Prohibition Does NOT Work!

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by garhkal on Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:45 pm

activist0000 wrote:

A lot of antis support employment discrimination against smokers, so why not give them a dose of their own medicine?

Antis make our lives hell. It's too bad we don't have people on our side who collect fat paychecks and have all the time in the world to show the antis, on a personal level, what it's like to be hounded without mercy by strangers.

While it not being done that way, i know a recent retiree who is opening up his own DJ business, and non smokers need not apply is his motto.

garhkal

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 24, 2009 Posts: 278

by crackerjack on Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:04 pm

Oh man I'm way off on my numbers. just go to show you cant believe what you read on the typewriter with the TV on it.

http://peoplesbudget.state.fl.us/bdagencies.aspx
Back to the drawing board it is then.

But I did find this interesting. I was trying to find out how much Florida gets from Tobacco companies annually.

THE STATE OF FLORIDA, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
THE AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY, et al.,
Defendants.
Civil Action No. 95-1466 AH

http://stic.neu.edu/fl/flsettle.htm

interesting read BUT!!!!
Now I'm totally confused.
If the tobacco companies are paying the sate to cover the healthcare cost of smoke related illness then why the hell do we the consumers need to pay it again.
I'm sure Big tobacco has already moved this cost onto the consumers so we are paying for this crap twice?
If I understand this correctly Florida gets 8 Bil. each year from American Tobacco
The total healthcare cost of Medicare in Florida is only $2,835,608,751
The State claims it needs 1 billion more just to cover smoke related healthcare (hence tax)
What the hell?

crackerjack Toker

Toker Joined: Sep 08, 2009 Posts: 83

by flex on Thu Sep 17, 2009 1:47 pm

Quote:

by activist0000 on Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:28 pm

I've got a great tactic, if we just had people to do it. Infiltrate the antismoking organizations, then target individual antis and systematically make them lose their jobs. It's fairly easy to do if you're organized and persistently work toward that single goal.

A lot of antis support employment discrimination against smokers, so why not give them a dose of their own medicine?

Antis make our lives hell. It's too bad we don't have people on our side who collect fat paychecks and have all the time in the world to show the antis, on a personal level, what it's like to be hounded without mercy by strangers.

Looks simple and relatively easy at first glance.
Far from it. Very, very far.
Sure. Getting into some organizations is not all that difficult. Bottom level. Some however have very good screening system even for entry level and many willing to share info.
Even the next level would give You nothing more than what most already knows and can easily be found out about them. Hardly an infiltration after a couple of years involvement and only if make it that far. Not the levels where a lot of money is around and without solid references and background checks will not get much higher.
Can also be risky.
Don't forget about the law and lawyers also. Financially draining a person through the legal system can be fairly easy even without winning unless some very deep and reliable pockets are behind You. Not something any of the bigger anti smoking organizations have to worry about.
lol;
Nice to dream about it but it is more of a pipe dream than reality.

flex

flex

Puffer Joined: May 12, 2008 Posts: 50 Location: Canada

by garhkal on Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:32 pm

crackerjack wrote:

If I understand this correctly Florida gets 8 Bil. each year from American Tobacco
The total healthcare cost of Medicare in Florida is only $2,835,608,751
The State claims it needs 1 billion more just to cover smoke related healthcare (hence tax)
What the hell?

Maybe we should ask them as publically as possible so they cannot wiggle out of it.

garhkal

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 24, 2009 Posts: 278

by libertarian99 on Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:02 pm

crackerjack wrote:

Now you're starting to wake up to the truth. The cigarette tax money should be going into a special fund where it is carefully accounted for and paid out only for smoking-related health care costs. If the politicians were being truthful, they shouldn't object to that set-up because it would solve the problem they're always carping about.

Unfortunately, if the problem of smoking-related health care costs was actually solved, it could never be used again to raise the tobacco taxes or justify other antismoking measures. In order to keep things going, the cigarette tax money must be shuffled elsewhere and never paid out to smokers and their families, Medicaid, insurance companies or whoever else might actually need and/or deserve it.

libertarian99 Enthusiastic Smoker

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: May 01, 2009 Posts: 453

by seabooty on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:02 am

What nonsmokers fail to realize in supporting the outrageous cig. taxes is how much it hurts the economy. There are about 60 million smokers in the USA, some smoke a pack a day, others smoke 3 packs a day. But to go with the low side, when Obama signed the $1 a pack tax into law, he didn't take in to account the fact that it takes $60 million + A DAY away from consumer spending. That is nearly $22B a year, probably a lot more. You can double that figure when states enact the same $1 tax.
In this day and age, the only people who are still smoking are the hard core smokers who have tried everything and can't quit. They will keep smoking, that Coke and fast food burger, or the higher priced groceries, or any unnecessary spending will stop to buy that pack or carton of smokes instead.
So all these people who think the tax is such a great idea, have contributed to cutting their own throats. When people have less money to spend, businesses close, jobs are lost, and crime goes up as does the cost of crime. In recent times the price of $4 a gallon gas put a lot of gas stations out of business because people quit buying their convenience store items, they couldn't afford it once they bought gas. My neighborhood gas station manager told me they had about 3 drive-offs a year before gas hit $4 a gal., after that it increased to about 6 a day.
So if anybody thinks this doesn't hurt them, they are living in a cave. And Obama and all his intelligent staff never thought about the facts, they just went headlong into what is trendy and popular. In fact he hasn't done anything to help this country, he has just increased the debt, and jobless rates are still rising. And will continue to do so.

We are in very big trouble.

seabooty

Puffer Joined: May 19, 2009 Posts: 43

by runamok on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:53 am

seabooty wrote:

In this day and age, the only people who are still smoking are the hard core smokers who have tried everything and can't quit.

I'm not sure what you mean by "hard-core" but I've never even once tried quitting for the 35 years I've been lighting up. I've always enjoyed smoking. You make it sound like some kind of masochistic torture that we're addicted to.

runamok

Smoking Lobby Sponsor Joined: Dec 20, 2004 Posts: 1288

by libertarian99 on Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:50 am

runamok wrote:

seabooty wrote:

In this day and age, the only people who are still smoking are the hard core smokers who have tried everything and can't quit.

With all the quit-smoking aids available today, anyone who truly wants to quit can do so. That wasn't true 25 or 30 years ago, before people had access to over-the-counter NRT and Wellbutrin. Back then, many people who wanted to quit couldn't do so comfortably because they had a high degree of nicotine dependence and couldn't tolerate the cravings.

The people who continue to smoke in the current political climate are the ones who truly enjoy smoking and don't have a high enough need for social approval to give it up in the name of conformity. I quit for 10 years and if I wanted to quit right now, I could do so. I just don't have any need to please non-smokers and/or antis who feel I should quit in order to gain their approval.

The reason people think 80% of smokers want to quit, but cannot do so, is because many smokers will say whatever it takes to get someone off their backs. Saying you want to quit but can't is just a way to politely end the nagging so that you can continue doing what you want, free of harassment.

Last edited by libertarian99 on Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

libertarian99 Enthusiastic Smoker

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: May 01, 2009 Posts: 453

by libertarian99 on Sun Sep 20, 2009 12:44 pm

seabooty wrote:

I think people would be more receptive to this information now than they would have been before the recession. What we need is an economist with good credentials who is willing to stand up in public and explain the impact of cigarette taxes and how they start a domino effect that eventually impacts the lives of non-smokers.

Right now, non-smokers are blind to the fact that high cigarette taxes can eventually cause them to lose their own jobs, even if they don't work in a bar or a smoke shop. You have to realize you are the last domino in the line before you start caring what happens to the first domino.

libertarian99 Enthusiastic Smoker

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: May 01, 2009 Posts: 453

by garhkal on Sun Sep 20, 2009 5:50 pm

runamok wrote:

seabooty wrote:

In this day and age, the only people who are still smoking are the hard core smokers who have tried everything and can't quit.

Agreed. I don't kow where Seabooty is getting his figures from, but only about 20% of those i know who smoke tried to quit.

garhkal

Enthusiastic Smoker Joined: Apr 24, 2009 Posts: 278

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