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"Taxation without representation." This argument goes directly to the heart of what brought colonists to America in the first place.

Luxury taxes, like those on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline, are not earmarked for funding the ill results of the products' use. Cigarette taxes are spent on everything except health care for the smokers who need assistance with costs of smoking related illnesses.

Cigarette taxes are used to fund government in its administrative form: salaries for congress and expense funds for representatives. Other uses of the monies are DARE programs (which, ironically, do not discourage smoking), a minimal contribution to education funds (which do not discourage smoking) and general funding (which does not discourage smoking).

Pork belly spending in the guise of smoking impact research has been the only legitimate, though barely, spending of cigarette tax money. It is of note that there have been no significant changes in the information available as to the impact of smoking despite the steady increase of funding for such research over the last ten years.

The only monies that are contributed to health care funds for smokers are those that are received at the state level as punitive damages imposed against cigarette manufacturers as a result of class action law suits. Lobbying continues to tout that increasing the taxes on cigarettes will increase the funds available to smokers using government funded health care. When pressed, the lobbyists cannot provide documentation of one tax dollar being spent to care for one smoker.

Examination of privatized insurance reports continue to show that insurance premiums paid by smokers are responsible for more than 75% of all money spent on caring for patients with smoking related emphysema, lung cancer, bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The remaining 25% is not shouldered by the government. Of the remaining money spent, patients, families and life insurance policies pay another 10%. Medicare and Medicaid are left with only 15% of the total money spent, yet they do not even shoulder that much.

Hospitals, laboratories, clinics and physicians are required by Federal law to discount the services they provide, that will be paid by Medicare or Medicaid, by 75%. The government is only required to pay 3.5% of all of the money spent on smokers' health care. This money is covered by the interest made on the multi-billion dollar settlement trust funds from the cigarette manufacturers.

In the end, the smokers are paying for their habit, the habits of their politicians, the health and life insurance premiums that will pay their bills and many programs that will never impact the smoking habits of generations to come. The government is the true benefactor of the cigarette taxes. They garner more than 250 times in cigarette taxes than the money they will spend on the taxpayers. "Taxation without representation."

Learn more about this author, Ann Marie Dwyer.
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