Taking Away the Tax Base

I just want to know how a state that has predicated paying its bills on gas and smoking taxes will be able to expand spending while the tax base shrivels -- by design.

Anybody out there? Too complicated a question is it?

"Adult smoking rate plunges in Mass.; Results coincide with potent ads" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | July 31, 2008

Nearly 8 percent fewer Massachusetts adults smoked in 2007 than the year before, the steepest decline in cigarette use in more than a decade, state health authorities reported yesterday.

The drop coincided with the revival of the state's tobacco-control program, which was slashed under the administrations of Jane Swift and Mitt Romney. The Department of Public Health, for example, in boosting its spending by 50 percent, resurrected in-your-face television ads starring former smokers whose health was affected by cigarettes.

But we were counting on those taxes to fund the state government.

At the same time, the state's quest to insure nearly every resident, which has extended coverage to more than 350,000 adults, may have contributed to the decline.

Another thing this government doesn't have enough money for.

When cigarette taxes increased by $1 a pack at the start of this month, it spawned a flurry of calls to the state hotline that helps smokers. In a typical month, that service gets 400 or 500 calls. By yesterday, more than 7,000 people had called this month, compelling the state to extend a nicotine replacement patch giveaway through August to meet demand.

That two-month campaign is costing $500,000. Overall, the state spent close to $13 million on tobacco control in the budget year that just ended. At its high point, in 2001, spending stood at $50.5 million; within a few years, it had plunged to $2.5 million.

Tobacco-control specialists not connected with the state cautioned that it can be risky to draw too many conclusions from one year's worth of data. But they also acknowledged that Massachusetts' smoking rates have been plunging for two decades.

Oh, so the PR CAMPAIGN using TAXPAYER DOLLARS really has NO EFFECT at all --- despite the blaring headlines claiming such success!!!

Sigh! Never changes with the agenda-pushing MSM!!!

Fewer than 2 in 10 men currently smoke. Within a few years, Connolly said, smoking rates may hover near 10 percent, leaving only the most "hardcore" smokers. "Then what do we do?" he said. "Do we treat tobacco like cocaine or opium? Do we ban it?"

Why does FASCISM have to creep into it?

And if you go after those guys, WHO is going to PAY the TAXES?!!!!

Smoking is blamed for 400,000 deaths a year, making it the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yup, and the FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS SUBSIDIZES IT the whole way!!!!

We INSIST FOREIGN COUNTRIES take our smoke sticks under penalty of sanctions!!!

The decline has not been noticed only by those who oppose tobacco: Big tobacco has felt the drop acutely.

"The decline in the US cigarette market is one that continues year on year," said David Sutton, a spokesman for the nation's largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA. "We expect that to continue."

The company lost one more customer yesterday: Joanne Lynn, a Marlboro devotee for 35 years.

Her husband had pressured her relentlessly to quit. Then there was that cigarette odor that fouled her clothing. "And we'll be taking a walk, and we're approaching a hill, and I say, 'Oh, my, we have to do the hill,' " said Lynn, 49, who sometimes wasn't sure her lungs could take the climb.

So she finally decided to quit, in no small part because she and other colleagues received an e-mail from their boss telling them about the state's nicotine patch giveaway.

Her boss: Auerbach, the Department of Public Health commissioner.

Now, she said, she won't have to play a daily game of hide-and-seek.

"I used to sneak out of the building, run down the street, and hope the commissioner or somebody didn't catch me smoking my cigarette," said Lynn, of Saugus, who works in the agency's graphic design department. "I didn't want to smoke in front of the building with the big DPH sign there."

No, you will just STINK of IT!!!

But, duh, you'll fool 'em, lady!!!!

And what a funny anecdote, huh?

Yeah, QUIT SMOKING because the AGENDA-PUSHING Boston Globe says so!!!!

I've never smoked, but I think I'll go light up just on general principle!!!!!!!