By Mike Kays
Phoenix Sports Editor
July 02, 2009 04:44 pm
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Recently, we received some new proposed Food and Drug Administration crackdowns against smokers.
Not that I like cigarette smoke. There are a few smokers I like, and I appreciate what they’re doing for our federal budget deficit — to no avail with the spending we’re seeing, but you know, every cent helps.
I’m wondering what kind of deal President Obama gets out of this — free cigs for a year? The man is a confessed slave to the habit. I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Is this his sacrifice for the good of the country? Is he trying to force the cigarette industry to make him quit?
All I know is that America’s smokers can’t handle the tax burden for our health care. There’s gradually fewer of them and the fewer there are, the greater the burden that will be shared.
Sooner or later, the next group to feel the mighty arm of the federal government will be overweight people — more to the point, obese people.
You might know a fat person who doesn’t make many doctor trips.
Doesn’t matter.
FOX News and others are starting to say you are unhealthy, you are a bad influence around others and should be shunned. (Neil Cavuto actually had a guest from an organization dedicated to the glorification of skinny people who said that. I wish I could have remembered her name, but I was on the phone to a local pizza place.)
Not that we could all use some exercise, myself included, but didn’t doctors recently discover an obesity gene?
Wouldn’t that blow a hole in the theory that fat people are fat because they sit in the recliner in between a dozen trips to McDonald’s a day?
Doesn’t matter.
At least until a lawyer gets hold of this.
So brace yourself, fat folk of America. You’re about to be an enemy of our nation, a tax servant to the so-called beautiful people, genes be damned.
But I wonder, could we ever tax gay people for being gay, since genetics is said to be the cause for sexual preference?
Maybe this is just much ado about nothing.
Some analysts believe the bill will actually undermine public health by making it harder to market to smokers other tobacco products, like snus, that are not as lethal as cigarettes.
It also denies companies’ protection against tort liability — even if they rigorously follow every FDA rule.
Washington will figure out they’ve screwed up this piece of legislation.
But fat people, be on alert.
Mike Kays is the Phoenix sports editor. Reach him at mkays@muskogeephoenix.com
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