The Journal

Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial

Smokers are the last mainstream minority group in America against which it is socially acceptable to discriminate.

Smokers today are increasingly harassed, isolated into small groups, or banned entirely from establishments. They pay more taxes and are being asked for more constantly. I paid more in excise taxes on cigarettes last year than in state income taxes.

Today's trend to ban smoking is going in the wrong direction. By municipalities banning smoking, they are infringing on the rights of business owners. Just as an individual has the right to decide whether or not he or she smokes or permits smoking inside his or her own home, business owners should be given the same opportunity. If a smoke free establishment really is the goal, provide tax breaks to businesses that choose to do so.

Workers can choose whether or not they wish to work in an environment that allows smoking. Reasonable accommodations must be made to people that are asthmatic or allergic to smoke. That being said, in the late '90s the Environmental Protection Agency found that the average adult that was regularly exposed to secondhand smoke had a 1 in 30,000 chance of contracting lung cancer in any given year.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program's expansion that President Bush recently vetoed would have been paid for by a 61 cent increase per pack of cigarettes. The tax on cigarettes is called an excise tax, or sometimes a "sin tax." Excise taxes are levied on tobacco and to a lesser degree, alcohol. Excise taxes are charged in addition to sales taxes. Using excise taxes is counter intuitive. The reason for high excise taxes is to discourage people from smoking and to encourage smokers to quit.

If excise taxes work like they are supposed to, then the amount raised will decrease and can no longer fund what it is earmarked for. At best, excise taxes are a politically convenient way to hike taxes and at worst don't work.

Tobacco money is typically wasted. In the late '90s, the four largest tobacco corporations settled a lawsuit with states that sued to recoup money spent on treating smoking related illnesses. Hundreds of billions of dollars was disbursed to the states. Missouri's portion of the tobacco settlement was supposed to go entirely to tobacco prevention programs and never did.

In the 2006 election, Amendment Three would have raised the state excise tax to 85 cents. The increase was earmarked to fund smoking prevention and cessation programs, as well as to restore some of the ninety thousand people cut from Medicaid in 2004. It was voted down because according to exit polls, the population believed that it would not fund these programs, despite the fact that Amendment Three required it. Much of the public also believed that the hikes were too large an increase.

If lawmakers want to punish smokers, fine. Then let's be equitable. Levy taxes on fast food. Obesity is the leading cause of preventable death. Begin to heavily ticket people who don't wear their seatbelts and require automakers to install breath analyzers to start cars. It's not fair to single out a behavior that a few people participate in, force them to pay more taxes and then allow that behavior only in their homes.

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