You want to put a sin tax on chocolate? Burn in hell!
"Colorado Needs a New Drug (To Raise Taxes On)," an editorial in today's Denver Post, suggests that Colorado has already boosted taxes on cigarettes as much as it can -- so in order to raise the revenue needed to trim the current budget deficit, lawmakers should consider attaching levies to other "vices." Among the suggestions: chocolate. According to the piece's author, who wisely remained anonymous, "A higher tax levied on chocolate just might erase the state's shortfall as we indulge our nervous selves through this recession."
Okay, okay: Judging by the lame Boston Tea Party gag that concludes the salvo, the writer could be joking about this idea. But some things just ain't funny -- and equating chocolate with cigarettes, or drinking alcohol, for that matter, is one of them. I mean, have anyone's lungs ever exploded after savoring a Hershey's Kiss? True, a wafer-thin mint polished off Mr. Creasote in Monty Python's Meaning of Life, but it had a lot of help. And has a driver ever caused a crash while drunk on M&Ms? The closest example I know of was when my friend DiAnn rolled into another vehicle while eating a Mrs. Fields chocolate-chip cookie. But she was parked at a curb at the time -- and that other car had it coming.
Hate to sound like a neo-con here, but some things are beyond the pale. If state officials try to add an extra tax to chocolate, they'll have to pry my last Whatchamacallit bar from my cold, dead fingers.
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