My 2nd Submission piece

 

Okay, hello again. I notice that I popped online after a long absence, bombarded you with a bunch of posts, and disappeared for a month.

I'm probably about to do it again, lol.

First things first: I didn't get that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel job, and it was no suprise to me. My submission sucked, and even if it didn't the Journal isn't looking for a guy like me. To quote the rejection letter:

 We have tried to choose a group of quality columnists who will be representative of the public we serve – politically, geographically, racially, ethnically, by gender and age.

As you can see, they were eager to hire a 32 year old straight white guy.

The vastly embarrassing thing is that they chose 25 other writers - poor submission or not, no way I'm the 26th best undiscovered writer in Milwaukee.

Oh, and since the subject of this piece (one of the two I sent in) was smoking, please note: nearly five weeks into life as a non-smoker, I'm still doing well. I fell off the wagon for a day or two last week, sneaking smokes during a high stress day, but I'm back to clean and phlegmmy :)

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Unless you enjoy being seen as a social outcast and a proponent of all things Evil, it’s best to just smile and nod your head when people bring up the idea of a smoking ban in Milwaukee.

Now personally, I think a citywide smoking ban will hurt local businesses, and more importantly I see it as yet another erosion of our dwindling individual rights.

After all, if the customer demands it, a business will ban smoking on their own. Why mandate it?

In other words, I’m as social outcast and a proponent of all things Evil.

But I’m also a realist, and I can see far enough down the road to know the days of public smoking are numbered. I could live with a smoking ban.

I wouldn’t like it, but I’d deal - in part because I believe that it would be enacted with genuine concern for public health, even though I know it was pushed not by the citizens of Milwaukee, but by special interest groups .

There’s no such saving grace behind talk of a citywide tax on cigarettes. I’ve heard the reasons behind it, and I don’t believe a single one of them is the true reason behind the tax.

According to the Council, cigarettes allegedly account for 1/3 of the city’s litter, adding to the cost of street cleaning and sewage treatment. They cause accidental fires, add to the cost of health care for government employees, and increase water and air pollution.

(No word yet on whether they contribute to tooth decay and global warming, but I’m sure our enligtened Council will educate us soon enough)

Tacked onto the end of the discussion is the one true reason for the tax: the need to fatten the city‘s wallet.

In 2004, 40,730,000 packs of cigarettes were sold in Milwaukee. If as hoped, cigarettes were taxed at an additional $0.25 a pack, $10,182,000 would be raised to ‘help pay for the above mentioned city costs’.

It’s not a unique idea. Cook County and the city of Chicago both tax cigarettes. and we all know how healthy and financially sound the folks in Illionois are.

Oh, and, um, naturally property taxes are currently used to pay for those costs in Milwaukee. If you read between the lines, the idea is the tax would lower that burden for homeowners.

Riiight.

Sewage treatment, street litter, careless house fires? C'mon, give us some credit!

And the bit about property taxes - implying the cigarette tax would lower them - is laughable.

[full disclosure: I am a smoker, albeit one that resents my own addiction. Sure, I don’t look forward to a cost increase, but unless I’m completely misreading my own heart, financial self-interest doesn’t play a role in this debate]

I just find it revolting that the council would try to increase the city's bank balance in the guise of an anti-smoking measure. Isn’t it a tad ghoulish to profit from something you yourself label destructive and deadly?

Not an ounce of me thinks that money will go to anything related to tobacco related costs, save perhaps for a token school program or two. The rest will go to fill whatever shortfalls the budget creates.

Years from now, when smoking is passe and the tax peters out, the people of Milwaukee will be left scrambling to meet the reduced revenue. What will happen then is self-evident - another tax will be created to take its place, only it won’t be as easy to find a willing victim.

Next time, everyone will pay.

I say, if your goal is to ban smoking, then do it. Do it on the basis of public health, do it because it means it will be that much harder for my kids to pick up my vile habit in the years to come, do it on principle or because it gives you more federal funds to repair the damage cigarettes caused.

Heck, do it with the long disproved reasoning the increase in price will reduce demand and limit smoking.

Just don't hide your motives behind some ad campaign - you're trying to profit off of someone else’s pain every bit as much as the tobacco companies you despise.