Reply #17: As a non-smoking bipolar person it sounds like stretch to me, too.

[Forkboy]

I don't smoke, don't agree with the tax, but I also don't see it as targeting the mentally ill either.

The reason I'm against this tax is that it does nothing to help smokers quit, just punishes them for an addiction. If raising the price made people quit then everyone would have stopped when they hit 2 bucks a pack. A lot of smokers swore they'd quit then. They now swear they'll quit when it hits 10-15 bucks a pack...but they wont, and can't, sadly.

One of the reasons I hear in favor of these types of taxes is that the money can be used to pay for the declining health care of the smokers, instead of everyone else picking up the tab. But this seems a mean-spirited endless loop to me unless we do more to help people quit, or not start in the first place. Without those goals, the cycle of smoking and taxing just goes on and on.

Personally, I think we should only tax toilet paper. If we're going to tax a product let's do one that everyone uses...I hope. :scared: