a) partially (and perhaps completely) offset the external costs.
b) reduced the extent of the external costs by the reduction in cigarettes smoked due to the higher cost.

Admittedly neither of these arguments is fool proof but they have been strong enough for me to alwasy support increasing the taxes on cigarettes while allowing people to make the personal decision on whether or not they want to smoke–as long as they don’t do it around me.

As for how the tobacco settlement you bring up a good though I think different point. I’d be interested to knowing how the settlement money was really spent and the reasoning behind it. If you have that data or are interested in writing about it feel free to email us here and we’ll look at putting it up.

Finally, as far as your “Big Mac” analogy, it’s a good argument and there are certainly social costs with that as well…medicaid, etc. My hope on that one is to see more of the costs associated with people living unhealthy lifestyles (like morbid obesity) bear more of the costs associated with that (the same way smokers often pay higher medical insurance). To me, it makes all the sense in the world that people who eat unhealthily would pay more for that decision.

Of course, I can just hear it now, “obesity is a disease, it’s not their fault, low income people don’t have time/money to eat healthy food.” I’m sorry I don’t buy any of these arguments. I’ve seen too many people of size eating super-sized chili cheese fries when other things were on the menu to move the blame away from the individual (or the parents in the case of juvinal obesity).

What ever happened to personal responsibility and freedom of choice?

Why isn’t there a $2.00 tax on each Big Mac sold in this country when obesity and diabites are far worse than lung cancer?

Why buy into the government line of BS when every State with the exception of the poorest one being Mississippi spent the tobacco settlement money on everything else except what it was supposed to go to.

There are no people in this country that think smoking is harmless to their health yet they CHOOSE to smoke anyway just like you and me. It is illegal for the government to make me pay more for the services they provide everyone else that doesn’t smoke.

If you want your children and grandchildren to grow up smoke free that is YOUR responsibility, not the governments nor mine. By the way, my son doesn’t smoke because he CHOOSES not to.

The flat tax is the only fair way to treat everyone equally. We need to wean the various governmental agencies off the cigarette tax money just as well as weaning America off foreign oil.

People need to take some personal responsibility and not expect the government to tell us what we can and can not do. That attitude of having Big Brother making my decisions for me is not FREEDOM at all.

What does a Republican Really know ’bout that?!?!

Sincerely,

H.Clinton