I find myself in the extremely unusual position of agreeing wholeheartedly with Rush Limbaugh. When a caller asked Rush what he thought about the new ultra-graphic cigarette warning labels, Rush made the following points:



1. Cigarette smoking is an addiction, and "You can put all of the rotgut pictures you want on a pack of cigarettes and somebody who is addicted to three packs a day of them is not gonna quit because of it."

2. From the government's perspective, cigarettes are one of the country's most lucrative products. Worse, "It's the number one tax that pays for children's health care programs." Want to ban cigarettes? Be prepared for our nation's tax income to drop precipitously.



3. If they really wanted people to quit, they would just ban cigarettes. Putting an ugly picture on the pack just satisfies some other demographic, it isn't really going to impact smoking rates.



4. If cigarettes really are as bad as people say, "It's immoral not to ban them."

Except for a caveat on point #4, I'm in complete agreement here. I say this as someone who had a pack-a-day habit for 20 years, and finally managed to quit two years ago.



I remember being pretty bitter about all those "quit smoking" campaigns. I always figured if the government really wanted us to quit, they would ban cigarettes, or hand out nicotine patches for free, the way they have methadone clinics for heroin junkies. (Or both!) And if health insurance companies really wanted us to quit, nicotine patches would be covered under our health insurance.



Non-smokers don't understand how expensive nicotine patches and gum are! It literally costs more to use nicotine replacements than it does to smoke, for those days when you use the replacements. Obviously in the long term it's cheaper, once you have gone off the patch or the gum. But in the short term, a week's worth of nicotine patches cost almost twice as much as a week's worth of cigarettes.



The truth is that cigarettes are big business. Big business for the tobacco companies, of course. But big business for the government and for our health care system, as well.



Smokers already know that smoking is bad. Most smokers would very much like to quit smoking. But they can't, because it's really hard. Trust me, I know. I say that I quit two years ago, but in a sense I'm still quitting. I may have had my last cigarette two years ago, but I still get cravings. And ugly photos can't change that, because it's a physical addiction.



As for Rush's claims that "it would be immoral not to ban them," Rush Limbaugh has long asserted that cigarettes aren't as harmful to their health as they are made out to be. As evidence for this belief he cites the fact that non-smokers get lung cancer, and many smokers do not get lung cancer.



This is faulty logic, and is patently ridiculous. I chalk it up to Rush's ever-present need to flaunt conventional wisdom. I do believe that cigarettes are just as bad as "they" say. And I do believe that because of that, it's immoral not to ban them. But what are ya gonna do?