Ray From Cleveland
Diamond Member
- Aug 16, 2015
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Far more than that once supported smoking regular cigarettes too. How did that work out?
Far more than that once supported smoking regular cigarettes too. How did that work out?
People tried Prohibition in the 1930's. How did that work out?
They tried a "zero tolerance War on Drugs" in the 1980's. How did that work out?
All of the substances of which you speak, are both addictive and harmful, and cigarettes and alcohol are still legal. And yet marijuana, which has numerous medical uses and is less harmful that any either cigarettes or alcohol, and has been shown to REDUCE crime in jurisdictions where it is legalized, is still illegal in most of the USA.
Whenever anyone tries to ban cigarettes, conservatives rise up about "personal freedoms", and "nanny state". But you've got 16 excuses for keeping something that is less harmful, illegal. Not to mention, you're sending users to jail, at great expense to the taxpayers.
Democrats would never dream of outlawing tobacco. Federally and locally, they taxed the products to death for their social programs. Without tobacco tax, those programs would all collapse.
Ray, once again, your ignorance knows no bounds. The tobacco companies' products are being taxed to death to pay for the added medical costs of cigarette related medical problems and deaths. The amount of taxes are dwindling as the number of smokers has shrunk. Additionally, the amounts being collected didn't come close to covering the public costs of smoking tobacco. That's why governments won big lawsuits against the tobacco companies.
Tobacco is being phased out and will disappear entirely a generation. No one will miss smokers when it does.
Perhaps in your system of government with socialized healthcare. In our system, when somebody gets ill, they are treated through their insurance company unless they are on Medicare or Medicaid. It's another reason why we don't need your system because then government would be able to dictate our lifestyles. We don't want that here.
The taxes here do not go to anything but social programs--not tobacco related illnesses. Gore's lawsuit went the same way. States like mine that ripped off the tobacco companies didn't send the funds to anything related to tobacco. It was just more fun money to waste on more social programs.
Democrats don't want to see any end to that. Otherwise they would simply outlaw it altogether.