide it, but to single out any one group is patently unfair. As for the argument that smokers make your health care costs go up, that may be true, but if your suggestion is we force people to stop behavior that is harmful to themselves so the state can save some money, are we heading down a path we really want to be on? Seems a tad Orwellian, no?
You bring up an interesting point, Tim. And it’s not just government. How far are we going to let insurers go in designing their policies? As information gets better, the potential for troubling underwriting decisions is going to increase. Genetic predispositions for various diseases? Increased ability to detect when a person has engaged in activity that goes against what’s allowed under the policy?
On the other hand, insurers are not the government and can’t use force to incarcerate you when you don’t pay up. They can just cancel your policy and/or stick you with the bill. Bringing to mind Pretty Boy Floyd:
As substances go, nicotine is markedly more addictive than alcohol. Virtually all regular cigarette smokers are “addicted” meaning that they experience physiologically-based withdrawal symptoms (such as headaches and cravings) which are manifest within a week or so of regular usage. (As a matter of fact, it takes less time to induce physiological dependence upon nicotine vs. heroin/opioids in lab rats.) In contrast (and quite thankfully), very few regular users of alcohol are physiologically dependent or experience withdrawal symptoms (such as “shakes”) when they stop drinking.
Smoking rates being higher in the lower socioeconomic classes, many of these folks will be being taxed for a benefit that they end up receiving back in healthcare coverage. Look, a lot of people don’t have enough money for even very inexpensive antibiotics–but there’s always just enough money for cigarettes. More than a few times I’ve had to suggest that someone use tomorrow’s cigarette money for tonight’s antibiotic for their child. As a parent, I’m shocked that such logic actually has to be spoken. But as a physician I can assure you it happens. Now if you add a tax on the cigarettes, that same person will be voluntarily making a contribution to a health plan for him/herself, and might even curtail usage to boot. And I, with my healthcare covered by a plan I actually purchased, am left out of the equation. Now there will be some people who purchase their own health plans and also smoke. Is it fair to them? Not really. But they have an easy out from this voluntary tax. They can quit smoking.
Again, I think that anything that you can’t change (your genes) shouldn’t be held against you.
However, I support shifting the costs of optional activities to those that choose to do them. If I choose to live healthy, I shouldn’t have to pay for other’s unhealthy habits.
As I think of it, I think that is the ONLY thing I have against government provided health care, and I don’t consider myself to be someone that is greatly opposed to it.
Private companies have compitiion to shape their policies. Just like a Mustang costs more to insure than a similarly priced minivan, risk based pricing is moving into healthcare. I think that is a good thing, and I see more and more insurers going down that path as they try to draw people to their company.
However, if it is the government doing it, how do you make those that choose to do things that cost more pay for their increase? We see how hard it is just to raise the reimbursement of one thing that is well-known to have a price in terms of health costs. What if we did go after the other activities?
Personally, I welcome the day that I can pay an ultra-low health care fee if I adhere to a set of rules, and I will gladly disclose a great deal of personal information for that.