Poor Folks Expose: Cigarette Tax Policy Is Harming the Poor

[roxybeast]

I’m going to die. Lung cancer, most likely. I smoke. Addicted. 25 years. Dad smoked. Friends smoked. I resisted at first. Grandma smoked. When she asked “mind if I smoke?,” e.g. while we were riding in the car, I’d say “mind if I fart?” What can I say, I was into Steve Martin. But eventually they convinced me, or I myself, that it was cool. I was in college. That girl was so hot. She told me nothing beat the taste of coke and a cigarette, not that she was right, but she was just so hot. I couldn’t resist. Well, I didn’t resist. I wanted her. I liked her. I had her, … and a coke, … and a cigarette, … and another, … and another, … I’m having another right now.

My state, and probably yours, sued the Tobacco Industry giants and won big. Really big. They recovered millions and millions, and collectively billions. My state’s now out of debt. Their theory was that smoking was killing us, their smoking citizens, and maiming the rest of us. We, the smokers, addicts, have spent billions on their products based on creatively false advertising, ads purposefully designed to lie about the real dangers and that they made cigarettes even more addictive, with little or sometimes no warnings when they first hooked us. Thanks. We are victims of purposeful fraud. Addicts. By choice or by deception, it makes no difference. The bottom line is that however they hooked us with their deadly product which government allows to be sold so that they can continue to skim off the sales tax revenues, we’re the ones who are addicted, we’re the ones who are maimed, we’re the ones who are dying, we are the victims. And we’re the ones, without whom, there would have been no viable legal theory, no recovery, and no massive settlement now being poured into the “general fund” to fix all their budget holes.

I feel so used. Violated. I need to take a shower. Victimized by the tobacco giants and victimized again by my State. I’m poor. I can’t afford to go to the doctor. I have no insurance. I can’t afford to get the MRI or body scan that’ll diagnose my cancer & get the treatment started. But I can feel it scarring my lungs, hurting my chest, and making my breathing more difficult. And, then there’s the Smoker’s Cough. The hacking. The shortness of breath. The black lung. Not that I can actually afford proper, or any, treatment once I have been diagnosed. Can you? And, if it’s long-term, how long can you hang on before you to join the ranks of the underclass? As Oprah says, most folks are just a paycheck or three away from being poor and destitute. Ergo my point, the states collected these settlements to reimburse the projected medical costs to care for the damage to it’s smoking citizens, so one would reasonably think the first priority would be to use the Tobacco Settlement funds on preventative care, minimizing future costs and education.

But they don’t. Sure they run ads to tell us to quit, and occasionally refer us to a hotline for assistance, or worse yet, to the tobacco companies own websites for information on quitting (which is posted right next to the link for more coupons to buy more cigarettes at a discount). And I should quit, have tried quitting, have failed at quitting, because I’m addicted to a product that is the most addictive in the world, more addictive than heroin, and designed to be that way. So I’m thinking that I should be able to walk into any clinic or hospital in my state and get care. Preventative care. Diagnosis. Treatment. Now. But I can’t. I’ve tried it, they say I need to fork over lots of money for all the tests, drugs, etc., etc. Money I don’t have. I have no insurance, and even if I did, I’m poor, which means I couldn’t even afford to keep up with the deductibles. So my health deteriorates. Slowly at first, but faster now. Every day I cough more, my chest hurts more, my breathing diminishes. Soon I will develop COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, a recognized disability. I will have difficulty breathing, walking, moving, and working. Of course, if the State would apply some of the Tobacco Settlement money which it used me and my health situation to collect to purchase specific health insurance limited to smoking related pathology or to directly reimburse healthcare providers for treating my smoking caused illnesses, I could afford to be diagnosed now, early, and receive treatment designed to prevent, delay or minimize some of these inevitable future effects, effects which they claimed justified their suit. If a doctor certifies that I am a tobacco addict, I should qualify for state-sponsored insurance paid for out of the Settlement which should become effective immediately to allow preventative care. And, while access to quitting programs should be available, benefits should not be conditioned on mandatory enrollment or success in such programs. The Tobacco giants purposefully have made these products more addictive that they need to be to keep us hooked & then lied about it. And, my State has profited greatly from the taxes collected on increased sales due to this fraud. It’s not like my State has clean hands here. They allowed sales & reaped the benefits. They still do. Even if the State didn’t know people were being addicted by fraudulent and deceptive means initially, they certainly know that now, & yet they continue to tax sales to those addicted victims.

The courts bear some responsibility here too. They did not exercise adequate control. They have not required the states who benefited from these lawsuits and settlements to actually demonstrate that the money collected is going directly to benefit the smokers on which the claim was predicated. They have not required the states to report or account for the use of these funds. They have not required states to implement mandatory insurance for persons addicted to tobacco and/or to set up funds to pay all smoking caused or related health care costs for addicted victims.

On top of all this, not only are smokers not entitled to directly benefit with individualized health care specifically designed to prevent their expected and foreseeable health disasters, in my State, and likely (or soon to be) yours too, smokers are now penalized economically because the State has imposed massive sales tax increases on tobacco (again the money goes to the State’s general fund, and not where it should, to provide individualized health care to addicted victims), which means that smokers in my State who used to pay $15-20/carton, now pay $25-35/carton. Now if you’re a rich person, perhaps you can afford to pay the thousands per year extra to buy health insurance which are charged to smokers not to exclude smoking related illnesses, and then cover the thousands, even hundreds of thousands to cover deductible and other non-covered charges that will be incurred if you actually develop COPD or lung cancer due to smoking, &/or cover the extra $100 every month to pay for cigarettes until you can successfully quit, if you can. But if you’re poor, you’re just screwed. Chances are good you’re closer to being poor than rich.

So here’s what really happens., an addicted poor person that smokes 2 packs a day, which is fairly typical for most smoking addicts, needs to spend an extra $100/month just to maintain their habit. Since this is an addition, this money gets spent before rent, before utilities, before credit card & other payments, sometimes, even before food. Thus, the poor addict may not be able to pay rent, or is late, and gets evicted. Or they go without heat, or electricity, or water, or their accounts become delinquint and cut off. Well, the proponents of higher taxes argue, they should just quit, they need to better prioritize. But the reality is that since this is an addiction more powerful than heroin, these expenses are paid after cigarettes are purchased, even if they know better, because it is a such a powerful addiction and because they can afford the $25 bucks for a carton out of the $100 they have in their pocket, but can’t afford the $150 or $250 or $400 in rent. So they buy what they can afford and is necessary to maintain their addiction, and hope that the rest of the money comes before the bill is due, but often it doesn’t come in time. So they get farther and farther behind, until one day, they have no electricity, no water, no gas, no heat, and finally, no place to live. If children are involved, and they usually are, it’s even more tragic. Poor smokers, many of whom were deceived about the risks when they started smoking and were made to smoke cigarettes purposefully designed to be far more addictive than normal tobacco, are being economically devastated and driven into financial ruin by the State’s punitive policies.

While the State has derived and continues to derive a short-term benefit by the revenues from tobacco taxes and has derived a monstrous financial windfall from the Tobacco Industry Settlements, it has been at the expense of the persons most victimized by the evil practices of the Tobacco Industry, and those effects are magnified more for the poor. Non-smokers don’t get it, they don’t see it. They don’t understand why we just don’t quit. They’ve never experienced addiction at this level. They design policies centered on the premise that smokers should just quit, & if not, pay dearly. They don’t, or refuse to, see that the real effect of these wishful thinking based policies is to devastate the poor and the underclass, and worse yet, to directly and indirectly increase society’s present and future economic and medical costs far beyond what alternative legislative schemes, not premised or blinded by the sole desire to make smokers quit or pay dearly, would yield. The reality is that not using the Settlement funds to implement individualized preventative health care is going to cost us all tons more money to pay to treat acute health problems in the future, or maybe just cause more chronic illness and earlier death, which devastates the economic earning power of the affected families, turns income earners and fruitful taxpayers into resource drains, and ultimately shortens the lifespan of smokers such that we lose years and years of tax income. The reality is that poor folks being forced to pay $10 more per carton as a “deterrent” or motivation to quit isn’t working as intended and the net effect on society is greatly increased costs to provide public assistance & higher rates of homelessness.

My suggestion: allow all smokers to go be examined by a doctor & certified as an addict. Have the State cover these examinations out of the Tobacco Industry Settlement Fund. If they are certified as an addict, they immediately qualify for insurance or assistance from the Fund to cover all medical care and treatment due to smoking related health problems and illnesses, and particularly early diagnosis and preventative care, subject to the condition of attending medically sponsored smoking education clinics on negative health effects and most effective ways to quit. They are not required to quit, just to attend monthly or bi-monthly clinics in exchange for continued coverage of their smoking related health problems and preventative medical care, and, if they are poor (e.g., income less than $25,000/year) they receive a card issued by the State which allows them to purchase cigarettes at any retail establishment without having to pay any sales tax. Such sales would be tracked with the lost revenues made up from the Settlement Fund. The purpose is not to encourage smoking, but rather to emiliorate the economic losses to poor families and in turn minimize resultant increases in public assistance and other taxpayer costs. Further, a medically supervised education program is far more likely to be effective than to continue the present course of increasing the financial burden on the poor and referring smokers to quitting websites sponsored by Tobacco companies, whose lies created this mess and have great incentives to make sure folks don’t actually quit, right next to their links to more discounts.
Or we could hope none of the bad effects on which these suits were based actually happen, and try to punish smokers into submission, which appears to be our current social policy. You decide.


Bill Isbell is a new contributor to Studio 8. He is an accomplished singer-songwriter and civil rights lawyer, who both won a case in the US Supreme Court and had a #1 country hit in Texas. He has been living on less than $1,000 a month for the past year. This is the first article of a series designed to study the devastating effects of America’s governmental policies on the poor.

[Arcadia]

hola roxy, welcome here!.
"Non-smokers don’t get it, they don’t see it. They don’t understand why we just don’t quit. They’ve never experienced addiction at this level." You are absolutely right. Bubble gum is cheaper and you only need a dentist after too much chewing.
I think the same happens with alcohol. There is no way for a serious treatment for alcohol addiction in my country. Only isolated and not well articulated efforts.
Cancer can happen or not. My grandfather smoked tons of black tobacco without filter since he was eleven in Italy until his dead when he was 82. And he did not die because cancer. Heart attack, yeah, with breathing complications.... but he was 82.
In my city since this year, it's forbidden to smoke in public spaces (including bars). The bars owner protested, but that's the way it is now. This was made to preserve non smokers rights, of course.
Well, it's all for now. Meanwhile, try not to die.
Funny tarotish column's name, by the way!
saludos,

Arcadia

[Doreen Peri]

Hi Bill! Welcome to Studio 8!

You're not blowin' smoke about this issue, for sure. And just when I was going to go outside and enjoy a puff, I read this and get angry because I'm an addict and the govt is taking all my money like that! So, will I enjoy this next cigarette more because of it? or less? More or less, they're all freakin' thieves! Now, I'm not going to lose my house over it but I could get sick and die (even though I agree with Arcadia that some get sick, some don't).

You know what I like to do? I like to make little silver chalices out of the silver paper inside my pack. I leave them for bartenders who love them and put them up on their cash registers... (but I only leave them for bartenders who allow me to smoke. The others just get a tip and no poetry on a napkin either and a smaller tip, too!)

All addictions should be treated as health issues. But it doesn't surprise me that nicotine addiction doesn't get treated that way because it's a big money industry. Later it does... after we're hacking away with emphesema or in line for a lung transplant. Ahhh but then the health care industry makes a lot of money on your habit, too, right?

I'm really glad you have this column here. Can't wait to see what topic you bring up next..... plus, there's no telling when I might need some sound legal advice and some good music.

Going outside to have that cigarette break now. While I'm puffing, I'll think of all you said.

[stilltrucking]

I have been Puffing on Polonium for 53 years.

Vonnegut called smoking the American way of suicide. LBJ came home with his heart broke over what he had done in Vietnam, let his hair grow long and started smoking again. Such an honorable way out of it, and it is legal.

Smoking is a death wish for me. I imagine myself walking on a beach with my lungs full of cancer and my pockets full of rocks.

The things we do for love.


Thank you for the good fight, thank you for the music.

[Lightning Rod]

Roxy,

It's great to see you here as a S8 columnist. (yeah, like that's all we need around here is another fucking lawyer. Stick to music, my friend, it's much better for the soul.)

But seriously, Bill, I'm looking forward to reading your well thought and expressed articles. Welcome to the S8 community.

I will write more later, but right now I'm going to go and smoke a Pall Mall.

[stilltrucking]

Speaking of lawyers, Vonnegut said he is thinking about suing the American Tobacooo company for a defective product. All the warnings on the pack and he is still alive.

I liked Pall Malls for their Latiin slogan.
"Per Aspera Ad Astra"

Pall Malls, “A classy way to commit suicide” Kurt Vonnegut

[gypsyjoker]

That's funny clay, I was thinking another fucking musician

There are times when we need them both
at the same time, but mostly I need the music.

welcome to the fun house,
nice web page Bill
thanks for the music and the good words in behalf of us working poor.

[roxybeast]

It was actually a friend reading Vonnegut's Man Without A Country that convinced me to get back to reading lately. And writing. And rithmaticing. Well, at least until the cigarette suicide kicks in. Bill