I’m back from furlough, and I’ll be honest — I missed you guys. My very first on-duty call — at around 7:30 a.m. — was from a woman with a voice like broken glass complaining about the new federal tobacco tax.
“Why are they always picking on us?,” she wheezed. “Why don’t they start taxing fat people?”
Her point, I assume, was that since the tobacco tax is meant to punish the unhealthy behavior of smokers, why not boost the tax on cheeseburgers and doughnuts, since they contribute to obesity, which is also unhealthy?
The answer, I guess, is that an occasional cheeseburger, or doughnut, is fairly benign, while no amount of smoking is harmless.
Or is it simply that smokers are society’s favorite pariahs, and, thus, an easy target for scorn — and financial punishment?
What do you think about that?
