Tears Of A Righteous Crocodile

Tobacco control advocate Dr Michael Siegel has today reported on an Oregon study which tracked the state's smoking prevalence since 1996. The main finding appears to be that statisticians are surprised when uncovering facts of which everyone else is already aware.

Although Oregon enacted a substantial cigarette tax increase in 1996, a new report shows that there has been no decrease in smoking prevalence among lower-income Oregonians, which remained steady at about 35% from 1996 through 2007.

"The report notes the economic impact of smoking hits lower-income families harder."Tobacco is so addictive that some Oregon families reduce the amount of money spent on food to buy cigarettes," it said."

Well, they can attempt to pin this down to addiction if they wish, but that's really not what's happening here.

As I've mentioned many times before, I have grown up with, socialise with, and work with working (and non-working) class people, and one thing you can reliably bank on is that the vast majority never change. Many are still working in the same job, meeting the same friends, going to the same places on nights out, to the same holiday venues, and with the same people, as they did 30 or more years ago. They still drink the same drinks, eat the same food, and sometimes even drive the same car as they have for decades too. If they smoke, merely raising the price is going to have very little effect - they will simply find the money from somewhere because smoking is what they and their friends have done, and will always do.

That's why it's always rather amusing to read the middle class coffee table poppycock pumped out by ASH extolling the virtues of raising tobacco taxes as a means of making smokers quit. You see, ASH are continually shedding crocodile tears about 'health inequalities'; their hearts bleeding as they explain how their main concern is helping those poor, err, poor people.

Yet, as this study proves - as if it required proving - imposing across the board tax rises on consumer goods naturally harms the working class more than others. It's the most regressive tax (along with VAT) that any government can apply. The better off, on the other hand, are not only more able to shrug off the extra cost, they are also more able to avoid it altogether by travelling abroad and stocking up.

Far from promoting equality as they emptily claim, ASH only serve to widen the gap in equality of disposable income ... or, to put it another way, they make the poor poorer.

The righteous never learn though, so we are no doubt soon to go through this whole charade once again with minimum alcohol pricing. It's being held off for the moment, but these tedious cretins are paid to carry on being tedious cretins so won't stop whining until they get it.

Again, the middle classes won't give a stuff as it won't affect them, while the working class will pay extra and, if that leaves them short, will economise by buying value brands at Tesco instead of the slightly more expensive version. The 69 year old guy I know who has been getting up at 5:30am, six days a week, to labour at a building site as he has done since he was 15, is not going to change the amont of cans he buys at the supermarket every week. He'll just buy cheaper sausages.

Of course, the people the tedious cretins claim they are targeting - 'hazardous' drinkers - will possibly stop eating altogether (or their kids will) - rather than give up their alcohol. Not a very wise move, is it?

Same goes for the ever more regularly mooted soda tax and new kid on the block, the junk food tax. In fact, every interfering righteous initiative is a cert to take a larger proportion of working class household budgets than it will those of the well-paid fucktards who propose it.

Nanny does so love to bash the poor, doesn't she?