Smokers get a bad rap. Most people think smokers “have a filthy habit, drain our health care system, and deserve to die—as long as it’s a hundred yards from the hospital entrance.” We already know smoking is bad for the individual, but is it bad for the rest of us who don’t smoke?
The dirty little secret is that smokers subsidize the rest of us. A pack-a-day user coughs up $1500.00 each year in additional taxes. Do the arithmetic. Non-smokers live into their 80’s and 90’s, have Medicare replace their hips, and get free pills for erectile dysfunction. Our smoker friends, on the other hand, scarcely get a sniff of all the money they sank into Social Security. They do us the courtesy of dropping dead decades before their time. Look at it this way — whenever someone quits smoking, your taxes go up. Speaking of which, do you remember the “Tobacco Settlement” a few years ago? The entire settlement of $100 billion has gone to help smokers quit. HA! HA! No, it didn’t. Lawyers and the politicians got all the money!
Let’s hear it for smoking. It can be the biggest cash cow we’ve got. We’ve just got to make it popular again. The State should air public service announcements saying how cool it is to smoke. Dig up the Marlboro Man and let him ride back onto America’s TV screen. Encourage retailers to again sell candy cigarettes to the little children; you know, so they can get the hang of it.
It needn’t end there. Give tobacco companies naming rights to cherished public institutions. Change Milham Park to Marlboro Park. Stick a statue of the Marlboro Man on his horse at the entrance. Then consider Parkwood-Upjohn Elementary School. Ask yourself: what have the Upjohns done for us lately, other then put on a bunch of boring piano recitals? I say rename the school to Joe Camel Elementary School.
Surely, a government moral enough to promote gambling to poor people should have no problem doing the same for smoking. And for the love of God, let smokers die with dignity, say, no more than ten or twenty yards from the hospital entrance.
