Are high taxes on cigarettes fair?

The high taxes that the Government imposes on cigarettes are definitely fair for the cigarette companies. It is absolutely cruel and immoral to produce something that is not only cancerous, bad tasting, and poisonous (to unborn children), but also addictive! Not only do the smokers lose control of themselves, but the addiction carries on to their progeny!

Teenagers who first try cigarettes by invitations from friends do not think in the long run. Kids just look at the immediate consequences, and not the long-term consequences of their actions. If a cigarette was offered to you when you were 12, you most probably wouldn't have thought of the cancerous and polluting effect of smoking on your body, or of the consequences of the addictive narcotine in the cigarette. You would have considered the addictive ingredient, yes, but not the EFFECTS of it. However, even if you did think of that, it would have been drowned out by what would have been the strongest influence: your friend, holding our his/her cigarette box, the rest of your circle of friends witnessing this exchange. You would have wanted their acceptance. They were your friends. If you said no, you would have offended the friend who offered you his/her cigarette, and have been deserted, branded as a conservative, chicken-hearted, scaredy-cat. So, you say, "Yes."

That "yes" would have cost you a day of gagging, followed by your anxiety of your parent's reaction, and then days and days of frustration at your helplessness, extreme highs and lows, etc. And then, one day, (if you are a woman) when you have found the love of your life, and are happily married and expecting a child, tragedy strikes. Your child (if not miscarried) is born with defects caused by the drugs in your cigarette. Imagine your grief, your sorrow!

Perhaps this seems far away to you because it never happened to you or to anyone close to you. But then, put yourself in others' shoes. Countless number of women who lost their child bcause of the cigarettes they smoke, (powerless to stop), and the countless number of deformed babies born each year, (through no fault of theirs)!

I put it to you, do you think high taxes is too much to ask from the cigarette companies, who thrive from the destruction of their 'clients'? Who, simply to keep business up, mix an addictive in the cigarette, knowing that it is very, very hard for anyone to quit smoking once they start? No, it is the least that the government should do to "punish" these companies! After all, the cigarette companies are merely giving back to the government some of their ill-gained wealth, so that the government can distribute that money to the rehabilitation centres, who assist the desperate heavy smokers to stop smoking.

High taxes on cigarettes are fair because they take from the greedy 'with-no-thought-for-his-neighour's-suffering' companies and compensate the ones whom the companies derive their wealth from: the suffering, and desperate clients.