The prices go up by four bucks a carton tonight. I found that out when replentishing my cream and smoke supply, so I thereby bought two cartons... Which really just postpones the whole thing for a bit, but y'know... If I'd bought them tomorrow, my purchase would have been eight bucks more..

Where's my smuggler when you need him? Y'know, they've almsot taxed 'em to the point where it's worth the smuggler's while again.. At the height of the smuggling season, I think I was paying my smuggler less than the convenience store will be charging me come tomorrow morning..

Enough with the taxes already! And get the diseased organs off my cigarette packs. Now. Not later. NOW!

See, now the reason that they've been able to get awqay with putting disgusting stuff on the packs of cigarettes, is that it's "societally frowned on" to smoke. Y'know, I'm thinking that they should start putting mangled, bloody bodies hanging out of cars, diseased livers, etc on bottles of fine wine. Make these moron lawmakers stare at a gruesome sight with their dinner.

I dunno. For a legal product, I'm getting damn tired of the government trying to squeeze yet more money out of people under the guise of "consumer protection". Fuck that. Some of us are addicted, and some of us like to smoke, and some of us smoke so that we don't have a bodycount to rival that of Jeffery Dahlmer. The last time I quit smoking, my co-workers bought me a pack of cigarettes. Just give thought for a second how much money smoking brings to the government.

On every pack of cigarettes, there is about a buck that goes towards the production of them. The other two and a half go to the government. Somewhere around 33% of our populace smokes. According to the census crap I got today, this means that of out 28 million people, there are about 9.24 million that smoke. If you assume that they are smoking an average of a pack a day, that is 3.37 billion packs of smokes a year. Multiply that by the $2.50 that they are taxing at a minumum on every pack, you see that smokers in Canada are paying about 8.4 billion into the government coffers every year. The government doesn't raise taxes on smokes to try to get people to stop smoking. It's a revenue stream. This latest increase of $4 a carton should translate into another 1.7 billion dollars into the government's pockets.

And who's pockets are those coming from? The rich? Maybe. But how many of the lower income people do you know who smoke? It's taking that $1.7 billion out of the hands of people who generally don't have that to spare.

Dear Canadian Government Smoke Nazi's. Go rob little old ladies or something.. Hey waitaminute.. You already are....