As Kansas considers raising additional revenue by raising the tax on tobacco and alcohol, let’s declare the end to governmental labeling of vice as sin, and people as sinners.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol are vices, not sins. Yes, some religions may label these activities as sins, and the people who engage in them, sinners. That is fine for them to do. But these sins — no, vices — harm no one except the person practicing them. Yes, I know that some will say that alcohol fuels aggression in some people, and that leads to harm to others. If they really believe that line of reasoning, they should call for the prohibition of alcohol rather than the state to profiting even more from its sale. (And we know how well prohibitions work [not].)
Say, if smoking and drinking are sinful, what does it say about the State of Kansas profiting from these activities? And what about the state having an even greater rooting interest in smoking and drinking, so there is more for the state coffers?
At one time gambling was illegal in Kansas. It was a sin, we were told. But then the state found it could profit from gambling, first through the lottery, and now through full-service casinos. But gambling is still illegal, unless the state controls it — and profits from it. What constitutes sin, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder — and profiteer.
Like the general sales tax, these special sales or excise taxes are regressive, falling hardest on those least able to pay. If we feel sorry for those who drink or smoke, how about this: Let’s offer them a good word or a hand up — not a kick in the teeth in the name of propping up state spending.
By the way: Many of those who may vote on these higher Kansas taxes have signed a pledge to not raise taxes. I wonder if we can place a tax on violating a pledge made to to voters.
Lysander Spooner wrote long ago:
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime — that is, the design to injure the person or property of another — is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
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