(With apologies to lyricists Merle Travis and Tex Williams)
Cigarette smokers are society’s most reliable whipping boy. The latest pitch-fork and burning-torch taxation mob was inflamed by the Surgeon General’s scathing 2012 report on smoking, focused on smoking-related health care costs and the approximately 400,000 “avoidable” U.S. deaths directly attributable to cigarette smoking (an un-stratospheric mortality rate of less than 1% of U.S. smokers).
Ethically, if the health cost card is played, then it should be played on a level playing field. Thus, it is well established that being overweight and lacking exercise is a major killer. Relevant health care costs are reported to be at least comparable with the smokers’ tally. The CDC’s estimate of overweight adults in the U.S. is 70% of the population---a potential taxation gold mine. But, how to collect? Well, everyone over 21 could carry a subcutaneous chip (renewable every six months), imprinted with that person’s weight. When read at the food cashier’s station, the chip’s revelation of how far the individual’s weight is above the appropriate, “healthy,” Body Mass Index would be used to calculate the Overweight Naughty Tax to be added to the bill. Voila!
Then there’s alcohol consumption. Not only does it bring its own significant health care costs but, ill-used, a massively destructive dose of costly and “avoidable” societal dysfunction as well. Another mother lode for the taxman. Heck, a mere $1 tax on every Bud sold in the U.S. would soon render the National Debt a faint memory.
And there’s marijuana. Rampant political pressure seeks to broadly expand its “medical” usage and even to legalize it for general use. Unlike tobacco, few experts seem to be bothered about the costs of any long-term adverse health effects. No problem, because by the time the light does go on, everyone will be too zonked to care.
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The author is a non-smoker. His weight is below his BMI but, with age, slowly closing in. His fondness for fine rum, single malt scotch, and Pierre Ferrand cognac would make him a taxman’s delight.
