But for everyone else this collapse may be for the best. While the tobacco companies deserve whatever they get, the rest of us don't. Consider the tax increase contained in Republican John McCain's Senate bill. Thus the tax would be paid by the nation's 45 million smokers, who are more often poor and lower middle class. Other parts of the bill would lift per-pack prices even more.
Democrats seem to believe such a regressive tax is kosher because it's for smokers' own good.
In the name of saving kids from a habit that may kill them in 40 years, our pols would take spending money from parents who need it today for clothes or food. This might even be tolerable if anyone were sure that prices are decisive in kids deciding to smoke. Anyone who ever puffed behind school knows that peer pressure and MTV have as much influence on teens. Thus the advertising and marketing restrictions agreed to by the tobacco companies last June are probably more important than price. The GOP wants its share to finance a tax cut it doesn't have the courage to pass merely using the budget surplus.