O.K., I don't usually get political, but this hits me where it hurts. So let me run this scenario by all of you.

They raised the tax on Tobacco to fund the S-Chip (and supposedly to reduce the number of Americans that smoke). Now the bean counters in Washington have come up with a dollar value on the revenue this will make to fund S-Chip. So now people quit smoking, or quit smoking at least as much, people die (not necessarily by smoking), and young people never start smoking because of the expense and stigma we all put up with. The revenue starts to not meet projected amounts, Washington needs more money to fund S-Chip. What do they do? Raise the tobacco tax again? and again?

We all need to stand up for our minority rights, as smokers. I have figure that they have already reduced the places I can smoke by 60% at a minimum. We are looked at by the 80% of poeple, who don't smoke, like lepers or worse.

The old tip of the Iceberg anology comes to mind. We could have prevented this but we were too busy sitting back on our laurels hoping somebody else would do it for us. There is more to come and if we don't stand up in force we will lose again.

Gene