So they now claim 4,000 kids a day are starting smoking eh?? Back before the smoking bans and the 200% to 500% tax increases on cigarettes they claimed only 3,000 a day were starting.? Using antismoking-type reasoning, one would be forced to say there’s obviously a clear causal relationship? between these things.
The high taxes have made cigarettes socially desirable as kids show off that they can afford to smoke and share their smokes.? The smoking bans have moved smokers out into public where kids now see more people smoking than ever before.
The solution to the teen smoking problem is simple.
1) Despite the screaming from the organized antismoking groups whose jobs will disappear, cigarettes should be taxed at a reasonable rate, say a maximum of a 50% tax (about $1) over their base product price of about $2/pack.? That $1 should include the MSA payments that the government and Big Tobacco worked out in 1998 as an unlegislated nationwide tax levied only on smokers.
2) Widespread mandated government smoking bans should be eliminated and replaced with voluntary bans and reasonable ASHRAE/OSHA standards that were in place in the 1990s and provided the great vast majority of workers with comfortable working atmospheres.
*ALL* workplaces, not just smoking bars and casinos, should be required to meet those standards.? Nonsensical claims about ventilation and air-filtration being helpless in the face of “magical” elements in tobacco smoke should be treated as the pseudo-science that they are and adult smokers will once again return to doing most of their smoking inside of largely adults-only work atmospheres.
Maybe then we’d see teen smoking reduced.
Maybe then we’d see teen smoking reduced.
Originally written By Michael McFadden
