While we're
at it, make soda drinkers pay.
Published: December 21
Since
“large majorities of the public” “don’t want to subsidize somebody’s drug addiction,”
the answer is not to drug-test welfare recipients but to make smokers pay more
of the $300 billion in costs they impose each year largely on nonsmokers in the
form of higher taxes (for Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) and inflated health
insurance premiums — a number that dwarfs the costs imposed by illicit drugs
and the amount smokers pay in excise taxes.
Alan:
Tobacco Excise Tax by country - http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/solutions/tobacco_taxes/excise_tax/
John F.
Banzhaf III, Washington
The
writer is a former executive director of Action on Smoking and Health.
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