What's the Big Deal?

Smokers are an interesting group. They have an addiction to an unhealthy substance, but don’t get treated the way drug addicts do, and in fact are often able to make friends based on a shared habit. Yet, whenever something comes along to make smoking less convenient, they act as though they are a brutalized minority. Every tax is viewed as an infringement of civil rights.

What never occurs to them is that there is also the matter of everyone else’s rights. I’ve never been one to demonize smokers or smoking, but still I was glad when smoking was banned in bars and restaurants in my home state of New Jersey and my state of residency, New York. What a person does on their own, unhealthy or not, is largely their concern, but I couldn’t attend a concert, go to a bar, or eat out without being forced against my will to breath second hand smoke. I mean, if the guy sitting next to you is eating a double bacon cheeseburger, you don’t get fatter, and yet it’s considered perfectly acceptable to judge fat people for making bad choices. Smokers, on the other hand, aren’t just making a bad choice for themselves, but for the rest of us. Even now, when smoking is banned in most buildings, I can’t walk the streets of the city without being engulfed in clouds of other people’s smoke. I choose not to smoke, and yet depending on who I end up walking near, I can inhale smoke and smell like cigarettes.

So when smoking is banned in specific places, I don’t see it as an attack on a smoker’s rights but as protecting everyone else’s rights. If you want to smoke, you can do it at home but still go out in the world, whereas if I choose not to smoke at home, I can still be exposed to that secondhand smoke when I go out into the world. Cigarettes also have other effects on people other than those choosing to smoke. Yes, they pollute our air. They also litter our streets, fill our landfills, stain surfaces, clog filters, and then there is the biggest cost: health care. Secondhand smoke can have adverse effects which can cost innocent people more in visits to doctors, but the biggest cost is to people who choose to smoke because they get sick more often, more severely, and can eventually gain debilitating or fatal conditions. If they end up in the emergency room, many of those costs are paid by our taxes and others are added into the costs of everyone else’s health care. If they have insurance, by it’s nature a shared burden, their increase health care costs get spread to everyone else in that plan through higher premiums.

Why shouldn’t we recoup these costs to our health and our environment through taxes? If you are okay with infringing on my health for your own pleasure, then why should I feel bad about taking some of your money for things that we all share? It makes sense to me, yet cigarette smokers complain that now they can’t afford this habit, or that it will hurt businesses that sell cigarettes. What is this prohibitive cost? Well, in New York which just raised their cigarette tax, the cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes is now about 10 dollars, or 50 cents per cigarette. That’s prohibitive?

What if instead of cigarettes, your social habit was smoking marijuana? 50 cents for a joint would be a bargain. Ask any marijuana user and they’d jump at the chance to get 20 joints for only 10 dollars. Some people at work take coffee breaks instead of cigarette breaks; 50 cents for a cup of coffee is amazing. Some people are social smokers. Ask any social drinker in New York if they thought it was cost prohibitive to pay 50 cents for a beer. In a New York City bar, you’d be lucky to get 2 beers for 10 dollars, let alone 20 beers. People with a sweet tooth can hardly even get a donut for 50 cents anymore.

The only reason smoker’s care is because, as time goes on, they feel compelled to smoke more and more, almost uncontrollably, so that what equals a 2 dollar a day habit now could be a 30 dollar a day habit later. Still, that’s the cost of doing business and we all have to make choices. People who like lobster choose not to eat it every day because it’s too expensive, and people who are low on cash cut back on the things they like. Yes, smokers may be addicted, but the fact is they chose to start smoking knowing that they probably would become addicted. Now, they complain because that addiction is compelling them to spend a lot of money on what is actually a low-cost product, and somehow that’s my problem? Would you take me seriously if I was eating three boxes of donuts a day and then said that I think donuts are too expensive because, while the cost of one is only 50 cents, the cost of three boxes is 30? No, you’d tell me I shouldn’t be eating 3 boxes and that if I wanted to that I had to accept the cost, and you’d be right.

People have the right to choose, but all choices have tradeoffs. I could choose to party all night or I could choose to get a full night’s sleep before work, but not both. Smokers can choose to smoke and spend a measly 50 cents for the privilege or to quit and save themselves some money, but they don’t get to smoke, bother other people, and get to do it for free. Taxing cigarettes creates revenue that helps everyone, smokers included, and it also creates a financial incentive to quit and for other people not to start. Even if you’re the type of person who loves smoking and never wants to stop, I’m sure you’d welcome better health and more money in your pocket. If you could smoke and have those benefits that would be great, but with choice comes cost, and in this case, the cost is 50 cents a cigarette. Can anyone actually tell me that your health and convenience aren’t worth that much?