As a bonafide political junkie, I spend a lot of time surfing other political website, blogs, and news sites. This leads me to a lot of very strange, good, racist, and fringe articles–but sometimes its the perfectly mainstream articles that catch my attention in the strangest ways. Exhibit A–this article on the rising cigarette tax.

The entire article is fairly innocuous, but there is one particular quote that evoked my interest. Paul Stein, age 23, a smoker from Galliano, Louisiana, said “It’s made me think to smoke less. With cigarette prices going up it almost doesn’t pay to smoke.”

It doesn’t pay to smoke because of the tax more doubled? What about the lung cancer, the fact that it’s a disgusting habit, or the revolting knowledge that it contains urea–the same chemical compound that makes urine smell the way it does? These are the things that make smoking untenable, not a $1.01 tax on each pack.

-The Political Avenger