Letters That Say It...

like it is. Sorry. I'm trying to get over my one day blogging withdrawals. Hard hitting letter to the editor of the Santa Rosa Press- Democrat about the upcoming tobacco tax initiative. Well said, Will!

Easy targets

EDITOR: Proposition 86 — what a no-brainer. Finally, a perfect way to help out the struggling health care industry at no cost to 85 percent of California, all under the heading of anti-tobacco. Now if that doesn’t feel good, I don’t know what does. It’s right up there with declaring your city a crime-free zone. And the real beauty is the tax base is pretty well locked in since little, if any, of the money goes to stop-smoking clinics. Just a bit for don’t-start campaigns.

The ramifications are enormous. If we can slam this through, think about what else we can accomplish. Take alcohol, for example. Everybody knows the financial, physical and moral decay inherent in consumption of that product. A huge tax on that would be absurdly easy since, like cigarette smokers, hard liquor drinkers tend to be pretty low life and don’t vote anyway. Think of the financial effect of a $50 bottle of rot-gut or a 20-buck six-pack.

Then having sucked these two evils dry, we could take on the monster — obesity. If set up like Proposition 86, it wouldn’t actually make any fat person stop eating or help treat his multitude of health problems. It would just make donuts five bucks a piece. Then the rest of us could lean back on our exercise machines in our rubber rooms, tune in some soothing music on our iPods and pat ourselves on the back for doing good work by punishing these evil people.

WILL GOETSCH

Petaluma