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Placing high taxes on cigarettes is nothing more then social engineering. Our government has decided it is not in our best interest to smoke and so they have placed high taxes on cigarettes in order to make smokers quit. The problem with this is that America is not a communist nation. In a nation that stands on the principles of freedom, we are granted the right to make decisions for ourselves and live with the consequences. The consequences were never supposed to be from the government.

The role of government is not to define society but to allow society to define itself. That means that the government should not legislate whether or not we smoke by placing high taxes on cigarettes. We see this same sort of philosophy in other countries on other issues. In countries like France they pass laws that prevent foreign words being used instead of french words. In Canada, they pass laws that require a certain percentage of music on the radio to be from Canadian musicians instead of American musicians. We might laugh at these examples but on the issue of smoking, our American leaders are doing the same thing. They are overtaxing an item that they don't want us to use.

Now, I am not a smoker and I never will be but I think we should all be upset when our government plays Big Brother and tries to control our behavior whether that is through overzealous laws or through high taxation.

On a pragmatic note, all cigarette taxes do in the end of the day is make our poor people poorer. People who are unable to break the habit because the addiction is too strong for them and they continue to smoke as prices rise. The very government who tells us that they are looking out for us makes our lives that much harder. Another reason not to let Big Brother try to direct our society - whenever they interfere, they only make things worse.

Learn more about this author, Jason Austin.
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