Ban it instead of raising taxes on it.
Some of you who read my blog may not agree with me on this one, but I think tobacco should be banned in this country. Ever since I started working in medicine and got a first hand look at what this deadly addiction does to people, I have felt that the choice to smoke should be taken away from people.
Eating in moderation doesn't kill people, neither does drinking alcohol in moderation. But smoking even a couple of cigarettes a day is just as deadly as smoking two packs a day. The number one killer of smokers is heart and lung disease, not cancer. The most expensive health care cost of smokers is chronic lung disease. "Texas taxpayers spend about $1.5 billion a year for treating tobacco-related illness in the Medicaid program for low-income people," that was from a Chronicle report in December. That is only in the medicaid program, you can imagine how much the private health insurance industry spends on smokers.
The numbers spent are staggering, the human suffering intolerable. I have personally seen my patients slowly suffocate to death even while on oxygen, weak and gasping for air, while they need an electronic scooter just to move in their house. A few months ago one of our patients died this way, after being in and out of the hospital seven times in the year before his death. Last month one of our patients came in to get her yearly referral to her lung doctor to follow up on her lung cancer that she had removed four years ago. She still smokes. This woman lost an entire lung from LUNG CANCER induced by smoking, and she still smokes. Her excuse? I can't quit, it is too hard. She has "tried" everything, but cannot quit. People who smoke around their kids are the worst. If you choose to smoke then fine, but don't force your child to suffer the same fate you will just because you cannot say no. I have a lot of patients who never smoked, but suffer from chronic lung diseases because their parents smoked around them.
Studies have shown that nicotine addictions are just as powerful as cocaine or heroin, but yet it is still legal to smoke. I don't get it.
Or maybe I do. I guess the government thinks they can still make more money in taxes on tobacco than what they pay out in health care. Stupid thinking, that worked 30 years ago when people were dying much more quickly from smoking related diseases. Now they aren't, they just linger on and rack up millions of dollars in health care. Who pays for that? All of us, not just the smokers. Who inherits the bills? Our children. How are they going to pay for it?
There is a new drug out on the market that helps people with smoking addictions. Chantix hits the nicotinic receptors in the brain that gives a person the same pleasurable feeling as if they smoked a cigarette. I have encouraged all my patients to give it a try, the success rate Pfizer advertises is impressive. It isn't covered by insurance, and cost about the same as buying a pack of cigarettes every day. You would think that this is affordable, but most of my patients complain that it costs too much. Uhmmmm....you can afford to smoke two packs of cigs a day, but cannot afford this medicine to cure you of your addiction and thus save you a lot of money, not including what you would have spent in the years to come on your health care? You do not smoke when you take Chantix, therefore you substitute the cost of the cigarettes for the cost of the medicine. It is simple. Really.
The problem is that most people with addictions do not think logically about some things, and the most important thing they do not think about is their health and how it affects not just themselves, but everyone else, including their children.
Sometimes the rights of the individual should not exceed the rights of the greater good. Bottom line, it costs too much money and causes too much suffering in the end.
Eating in moderation doesn't kill people, neither does drinking alcohol in moderation. But smoking even a couple of cigarettes a day is just as deadly as smoking two packs a day. The number one killer of smokers is heart and lung disease, not cancer. The most expensive health care cost of smokers is chronic lung disease. "Texas taxpayers spend about $1.5 billion a year for treating tobacco-related illness in the Medicaid program for low-income people," that was from a Chronicle report in December. That is only in the medicaid program, you can imagine how much the private health insurance industry spends on smokers.
The numbers spent are staggering, the human suffering intolerable. I have personally seen my patients slowly suffocate to death even while on oxygen, weak and gasping for air, while they need an electronic scooter just to move in their house. A few months ago one of our patients died this way, after being in and out of the hospital seven times in the year before his death. Last month one of our patients came in to get her yearly referral to her lung doctor to follow up on her lung cancer that she had removed four years ago. She still smokes. This woman lost an entire lung from LUNG CANCER induced by smoking, and she still smokes. Her excuse? I can't quit, it is too hard. She has "tried" everything, but cannot quit. People who smoke around their kids are the worst. If you choose to smoke then fine, but don't force your child to suffer the same fate you will just because you cannot say no. I have a lot of patients who never smoked, but suffer from chronic lung diseases because their parents smoked around them.
Studies have shown that nicotine addictions are just as powerful as cocaine or heroin, but yet it is still legal to smoke. I don't get it.
Or maybe I do. I guess the government thinks they can still make more money in taxes on tobacco than what they pay out in health care. Stupid thinking, that worked 30 years ago when people were dying much more quickly from smoking related diseases. Now they aren't, they just linger on and rack up millions of dollars in health care. Who pays for that? All of us, not just the smokers. Who inherits the bills? Our children. How are they going to pay for it?
There is a new drug out on the market that helps people with smoking addictions. Chantix hits the nicotinic receptors in the brain that gives a person the same pleasurable feeling as if they smoked a cigarette. I have encouraged all my patients to give it a try, the success rate Pfizer advertises is impressive. It isn't covered by insurance, and cost about the same as buying a pack of cigarettes every day. You would think that this is affordable, but most of my patients complain that it costs too much. Uhmmmm....you can afford to smoke two packs of cigs a day, but cannot afford this medicine to cure you of your addiction and thus save you a lot of money, not including what you would have spent in the years to come on your health care? You do not smoke when you take Chantix, therefore you substitute the cost of the cigarettes for the cost of the medicine. It is simple. Really.
The problem is that most people with addictions do not think logically about some things, and the most important thing they do not think about is their health and how it affects not just themselves, but everyone else, including their children.
Sometimes the rights of the individual should not exceed the rights of the greater good. Bottom line, it costs too much money and causes too much suffering in the end.