Last month, the cigarette taxes went up approximately 66.6 cents a pack. This month, cigarettes are set to go up a dollar in price. Not since summer camp ’92 have I felt so violated.

Smokers are already pariahs. No smoking in restaurants, fine, I understand. No smoking in bars, whatever, there’s nothing I can do about it. Having to find a street corner like a prostitute in certain cities just to have a cigarette? Fairly totalitarian, but again, nothing I can do about it.

We already stink and probably have cancer, but if smokers are going to be taxed so heavily, shouldn’t they be allowed to enjoy their vice a little more freely?

Besides the fiscal, the noble intention behind the tax increase is to discourage smokers and to help them quit. I call shenanigans. Everyone knows smokers are dumb and weak willed individuals who will pay whatever they charge for cigarettes. If the price of cigarettes was a date with Dom DeLuise, with him expecting to get to third base every time, I would pay it and so would you.

Unless you’re that guy that asks, “Hey man, can I bum a cigarettes? I’m trying to quit, so now I just bum them.” No, you’re not. You’re stupid and cheap and everybody hates you. Now walk back awkwardly and ask for a light too.

The increase in tax will allegedly also help bail out the health care machine. With cancer and emphysema being such large percentages of insurance cases, and an estimated one million smokers expected to quit, hundreds of millions of dollars will be recouped.

Smokers are a needy bunch, though, and cigarettes are bought every day, sometimes twice. Liquor is not. Raise the liquor tax. Not everybody smokes, but a good majority of people need their liquor. And liquor is typically bought once a week and lasts awhile. If the tax on booze went up a dollar, would anybody even notice?

I’m sure almost as many people come in to hospitals with wrecked livers as black lungs. The increased tax would eventually be more beneficial than that of cancer sticks.

Especially in this current economic climate, is raising tax so drastically on something that you can buy elsewhere the smartest move? When the idea is to get some extra money in the state’s change purse (no longer coffers), wouldn’t a move that sends people to the Internet to get their fix kind of backwards?

I can already see what’s going to happen. Some nice young man is going to come up with a get rich scheme and rent a cigarette boat. He’ll become associated and quickly indebted to seedy people and eventually cross paths with Crockett and Tubbs. And Crockett is a loose cannon, you see. Boat chases and montages will ensue, Phil Collins will play and the bullets will fly. And then that nice young man, with a promising future and a child on the way will be dead on the five o’ clock news. The blood will be on your hands, tax-makers. Is that what you want?