In other words, treat every day as its own separate thing:

Don’t waste time and energy regretting what you did (or didn’t do) yesterday (or the day before that, or the day before that…); the past is over, it’s carved in stone, you can’t take it back, and you can’t change it.

Get over it.

And don’t waste time and energy worrying about what might happen tomorrow (or the day after tomorrow, or the day after that…); you can’t do anything about tomorrow until it becomes today.

(more…)

Of course, the tax was sold to the electorate as a win/win (we’ll help people quit smoking while creating and funding the Early Childhood and Development Fund), but now they’re faced with funding the new programs with non-existent tax revenues.

Did it really not occur to anybody that this would happen? As a number of the comments point out, cigarettes can be had tax-free on the reservations, and anyone who wants to can take a quick trip to Mexico, where (even with the duty), cigarettes cost half what they now cost in Arizona.

My favorite quote from the 42 comments left on this story so far:

“It takes a selfish heartless s.o.b. to quit smoking today, knowing that the tax he pays for his tobacco is saving the lives of children who would otherwise have no access to medical treatment. Those who continue to “light ‘em up” for the kids should have a special place in the hearts of all non smoking Americans who are allowing these few brave souls to sacrifice their lives and money while carrying the burden of paying for the health care of the children of non-smokers and smokers alike. Looks like it’s time to bring back Joe Camel, an inspiration to the overtaxed but determined smokers who keep our children healthy while they rot their own lungs in the process. Light one up for the little nippers. The life you save won’t be your own, but if it saves one child, it’s worth it.”

What do you think about funding social programs with “sin” taxes like this?

The campaign apparently will feature ads with graphic images, such as black tar dripping from saturated lungs into a beaker, and “echo ads”, where a current smoker makes a statement which is echoed by another smoker, but with a twist: the first ad stars two young men:“I can’t go more than a few hours without a cigarette,” says one. The other, lying in bed, suffering from some tobacco-related illness, whispers, “I can’t go more than a few feet without the oxygen tank.”

Nobody asked, but based on my observations of my own behavior as a smoker for over 35 years, and the behavior I’ve observed in the hundreds of long-term smokers I’ve met and worked with over the last 6 years or so, the campaign will have little discernible effect beyond spending $1.25 million of the NYC Health Department’s budget.

Which is fine, if depleting the Health Department’s budget is the goal, but scare tactics had no effect on me for 35 years, and affected only a very small percentage of the hundreds of long-term smokers I’ve known and observed over the last 6 years on my own quit-smoking support site and others.

We all knew that smoking was bad for us; we just didn’t care: we’re addicts.

And tragically, we’re addicted to a drug that’s not only cheap, legal and in plentiful supply, but our pushers, rather than being some low-life dealing their poison out of the back of a van or from some dark alley, are giant corporations with multi-billion dollar advertising budgets and the blessing of government at all levels.

For instance, the NYC Health Department is going to spend $1.25 million on this campaign to discourage people from smoking, but, if all of New York’s million-plus smokers only smoke a pack a day, the $1.50/pack cigarette tax that NYC imposes brings in more than that in tax revenues in a single day.

Get real, New York; if you want to discourage smoking in your city, make it illegal to smoke there. Of course, then you’d also have to make it illegal to sell cigarettes there, too, and you’d lose more than a half a billion dollars a year in tax revenue…

You can’t have it both ways.

So it was refreshing to run across a blog post that wasn’t the same old bad advice that wannabe internet marketers post over and over about quitting so they can make a buck off the snake oil salesmen who buy adsense ads.

In fact, it was doubly refreshing because it appeared on a beauty/glamour-oriented blog (http://www.beautyhobby.com/) where the author is obviously not trying to make a buck off the snake oil salesmen, but rather, sharing a method for quitting that worked for her, and is actually a lot more sensible than methods I’ve seen posted on some so-called “health” sites and blogs.

Thanks, Maddie! Keep up the good work!

Overstepping the line in what way? Are employers supposed to simply bear the increased costs associated with having employees who smoke?

Are the editors of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel aware that:

• Smoking employees cost an employer an average of $1,429 per smoker per year in increased health care costs over nonsmoking employees (and this does not include the costs of lost productivity and absenteeism)?
• Employees who take four 10-minute smoke breaks a day actually work a full month less every year than workers who don’t take smoking breaks?
• Smokers are absent from work 50% more than nonsmokers, and are also 50% more likely to be hospitalized and have 15% higher disability rates?

Would the Editorial Board of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel say the same thing about alcoholics? Are employers who require alcoholics to quit drinking as a condition of their job security or career path overstepping the line?

What about heroin addicts? Cocaine addicts? Are employers who require addicts in general to quit feeding their addictions as a condition of their job security or career path overstepping the line?

Why the special case for smokers? Last I heard, Florida wasn’t even in the Top 10 Tobacco-producing states (although it was 11th in total acreage devoted to tobacoo cultivation).

Ultimately, it’s you and me who pay the increased costs for employers who continue to employ smokers, and I applaud any employer who tries to help their employees quit smoking, whether they use the carrot or the stick; as a nation, we can’t afford to keep subsidizing this addiction.