In 1980, an organization called Mothers Against Drunk
Driving, (MADD) was founded by Candice Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a
drunk driver. This noble effort,
according to MADD, has cut drunk driving in half.
Such wonderful news shouldn’t go uncelebrated so, let’s all
figure a way to congratulate these folks for their righteousness.
One way would be to go out and have a toast but, that would
be counter-productive. Another way would
be to incorporate an easy new target.
After all, society has proudly beaten its collective chest
because it tried to force smokers to stop their “dirty” habit, or as the
smokers put it, their “lifestyle.”
For you young’uns, smokers were people who would come by
your house and join your parents in smoking non-filtered cigarettes, cigars, or
pipes. The smoke would waft though the
air and eventually soil everything from walls and cheesy oil paintings, to
walls and lungs. Smokers could also be
found in stores, on streets, in cars, busses, on planes, and in office
buildings. They were everywhere because
they had money and paid taxes.
Eventually, the Surgeon General deemed smoking bad for us
and decided to try to outlaw cigarettes.
Unfortunately, cigarettes were subject to what smokers called “sin
taxes.” Sin taxes were levies attached
to products holier-than-thou people in free societies felt needed taxing in
order to save the rest of civilization from damnation, or sin. Cigarettes and alcohol were always the two
big ones to tax because they usually sold the most and thereby generated the
most tax.
But, the pesky Surgeon General messed things up when he told
people to stop (more on quitting smoking using e-cigs in a future story.) Taxes slowed from a river to a trickle; still
there was that alcohol to be taxed.
Until MADD got on the mess-up-the-revenue bus, that is. You see, now people are drinking less as is
evidenced by MADD’s statistics of cutting drunk driving in half. That doesn’t mean people aren’t drinking more
at home, or simply using designated drivers or taking taxis home from bars and
restaurants.
Nonetheless, the government appears to be anxious to tap
into another source of revenue to fill the voids left by the cigarette tax
chasm and the alcohol tax slump.
Our politicians fail to see these taxes as dynamic, in
nature. They move up and down as people
change habits. But, politicians create
projects and earmark those tax dollars without considering that fact. And so, the tax must increase and it then
becomes punitive.
The crux of this rant, though, is to identify the latest
scheme where the government is giving its subjects – er – citizens rights to a
“new, legal” product: cannabis, otherwise known as marijuana.
This nominally inexpensive drug which is now legal in Colorado
So it appears as though “lifestyles” are only acceptable if
they involve ingesting drugs. Smoking
cigarettes are bad. Smoking cannabis is
good. Paying taxes is great!
Now, if only we had a crusader to keep cannabis-impaired
drivers off the roads much as Candice Lightner did.
