MODERN-DAY TRAGEDY: THE WAGES OF (TAXABLE) SIN: A MARLBORO COUNTRY REPORT

Every time some politician in Jefferson City or Washington proposes an increase in the cigarette taxes, persons around me applaud with all the enthusiasm of a revival preacher who finds himself in the midst of a passel of sinners. When Missouri House Speaker Bob Griffin proposed higher cigarette taxes to finance a state health care program, it was like Fiesta Time in Rio, and when former Missourian Bill Bradley suggested raising the federal cigarette tax from 24 cents to $1 a pack, you would have thought it was Mardi Gras all over again.

By actual count, there are now only 304 U.S. citizens who actually purchase cigarettes for the sheer enjoyment this disgusting sin brings our small minority. The other 24.5 million who continue to smoke don't really like the habit and would forsake it in a moment were it not for the harassment they receive from all quarters, including their family members who plead with them to abstain so that they will live long enough to see their grandchildren.

The really disgusting part of this modern-day tragedy is that every politician who proposes a tax on cigarettes to find extra revenue for the government to fritter away acts as if he just thought of the idea. Bill Bradley is so serious about his tax that he has tried to calculate the cost of tobacco in added health costs, and the figure he has come up with is $24 billion. That's ridiculous, of course, because nothing costs $24 billion except the perks and privileges of Congress.

Sin taxes have been around longer than the American Constitution. And the originator, although he probably stole the idea from Genghis Khan, was King George III, whose proposal to add a small tax on tea was the most expensive tax ever levied by the British Empire, since it cost that country trillions of dollars in all the gold, silver and oil of the New World, plus both Disneyland and Disney World.

Being logical, however, most Americans like the concept of sin taxes. The Puritan idea that those who commit the sin should also be the ones who pay for it makes sense to most of us, including cigarette smokers who have in recent years become so harassed that they are seriously considering forming a NAACP of their own: The National Association of Anguished Cigarette Puffers.

Let us, then, take the sin concept a step further. The country's most serious health hazard is heart attacks, which doctors say can be caused by, among other things, cigarettes, too much cholesterol, too much fat, baldness and lack of exercise. By eliminating this one hazard, we would, by my calculation, double the over-65 population in less than 12 years. What politician, Bill Bradley included, has calculated the cost of this life-saving fact on the national economy? We would have to double our current expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid, build more hospitals and nursing homes and triple the number of Bingo parlors, at a cost of more billions than any of us, save Ross Perot, could calculate.

Assuming it's a good idea to create this kind of Valhalla in the Good Old U.S. of A., why not levy sin taxes on all the other root causes of heart attacks? Where's the plan to tax cholesterol, the 50-inch waistline and the hot fudge sundae? But, wait, we can't stop there. We know a Democrat who recently grabbed his heart just as Rush Limbaugh was unloosening another tirade against Commie Liberals. If we taxed Rush by the pound, the Treasury would be rolling in dough. An acquaintance several years ago became so incensed at what he said was lousy service at the Post Office that he keeled over dead right in the lobby. A sin tax on stamps, anyone?

But why stop there? Some taxpayers grab their chests just as they spot a letter from the Internal Revenue Service in their mailboxes. Shouldn't the IRS do its bit in creating a more healthy, if less affluent, America? Some of us get a strange feeling around the heart when we accidentally push the wrong button and come across an MTV show~ featuring unintelligible language, four-letter words and performers doing all manner of suggestive movements. Cleaning up TV would do a lot for my blood pressure, I'll tell you that. Many of us would probably feel like running in the New York Marathon if we could only get rid of Sam Donaldson, the entire set of the John McLaughlin group, and Oprah, Geraldo, Sally Jessy and Phil.

Way back in 1604, King James I of England denounced smoking as "a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs." As a reformer, however, King Jimmy raped and pillaged the countryside, destroying innocent millions who annoyed him. Sounds to me like he had a wife and children lecturing him about the evils of smoking.