Up in Smoke

Surprising absolutely no one, Doug Duncan proposed a $1-per-pack increase in cigarette taxes yesterday as an effort to fund health care efforts:

"What good is having the best health care in the world if people can't access it?" said Duncan, a Democrat, as he unveiled his campaign's health care proposal yesterday. "A healthy society benefits us all, so government has a role and a responsibility to do what it can to achieve that goal."

There are so many problems with Duncan's quote, not the least of which is the fact that it is the individual, not government, who has the ultimate responsibility for living a healthy lifestyle and living in a healthy society.

The bigger problem for Duncan's plan deals with access. How will people have better access to health care under his plan? Sure, it creates an anticipated $200 million in new revenue, all of which is immediately spent on his initiatives. But what happens when the money does not materialize? Common sense and past indicators show that when sin taxes like these are enacted they never produce as much revenue as anticipated. People will either have a new impetus to stop smoking, or they will go out of state to by their cigarettes.

Sure, this is in all political reality a temporary diversion from energy rates. But it just goes to show that the Democrats plan on raising taxes like they always do...