Doug Henwood wrote:
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >True enough, but don't the adverse consequences of tobacco hit the
> >working-class
> >harder? So, discouraging smoking by taxes might have positive
> >consequences over the
> >long run.
>
> Shouldn't people decide for themselves whether to smoke? Do you think
> you should prescribe their diet too?
Doug, I think I agree with you on the question of taxes -- mostly out of
a dogmatic dislike of the bourgeois state exercising even indirect police
power.
But your particular argument doesn't work -- in fact it is sort of
stupid. People
simply don't choose to smoke or not. They start for the most part when
they
are too young to be described as "people choosing" and have too little
information. And then it is devilishly addictive. I smoked, heavily, for
forty
years. (10 years 2+ packs of unfiltered long cigarettes; ten years pipe
and
cigarettes, 20 years pipe.) Those who have never had a chemical addiction
like nicotine have no way of even imagining just what it means to be
addicted.
Carrol
