Who's paying what?

Check out this NBC article on smoking. It talks about the health costs to the state relating to smoking. It shows that smokers pay not only for their own health costs, but also for education and health care of others. Not a fact many media companies and governments like to portrait since it doesn't fit the smokers are evil money eating killers and should rot in hell image.

I agree smoking is bad for health and that people should quit, but the smoker bashing and calling them scum of society needs to end!! Don't we live in a free country in which the people are entitled to make up their mind whether to smoke or not? Can't people choose not to go to a non-smoking bar? If there are enough people willing to go to non-smoking bars there would be a bunch of them all over the place. That's how the market functions. If there is a demand and people take advantage of it because there is money to be made. Northfield has a couple of them and its because people there want it. If one can't find any non smoking bars that means people don't care for them and so maybe that person could open a bar and make a good profit (or maybe nobody cares for them in that specific town). Apparently people in the US are too dumb for that and thus need some authority figure to step in. Needless to say that reminds me of communism in which the State always knows better and regulates everything. Is that were we're headed? The way I see it is that smoker bashing has turned into a trend, and politicians want to capitalise on this trend by implementing bills in which they ban smoking.

Even looking at the global warming issue it seems that the government is years behind the market. Companies all over are moving in the direction of cutting down emissions while the central government is dumb found. Maybe the people in charge need to listen more to people and facilitate things rather than banning everything that isn't trendy. And with facilitating I mean taxes and caps (carbon caps). That way the smoker, polluter, whatever can choose whether to quit or to pay a fine (as smokers have been for years!!).

Here is an except from the aritcle: It is clear that states could see some medical savings from reduced smoking, but it is difficult to say how much, and whether those savings might offset the lost tax revenue. Minnesota’s Department of Human Services estimates it spends $295 million a year to treat smoking-related illnesses for 647,000 people on public assistance....

...In 2005, tobacco taxes contributed $13 billion to state budgets. But cigarette tax collections that year were down in 15 states compared with the year or years before, according to a study backed by the tobacco industry. States such as New York, Massachusetts and Illinois are all forecasting a drop in revenue.

Sure, there may be more cost involved with smokers but 13 billion versus 300 million should give some better perspective on the contributions of smokers to the state budget.

PS: After smoking for 12 years I finally got to the point at which I haven't smoked for 6 days. This should prove that my smoking or not smoking has nothing to do with what I perceive about this bull crap that's going on.