marlboro

I see that Gov. Sanford has seen fit to propose a 30 cents per pack tax on marlboro guide. His proposal is nothing new as groups like AARP have lobbied for it due to health reasons. However, the governor opposed it all along. He stated that the tax would not be sustainable since cigarette sales would go down due to the assumption that sales would go down due to the increased price and people quitting smoking.

Instead of dedicating the revenue from the tax to areas like providing health care coverage to uninsured South Carolinians, smoking cessation and the like, the revenues would go to the general fund according to the governor.

The tax on cigarettes in South Carolina is among the lowest in the nation. It needs to be increased to deter use. The governor may not acknowledge it, but he will be helping the health of many of the state’s citizens and helping to bring the state out of the dark ages of marlboro fun use and abuse.

In the same speech, Mr. Kornegay predicted that commercial airlines would eventually ban smoking, that smoking would eventually be prohibited in federal buildings, and that the industry would be forced to place tar and nicotine numbers on the packages and strengthen the health warnings. He predicted that all of these measures would cause the industry great harm. Then, ironically — and inadvertently — Kornegay made a case in favor of policies eliminating public smoking:

“Consider this,” he said. “If the pressure of anti-smoking laws and regulation succeeds in stopping each American smoker from lighting up just one cigarette each day, the annual consequences are devastating: marlboro online consumption would drop by more than 18 billion units. Personal spending for cigarettes would decline by more than half a billion dollars.”

Ah, how many more lives could have been saved by the earlier enactment of such policies, had the industry not stood in the way and fought against them with all its resources? But this did not concern Kornegay or the industry, who both continued to fight public health authorities’ efforts to reduce tobacco-related disease.

In 1979, after HEW issued a report linking maternal smoking to perinatal mortality, Kornegay dismissed it, saying, “The data suggest that such factors as … hospital pay status (public vs. private) have greater effects on pregnancy outcomes than maternal smoking.”

When society became alarmed over skyrocketing rate of lung cancer in the 1970s, Kornegay deflected attention from cigarettes by attributing the increase to improved medical diagnostic techniques.