Smokers are no more responsible for assuming their own health care risks than are the obese who suffer strokes, or tanners who develop melanoma. It is simply prejudicial and biased to isolate smokers as responsible for their own health care, without extending this level of responsibility to other people who have equally unhealthy, disease causing habits.
In an ideal world, everyone would consciously choose to lead a healthy lifestyle. In the real world, however, people assume habits that are hazardous to their health.
All individuals are certainly responsible for their actions. So, if smokers themselves provoke diseases which are the result of their own unhealthy habits, why should they not bear the financial cost of the health care necessary to treat the conditions they brought upon themselves?
*Foremost, smoking must be appropriately recognized as less of a 'conscious choice,' and more of a physiological and psychological substance addiction. While there is a tricking of a few, mostly unpopular, proponents of "smoker's rights" in society, most individual smokers seldom brag about their habit. The vast majority of smokers have tried to quit more than once, and have relapsed at some point after quitting. Quitting smoking and battling all of the psychological stresses and situations that trigger nicotine use is not easy, and is a challenge for most, rather than a choice. Only 2.5% of smokers who try and quit each year succeed their first time, so they need the support of the medical community, not the aggravation of restricted access to medical treatments that could help them quit.
*Second, most smokers acquired the habit during their young, impressionable youth. Smoking is a habit that commonly begins in adolescence. Immature teenagers typically feel invincible and do not consider serious health repercussions that could arise later in life. It is exceedingly harsh to hold a smoker responsible for the risks assumed with continuing a habit he or she acquired as an immature teen, especially if the smoker is trying to break the habit as an adult.
*Furthermore, mandating that smokers bear the responsibility of their own health risks is an impossible premise to enforce. Would the Medicare system have a national list of registered smokers? Would the medical community refuse health care treatment to any smoker that shows any vague symptom of a smoking related illness? While smoking can cause countless health complications, smoking is by no means the ONLY cause of ailments and diseases. If it is possible that a disease associated with smoking may have been caused by something besides cigarettes, then merely being a smoker should not be enough to force a smoker to pay for his or her own treatment.
*Mandating that smokers pay for their own health care is discriminatory. Under the very same ideology, anyone who displays unhealthy habits should be forced to subsidize their own medical care, including the 58 million overweight Americans, and anyone else who leads an unhealthy lifestyle.
*It is also scientifically proven that exposure to second hand smoke increases the likelihood of developing smoking related cancers and illnesses. Would the non-smoking family members who live with smokers, or those who work in smoke-filled environments be forced to pay for the health risk of cigarettes, if they voluntarily exposed themselves to second hand smoke? They clearly should not. Yet if smokers are obliged to pay for their own treatment, anyone constantly exposed to second hand smoke would have prove that he or she is not a smoker, to receive medical treatment for a smoking related illness.
*Smokers already DO bear the responsibility of their health risks. Smokers pay higher premiums for health insurance and suffer the repercussions of their habits when they develop cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disorders, bronchitis, emphysema, and all the other illnesses associated with their habit. Suffering from cigarette related illnesses is enough punishment; smokers should not have to furthermore pay for their own health care.
*But most importantly, human compassion and medical ethics dictate that any human person, smoker or non, with access to health care, and in need of medical treatment, should be entitled to receive it indiscriminately.
I conclude with the affirmation that I am a staunch non-smoker. Personally, I cannot comprehend how a product that contains 400 chemical substances, promises to give me cancer, lower my life expectancy, suppress my cardiovascular and respiratory systems, make me impotent and give me a heart attack can be such a money-making, smashing success. If I were to advertize such a commodity in the newspaper, with only the above description, without calling my product 'cigarettes', if a smoker had no idea what it was, he or she would never even venture near it, much less fork out hard earned cash to buy it.
Although Surgeon's General Warning bulletins have been reporting the health risks of cigarettes since the 1960's, cigarettes remain a completely legal product. To be perfectly honest, it is quite contradictory to treat smoking as a petty crime by expecting smokers to pay for health services after using a product that the government, because of its revenue generating capacity, refuses to outlaw despite its risks.
Very ironically and ridiculously, cigarette taxes, which only smokers pay, are partially dedicated to health spending services and cancer research. Should smokers bear the responsibility for the health risks of cigarette smoking? They probably already do.
They at least in part, help offset their own higher health care costs every time they buy a pack of smokes and try to buy insurance.