Senate President Therese Murray’s plan to raise the cigarette tax by a dollar does nothing to improve the health of the community but only the coffers of the state. That is not enough! In fact, the Commonwealth is just sharing in the profits of a killer and has blood on its collective hands.
What the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be doing is to discourage smoking rather than to profit from it.
A proposal which makes more sense and which will make the purchase of cigarettes more difficult while not banning them is as follows :
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and any of its state supported health plans should not honor and therefore not pay for any prescriptions from any pharmacy or chain drugs store which sells cigarettes or tobacco products.
It is a clear conflict of interest for a CVS, a Walgreens, a Price Rite, or any drug store to sell pharmaceuticals at the back of the store to make you well and cigarettes at eye level at the front of the store to make you sick.
As long as those chains drug stores and independents sell cigarettes or tobacco products in their stores the state should exercise its right to not honor or pay for prescriptions coming out of those stores which will in the total picture cause the cost of health care to rise.
Senator Therese Murray’s plan does nothing to address the rising costs of medicine. Taking cigarettes and tobacco products out of pharmacy and drug store chains will.
Beyond the state, health insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Tufts, Fallon and others should follow suit and not honor or pay for prescription drugs which come out of a drug store that sells cigarettes or tobacco products.
jaybooth says
Been proved before, will be proved again.
pj says
This is NOT a Prohibition. It is truth in a death dealing drug.
jkw says
So your solution is to make it so that people can only buy cigarettes at grocery stores and gas stations? Why do you think that will make a difference? A tax on cigarettes will discourage people from buying them far more than restricting which types of stores sell them. Your proposal would not stop grocery stores or gas stations from selling cigarettes, so they would still be available at stores people go to every week.
pj says
My concern is that it is a real conflict of interest for the CVS’s of the world to encourage its customers to smoke at the front of the store and sell pain killing cancer drugs at the back of the store to lung cancer patients.
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p>It is also a conflict of interest for the state to share in this blood money.