Tobacco tax hypocrisy

The current flap over tobacco tax hikes raises a larger issue of hypocrisy wrapped in the tendrils of commerce, the common good and a national addiction. Corporations such as Phillip Morris and Lorillard seem to overcome all legal assaults and continue to dispense billions of cigarettes, which contain the deadly drug nicotine, yet the lowly average citizen is chastised, excluded from public places and relentlessly taxed for smoking them.

Setting aside the question of the free availability of a drug far more deadly than all the heroin and cocaine put together, we approach a more lurid equation: the dependence of bloated state government budgets on tobacco sales. Yet the smoker is cursed wherever he goes and the victim of abusive, selective taxation that mocks fairness while protecting the real culprits, the manufacturers, and decades of their lies.

Why not raise the taxes on alcoholics (far more of them), other drug addicts, boaters, sled riders, ice fishermen, visitors or gamblers? If you were to consider the darker face of capitalism, you would want to ponder our national drug policies: Let those with the most money make the rules, and put the screws to the rest. Sound familiar?

Dennis Lopez

Rockport