While we're at it, make soda drinkers pay.
Published: December 21
Since “large majorities of the public” “don’t want to subsidize somebody’s drug addiction,” the answer is not to drug-test welfare recipients but to make smokers pay more of the $300 billion in costs they impose each year largely on nonsmokers in the form of higher taxes (for Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) and inflated health insurance premiums — a number that dwarfs the costs imposed by illicit drugs and the amount smokers pay in excise taxes.
Alan: Tobacco Excise Tax by country - http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/solutions/tobacco_taxes/excise_tax/
John F. Banzhaf III, Washington
The writer is a former executive director of Action on Smoking and Health.