Big Bro' Don't Know Drugs

I'm looking at a headline in today's Independent Florida Alligator newspaper: SMOKERS, BUSINESSES PREPARE FOR CIGARETTE TAX INCREASE. According to the writer Jacquelyne Smith, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says the tax for small cigarettes will increase from 39 cents to $1.01 for each pack and from $3.90 to $10.07 for each carton. Although the increased tax is certain to cause a spike in prices, local business owners were reportedly unconcerned that cigarette sales would suffer in the long run. I say, of course, that's because cigarette smoking is an addiction! And I wonder about the wisdom of conveniently laying this "sin tax" on an officially-frowned upon commodity.

I've already revealed my opinion about smoking, never having lit up even once and having undergone death in my own family, caused by smoking. Smoking cigarettes is a nasty, dangerous thing to do. But nicotine is a very highly addictive drug and its regular users are addicts. And should be treated as such. If the price gets too high for them to get their cigarette "fix", then they will behave as addicts to illegal drugs behave: they will seek their drug through the black market.

And don't think that this isn't going on right now. When are politicians going to understand that you can't legislate people out of addictions, be it proscribing the responsible drugs or levying impossibly high taxes on them? All this does is create a criminally-based alternate economy that exploits and brutalizes its own consumers and diminishes our law-based civil society.

I've heard the argument that having a high tax on cigarettes will encourage users to finally "kick the habit". But as I have said, it isn't a habit; it's an addiction! Yes, people can overcome addictions, but this ain't gonna do the trick, bro'. Otherwise, why not legalize and heavily tax cocaine, heroin, and any other currently banned addictive drug?

I believe that our "War on Drugs" has been an unmitigated disaster. All it has accomplished is to empower criminal elements across the world, who in turn have empowered hostile governments and terrorist movements. Hillary Clinton was right to apologize to Mexico for U.S. complicity in their drug/crime problems. For our own laws and their enforcement have created the very market that these foreign-based cartels exist to satisfy. Legalization of these drugs, without "sin taxes" and with a concomitant stringent regulatory process overseeing their provision to users, would completely undercut those crime organizations and send THEM into a severe economic downturn! But I'm afraid that this will never happen, with all of the pious self-righteous moral goody-goodies running around reacting in a knee-jerk negative manner to any proposed reasonable reforms on this topic while demonizing anyone who would advocate such reforms.