Governments Shouldn’t Be in the Smoking Business

Smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit. Millions of people worldwide smoke and they all stink like the exhaust they pump out into the atmosphere.

Smokers toss their used matches and cigarettes on the ground wherever they happen to be – littering our parks, streets, and public spaces.

And we all know smoking kills. It’s the leading cause of lung cancer, and a key factor in many other fatal and non-fatal diseases, illnesses, and health problems.

According the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada:

• 37,000 die in Canada from smoking
• 6,300 non-smokers die each year from second-hand smoke
• Approximately 1 million Canadians will die over the next 20 years directly related to smoking and second-hand smoke

Those are startling numbers. Yet smoking will never be made illegal in North America. Because the governments are on the take.

In Canada we call these “sin taxes,” they are the taxes governments collect on things we know are bad for us, but governments let them be sold anyways.

Traditional “sin taxes” in Canada are alcohol products and cigarettes and cigars.

Though one could even argue that a gas guzzlers tax is a sin tax, because it taxes those that choose to drive environmentally harmful vehicles, we’ll stick to the traditional ones today.

Specifically smoking, because although alcohol also changes people’s behaviour  and can have negative health impacts, smokers are the only ones that are exceptionally filthy and disgusting.

You don’t see many engaged in drinking booze tossing their used beer bottles and wine glasses out their car windows. People who have a drink socially rarely stink like cigarette smokers that have a smoke during a social function.

And although you can become dependent upon alcohol, alcoholism is more of a mental illness, than one caused directly by the alcohol itself, while the nicotine in smoking products is highly addictive.

Smoking should have been banned a long time ago.

But because governments in Canada and the States make billions off of the taxes charged on cigarettes, cigars, and other smoking products, smokers have been relegated to isolation, instead of given 90-days to get their last cigarettes before they disappear forever.

Smoking is banned in most workplaces and public buildings these days. There are some places where you can’t even smoke outside. So smokers are forced to find hidden corners to feed their addictions. While their addictions are killing them, they are paying for politicians high salaries.

One day, I hope smoking will be a thing of the past. Cigarettes should be available only in a museum, showing what strange and bizarre habits we humans had once, a long time ago.

Though I imagine, until the governments which make money off the lungs of smokers, cigarettes will continue to little the ground, just as smokers litter our air.