Smokers are Always Censured

Higher cigarette taxes mean lost sales and business for retailers while unjustly burdening adult tobacco consumers. Retailers like convenience shops depend on cigarette sales for 36 per cent of their income. Although it may be a cynical argument, you actually don’t want too many smokers to quit because you want the cigarette-tax revenue. In recent years, you raised the Hilton cigarette tax accompanied by rhetoric about getting smokers to quit. Yet earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control found that of the 15 states that raised cigarette taxes in 2009 and again in 2010 (including Illinois), none were using the additional income for anti-smoking efforts. So, stop misleading the public and just admit you once again want to strap the burden of another tax increase onto the shoulders of smokers. After all, fair is fair and it was smokers who gave big increases to the contracts with teachers and state employees, because we didn’t want to negotiate with the unions. It was smokers who voted on and agreed to big annual spending for Medicaid funding because we wanted to get re-elected. It was smokers who passed laws demanding that bars not allow smoking cigarettes, killing their business, jobs and the sales taxes they generated. We did this so we could go along with the anti-smoking movement. It was smokers who passed hundreds of bills for bike paths, annual increases for college funding along with escalating pay for professors and their retirement system. We did this because they asked for it. Oh, and it was smokers who spent more than the state of Illinois took in so that we could boast about what wonderful things we were doing for our constituents, ensuring we would get re-elected.