terratogen wrote:
This is targeting one set of victims to help one the government is deciding more valuable. I'd argue that smokers are more valuable. Sick kids have been flagged by darwin while smokers by their very survival defy darwin and are therefore more fit.

Congratulations on achieving Swiftian levels of satire. I'm having trouble even begining to wrap my head around what you're trying to say. I'll limit to this sentence my treatment of the asinine assumption that a child stricken by disease should be sacrificed at the Hand of Darwinian Selection presumptively... I even agree that not every person can be or should be cured, but hardly to the extent any serious aggreement with your statement would imlpy. Beyond that, the assumption that health care for children is only beneficial to kids with cancer or spinal meningitis or whatever is clearly incorrect. Preventative medecine has a high value and furthermore a demonstrable cost savings over later treatment of disease. In other words, even an emotionless economic analysis would show childhood health care to be valuable. I'm not even going to bother with the notion that smokers prove their evolutionary fitness... again, unless the statement was satire, in which case I retract this entire paragraph, I see no logic whatsoever in that attitude.

As for smokers as victims, I'll get to that in a moment.

This is about the healthcare of children who's parents either don't want to pay for their kids health, or can't and probably represents a bad decision.

I mistook the initial article and said Education. My opinion stands.

Bullshit. Many of these smokers got started when cigarettes were less than 3 dollars a pack. "The first hit's free, but now you can take care of my kids!!!"??? I don't see that as worth it for the smokers who have problems of their own that that money should be used for.

I couldn't give a fuck how much they cost way back when. As if the fact that we *didn't* tax them to hell in 1980 means we can't now. Even at $3/pack that's $2200 a year for 2 packs/day. And that's assuming there hasn't been inflation since whenever cigarettes were $3 a pack.

Beyond which, I didn't push them on anyone. I'll even concede that the tobacco companies DID engage in some unsavory advertising practices and likewise understated the dangers of smoking for many years, an argument you haven't made yet, but perhaps will. Still, I didn't need all the modern advertising to know that that shit was noxious and unhealthy. I'm supposed to accept that smokers are poor, misled sods who never knew any better, and I'm taking advantage of them? Please. I know the things are fucking addictive, and I know that that's a public health issue... if anything, the tobacco tax should go towards preventing people from becoming smokers in the first place. Hm, I suppose a well designed child health care package might have that effect to some degree.

I'm sorry, I just can't dredge up an ocean of sympathy for smokers. It's not a neutral activity, but an objectively harmful one, and one which *CAN* be discontinued, albeit with difficulty for most people.

RE: Senate Panel Approves Huge Tobacco Tax To Fund Child Healthcare