Poll: Are Cigarette Smokers Treated Unfairly?
Gov. Pat Quinn has propose to more than double the tax on a pack of cigarettes.
Gov. Pat Quinn has proposed increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1 in an effort to reduce a $2.7 billion deficit in the Medicaid program, the State Journal Register reported. The cigarette tax would generate about $675 million in revenue. The state's current cigarette tax is 96 cents; Quinn's proposal would more than double it. Aside from raising revenue for a health care program, the thinking goes that such sin taxes are more acceptable because people shouldn't be smoking anyway. Smoking causes about 443,000 deaths a year in the United States, or about one in five of the nation's deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And smoking contributes to yearly health care costs to tune of about $96 billion. But not …
Richard Schulte
5:59 pm on Saturday, May 5, 2012
Sully: "Sorry Buc- Richard''s absurdities get to me after a while." I've been mulling Sully's comment above over in my mind. Sully didn't elaborate about the "absurdities" that he's talking about, so I can only speculate. Is it that those "green" light bulbs, CFL, contain mercury and are an environmental hazard and should be banned? Is it that we were being warned about "global cooling" and a new… more ›