The Large Tobacco companies are currently contributing a half a billion dollars a year to the state of Texas, as part of a
1998 Lawsuit and the big boys are now wanting the small cigarette manufacturers to pay they're share. That was a good start but they both need to be paying more now, significantly. The Tobacco toxin has zero benefits to anyone and everyone, society, the environment and especially the human body. Since it does nothing good, lets make it do something good. Use it to pay the state further in it's budget crises.
I'm all for people making their own choices and decisions. Free will has to be one of our greatest gifts as people, especially in the free world. As adults we absolutely should be allowed to chose for ourselves and make up our own minds (I was never a fan of being forced to have to ride a bike with a helmet) but that doesn't mean people shouldn't have to pay a lot for something that is bad. In a time when our cities and state need revenue to save the most important functions of society as we see them starting to crumble before our eyes, why not?
It's time for some additional squeezing, across the board. I'm not arguing to make it illegal so I hope my point doesn't get misconstrued. We don't need to make it illegal but if people are going to chose to partake in past times and leisure activities that involve polluting the environment pretty harshly with cigarette butts and making their bodies unhealthy, they can at the same time contribute positively to society by paying heavy taxes for it and helping to save education and health care. Give it a positive spin.
The large Tobacco companies right now are asking the small manufacturers to raise tens of millions of dollars for the state, which lawmakers agree would be helpful as they prepare to slash health care funding to meet a massive budget shortfall. By all means lets do it. The small tobacco companies on the other hand are saying that this is merely an effort by big companies to snuff out their competition and that they were not part of the '98 lawsuit because they were not engaged in the same misleading practices the big companies were accused of and they shouldn't be subject to their own personal tax. I find that irrelevant and personally unsympathetic in our present and current circumstances. All of this was a topic in an excellent article I recently read on the subject, called
"In Hunt for Revenue."
We need to seriously consider further taxing all of the tobacco companies, large and small with heavier taxes. The time is now. Our lawmakers should start making the propositions in lieu of the cuts we've been hearing about. Cigarettes can and should start costing about fifteen dollars a pack. You can smoke if you want, it's not illegal but you should have to pay for it and contribute to funding positive, productive programs and functions for the state. It doesn't necessarily have to be a smoke free society like from something out of the science fiction
1993 movie Demolition Man but if people are going to smoke, again as I have said, they can at the same time further contribute towards funding. At this point I would call it bailing out or saving anyway.
The big companies of the lawsuit were accused of suppressing years of evidence about the dangers associated with smoking and settled a lawsuit in 1998 agreeing to pay Texas more then $17 billion dollars over 25 years, or about 3 billion a year for public health and smoking prevention funds while the small cigarette companies were excluded. Fast forward to 2011 and our state's economy and budget is in peril. Time to up the ante?
Damn straight, go after the Tobacco companies again and without bias- both the large ones and the smaller ones who feel they will not be able to compete. Tax them all and if the smaller ones fail to compete in the business of death dealing, then they will just have to find other means of work. That argument isn't good for today. If the large companies are indeed the only ones that can survive- they can actually help the state's economy with the efforts of the people willing to pay fifteen dollars for a pack to smoke.
Do we really need a highly competitive tobacco industry in the first place anyway? We lost Circuit City a few years back, leaving Best Buy as a primary home electronics store in the industry and we survived. So what if we have less tobacco companies around, a few less brands to select from. There's a bigger picture here.
I don't think we need to stop there though. Booze needs to be taxed heavier. If people want to drink, they can help by paying tax for it. There is a statistic with a large number of drunk drivers being on the roads in Austin on the weekends after a certain hour. Collect money there. Also how about a tax on Soda and junk food. I'm sure I probably sound like a broken record by now because I have been saying it all semester but in my opinion, it's time for people to wake up.
Tax this stuff that is counter productive, don't just start cutting school costs and our educational funding and health care as
China prepares to pass the US economy by possibly as early as 2016 and we don't have money to educate our citizens and we all sit and slowly watch America become a third world country. Without a strong economy, we cannot remain the dominant force in the world.
