Study says cigarette tax hurts the poor the most

My grandmother smoked until she was 92, and that is not what killed her.

My Mother is 86 years old, and she is still smoking. No one has any right to preach about this.

Both my grandmother and my mother were/are on fixed incomes, and it is hard for my mother.

All these elites do their drugs and alcohol, but they go after the little people for smoking a cig.

I wonder which is worse for you...cocaine or cigs?
:ptm:

I'm a nonsmoker, and I used to literally BEG my mother to stop. She's been a chainsmoker since the age of about 10 years old. That seems bad doesn't it (although she's a good woman, believe me); but, I now realize WHY she smokes. She nearly died of meningitis (a brain infection) at the age of five, from complications of "German measles" (in 1943)... Whenever I asked her to stop smoking, she always said, "I can't, my nerves can't take it." Without cigarettes, my poor mother would literally lose her mind, and it's not because she's addicted (although she is). Cigarettes was her way of self-medicating, and is probably HEALTHIER than any modern pharmaceuticals out there, assuming there were any that would actually WORK. For all I know, cigarette smoking may have saved my mother's life; and it pisses me off, that she has to pay so much for them now. She is not wealthy; and I don't consider her habit a "luxury".

Hi Krystal! :)

It also angers me how the FDA allowed the tobacco companies to poison the cigarettes with additives. That's criminal. Pure tobacco alone is not the problem, it's the additives they put in them, and the lousy filters they use on them.

The price of tobacco and cigarettes have risen to about 5 times the amount I used to pay 20 years ago here.

Every half year they increase the prices. No one quits smoking or smokes less because of that, that's proven. Also the trade price of 40g shag tobacco is about 2 euro now. I have o pay 6 euro. A total of 4 euro tax on a product of 2 euro.

It's pure taxleeching the smokers and especially the poor. True that, 5 stars.

(they taxleech gasoline here too, more than half is tax)

Hi, how are u?

Not sure why they needed a study to figure that out. It was pretty obvious from the start that all it was was a money grab of the middle class and poor.

I smoke and they used me as a so-called "victim" to when their case against the tobacco companies. But yet the tobacco companies have never had to pay a red cent. All they did was raise the prices and soak the very "victims" that the government used to win their case. Now the government makes more off the sale of cigarettes than even the tobacco companies do.

So what did they do with all that money? I don't see any free treatment centers for smokers to help them get off of cigarettes. No...it all goes into the general fund to do whatever the hell they want to with it.

Another part of their scam was the government claiming that they needed the money to pay for healthcare for smokers they have treated. what they do not say is how much money they do save off people smoking. You smoke and die young then the government does not have to pay out all that Social Security and medicare money.

It is another one of their scams and money grabs...nothing else. They don't give a rat's ass if people get sick and die.

.

it's called 'addiction'. some people struggle with it.

Yep just like its cheaper to go to the pub then the doctor. And it's cheaper to buy junk food than fresh food.

Poor people shouldn't be smoking, or drinking, or gambling
but they do, more than the rest of us.
Why is that?

In the slums there is a dope dealer on every
corner, and a liquor store on every other corner.
Sales of lottery tickets are highest among the poor.

The stinking liberals say that poverty is why people
succumb to all these vices.

The opposite is true.

All of these vices CREATE POVERTY.

SIN creates POVERTY.

That nicotine demon is hard to fight. Just 6 puffs on a cigar was enough to lodge that fucker in my throat for months now, and quitting means being surrounded by non-smokers to relearn the sobriety. Harder to say no when your previous generation was smokers too. Don't want the tax, don't let that smoke touch your mouth to poison your cells into dependence.

I've learned though that after becoming dependent on smoking, a smoker has a lower resistance to feelings of jealousy, unless they suck on something to fill the void whenever their wanting mind starts working. It's that thought-monster pulling the iWants your way, and you feed it with hot air.

The poor make poor choices, that is why they get the poor label. Know how to stop being poor? Stop being poor. Put down the problems, pick up the right choice and relearn how to live with feeling without having something at your mouth.

It's a punishment tax that gets converted to pay for cancer research later. It actually benefits the poor the most when their lungs crap out and they find themselves in the hospital.

Equality before the law is meaningless there.

Exactly.

It hurts the stupid, nothing more.

And other, less weak people put it down and walk away. I guess that's how natural selection works...