Let me start this piece with a disclaimer: Listen, kiddies, if you don't know by now that smoking is a disgusting, dirty, foul, repulsive and DEADLY habit then you are truly an ignorant lot. This article in no way advocates teen smoking. The simple fact is that I'm a hopeless nicotine addict who will most likely die from lung cancer. So, anyway, here goes....
Being a rebellious teenager in the mid eighties, I decided (in my infinite teenage wisdom) that smoking cigarettes would be a cool thing to do. Now, fifteen years later I've got the coolest smoker's cough around. So, ok, I'm not in the best health, I guess, but this is a lifestyle choice that I made. I've done nothing illegal, yet I'm punished everyday by a bureaucracy gone absolutely haywire!! When I buy a pack of smokes for two bucks a pop, I'm paying about eighty percent tax. Why? To fund health care programs for lazy, non-working assholes who won't get a job and pay their own health care costs. That's just plain old bullshit. I know I'm a health risk, but I'm paying for it out of my own pocket anyway, ya bastards! See, I have a job, have health benefits and don't mooch off of the state for my every need. And I see the dollar signs in the eyes of these politicians. They know that most of us (smokers) aren't going to quit even if cigarettes cost five bucks a pack so they're saying to themselves, "Hey, let's boost the tax base. Tack on another buck and a quarter tax on a pack of cigarettes. Screw'm!" Hey bite me, Lib Boy! I've decided that when it becomes cheaper to buy the nicotine patch than it is to buy cigarettes, I'll switch to that. But for now I smoke, I vote and I'm ready to kick those Capitol Hill bastards in their collective heads!!!
