MY DIRTY SECRET

I have a secret, a dirty secret.... a filthy secret, one that embarrasses the Hell out of me.

Mich is a smoker.

A dare when I was all of ten left me with an addiction that refuses to be beaten. I've quit many times over the years, only to find myself with another of those damned coffin nails smouldering in between my fingers. I don't smoke in the house, in the vehicles, in front of children, and very rarely in public settings....but I smoke.

I'm legally prohibited from growing my own tobacco; I recall a court case back in the 90's in Victoria where a fella with 50 tobacco plants received more time than the fella with 400 pot plants....the government doesn't like competition, I guess. As I can't grow my own tobacco, legally, I'm obligated to purchase it from "official" sources, with the Canadian government the only licenced distributor. If a pack of 20 cigarettes costs $10, more than $5 of it is federal and provincial taxes. In this instance, the government is profiteering from my addiction as well as punishing me financially for it. OK, perhaps the expense is meant to be a deterrent, but it doesn't work that way in real life. Reservation cigarettes and smuggled smokes end up being pursued as smokers desperately try to cut the cost and expense of the brown weed they're addicted to. High taxes has led to dishonest business practices, outright, when it comes to tobacco sales.

The federal government wants tobacco companies to pay for the health care costs associated with the use of their products... but not the manufacturers of alcohol products...; and why it is that the tax monies I pay on each package isn't going into health care is a good question. The tax monies generated from cigarette sales goes into general revenue, which means that the rest of Canada is profiting from my addiction, too. All of that will be forgotten if I develop a smoking-related illness, of course, because health care is so costly and no one thought to put aside tobacco revenues to care for the addicts paying them, like me. Tobacco purchases could easily be linked to a health care card number, and the taxes paid on tobacco products routed to a health care kitty instead of general revenue; instead, 1 in four Canadians pay $5+ day more in taxes to support a government-sanctioned addiction, only to be abandoned and vilified when resulting health issues arrive. A street addict is afforded more help to kick addiction issues than a smoker is, and street addicts aren't using legal substances like a smoker does....they don't contribute to the system in general, but they qualify for more help and assistance in getting "clean". A street addict is often viewed as a victim, but I've never heard of a smoker being described as such. Smokers are as much victims as any other addict is, but because we are not impaired by our addiction, we aren't viewed as such.

The government wants it ALL ways: to tax smokers to the poorhouse, deny them equal footing with other addicts as regards treatment options, fine the tobacco companies for the health care costs associated with smoking (perhaps because big tobacco companies earn more money than the government? : "You have more, YOU pay for it!" ), and retain a firm grip on distribution by being the ONLY licenced distributor . The government has, literally, a monopoly on tobacco addiction in this country, yet cries foul about all that it entails.

A pack a day = $5 in tax revenue

Multiply by 365 days in a year = $1825 tax dollars generated

Multiply by 50 years = $91,250 tax dollars generated

A fifty year smoking addiction will net the government almost $100,000, none of which goes into health care for the addict. The government complains bitterly about the cost of health care for smokers' issues, yet continues to distribute the addictive product. Tobacco is one of THE most addictive substances known to man, but it's one that's licenced and distributed by our own government. It's playing both sides of the fence, and makes little sense, in that light.

I didn't ask to be an addict, and the issues of addiction involving tobacco weren't as known in the 60's and 70's as they are today. All I knew as a ten year old kid was that it was supposed to be cool, many of the adults I knew smoked in those days: it was a grown up thing to do. Now it's socially unacceptable to smoke, so those with the addiction are forced into a higher level of discretion. It takes a lot of people by surprise to find out that there's a pack of cigarettes sitting inside of a little wooden box by the back door: they're invariably shocked and horrified when they find out that those are MY cigarettes in that box. Apparently I don't "look" like a smoker... whatever the Hell that's supposed to mean.

OK, I smoke....and I keep trying to quit and make it stick, one of these times it WILL. In the meantime, I'm appalled and angered by a government that behaves no better than a 4 year old bully in a sandbox when it comes to the subject of tobacco, tobacco sales, addiction, and health care costs; they want their cake and to eat it too. Since it's discovery, tobacco has been in and out of fashion, but never completely removed from our society: so it will continue to do, we need to find a more compassionate and cohesive way of addressing the addiction it creates if we're to ever see it leave the fringes of society some day in the future.