Like most of the other 81% of American adults who don’t smoke, I was delighted to hear that CVS Pharmacy was taking the bold step of no longer selling tobacco products at its stores. However, on second thought, it occurred to me that this may not be a slam dunk positive story.

Eliminating tobacco products from its shelves will definitely mean a major financial hit for CVS, estimated to be approximately $2 billion per year. It will also be a hit to tobacco consumers. Nationally 7,600 outlets for tobacco products will be eliminated. The total supply of tobacco products may not be reduced, but access to them will be constricted.

What does this mean to the smokers of America? It means that it will be marginally more difficult for them to get their smokes. To the extent that the law of supply and demand includes access to the product, the price of tobacco products may increase.

Where will the smokers, who have been adding $2 billion per year to CVS’s coffers, go to get their fix? It is possible that some will rethink their addiction to cigarettes and may take (or re-take) the difficult road towards cessation. Others will find that it’s easy to go to another nearby drugstore. Others will just add cigarettes to their shopping lists when they go to the grocery store. Some may no longer pay for their gasoline at the pump; instead they will go inside to the quick shop and purchase cigarettes along with gasoline.

Another alternative is that they will go to outlets like “Dirt Cheap,” where they can get cigarettes at reduced prices along with discounted liquor. I certainly do not think that there is societal benefit to making companies like “Dirt Cheap” more profitable. However, if we were to in anyway crack down on such franchises (such as refusing to give them necessary permits, etc.), we would be on the doorstep of bringing back Prohibition, this time to include tobacco products as well as alcohol.

So congratulations to CVS, not only for stepping forward to promote better health, but also for the willingness to take a major financial hit to the tune of $2 billion per year. It is certainly doing its part in addressing what is still one of America’s greatest public health problems. But left still is consideration of what might happen next to the smokers.

Cigarettes should be part of our national discussion on regulating drugs. So should alcohol, as well as marijuana, other street drugs, as well as legal pharmaceutical drugs. Maybe cigarettes should be more restricted, while still being legal. They might be a suitable drug for a physician to prescribe for anxiety or irritability. Like other pharmaceuticals, the permit would have to be periodically renewed. The same might be true for alcohol and marijuana. Whatever happens, we owe considerable thanks to CVS for taking a firm moral stand, while absorbing a major financial hit. Perhaps the greatest gift CVS gives us is another channel in which to have the important discussion of what substances should and what should not be legal in the United States.

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Three measures in Missouri garnered enough petition signatures to make it on the November 2012 ballot, but will Missourians’ conviction be enough? With nearly twice the required minimum number of signatures on each petition, Missourians submitted ballot measures to raise the minimum wage, increase the country’s lowest cigarette tax, and cap loan annual percentage rates (APR) at 36%. Once reviewed and approved by the Missouri Secretary of State, they should be on the November ballot, but opposition is fierce.

Moneyed interests are fighting the petition to cap loan APR’s with bully tactics that include physically preventing signers from accessing petitions, harassing signature gatherers and signers, perhaps even breaking into a gatherer’s car to steal more than 2,000 signatures. Payday lenders and their enablers also filed a lawsuit claiming that the language of the measure is “deceptive.” Faith leaders and proponents disagreed.

In early April, a circuit court judge sided with lenders, ruling the petition’s language “insufficient, unfair, likely to deceive petition signers and voters.” The Missouri attorney general’s office filed an appeal of the ruling, but now the opponents of the cap are pushing Secretary of State Robin Carnahan to invalidate the more than 180,000 signatures in order to keep it off the ballot in November.

It is clear from the sheer number of signatures alone that many Missourians agree the current annual percentage rate of payday and title loans is exorbitant. Efforts to inform voters are paying off. More than 430% APR on a single small loan does little to help low-income people—who are overwhelmingly targeted by these types of lenders—stem the tide of debt, and Missourians know this. Voters’ interests, however, may not be enough against a huge Missouri predatory lending industry willing to bully, buy, and lawyer their way to victory.

It may come as little surprise that big tobacco is also waging a battle to prevent Missourians from voting to raise Missouri’s tobacco tax from 17 cents to 90 cents per pack. Despite garnering over 220,000 signatures and an apparent mandate, this ballot measure’s language was also challenged in court. A trial judge in Cole County recently upheld the measure’s language, declaring it clear and fair. Pending the secretary of state’s review and approval, the measure could make it to the ballot.

It’s worth noting, however, that the Missouri legislature had quite a few bills last session regarding a cigarette tax increase and unilaterally failed to bring them to the floor. Again, this is not a big surprise, especially given this year’s antics and the many failures of the Missouri legislature to enact laws for the greater good. (What happened to all those jobs we were promised?)

Voters have also defeated efforts to raise the tobacco tax twice in the last decade. Recent budget cut battles, austerity measures, and public sector layoffs may convince them that increased tobacco tax is much-needed revenue for education and smoking cessation programs.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce is opposing the ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 from its current level of $7.25 per hour and also allows for increases every year based on inflation. Opponents claim paying employees a full dollar more per hour is a financial hardship on employers during “fragile” economic times and could abate hiring, but they made the same claim in 2006 when the economy was in better shape, and unemployment was about half the levels we’ve been seeing.

There is no evidence to suggest that giving low wage workers a small raise in itself harms the job market, though it’s not difficult to argue that paying people too little is seriously distressing for millions of families. All three of the Republican candidates currently duking it out [in extreme fashion] in the primary to run against Claire McCaskill could not even tell you what the minimum wage is, much less how detrimental or beneficial it is. And yet they all oppose increasing the minimum wage for Missourians and across the country. Disconnect much?

Wages nationwide and around the world have scarcely kept pace with inflation, as countless experts and economists have asserted. Though our personal hardships may be a testament to this fact, it is difficult to predict whether an extremely and increasingly polarized red state—complete with newly drawn political districts–will disregard all the paid-for political noise and vote in their own best interests.

We’ll find out in November.

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Republicans have made an art form of trying to turn back the clock. I can’t help but wonder what’s next on their agenda.

Could it be that cigarette smoking is actually good for your health and second-hand smoke adds to the longevity of those who are in the presence of smokers?

How long will it be before Republicans are saying that while government has every right to be in your bedroom, it has no right to be in your mouth? If people want to smoke, they should be able to. If there is any scientific evidence indicating health hazards related to smoking, it probably comes from those wacko leftists who try to hoodwink the American people into believing that something called climate change is actually happening in our very country.

Even if the pseudo-scientists on the left are right and smoking causes health issues, who cares? Such a development would reduce the pressure to raise taxes from the left. If people die younger from cigarette smoking that translates into fewer years in which they will be drawing funds from Social Security and Medicare and thus taxes can be further reduced. Additionally, a disproportionate number of smokers are poor; so the GOP can launch its own “War on Poverty” by encouraging more smoking among those who can least afford it.

Years ago, the intrusive federal government mandated a warning on cigarette packs, “The Surgeon General has determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health.” That was just another case of leftists telling the public how to live their lives, particularly what goes in one’s mouth. It’s as insidious as First Lady Michelle Obama suggesting that obesity can be bad for one’s health and children should eat more fruits and vegetables and less sweets.

Many Republicans (and more than a handful of Democrats) prefer to not be confused by the facts. So when Republicans initiate their war on cigarette restrictions, you can befuddle them by reminding them that the first Surgeon General’s warning was signed into law in 1970. Hmmmm; I wonder who was president then who signed the bill? Oh yes, it was Richard Nixon, one-time darling of the Republican Party. Oh, that can’t be true. Someone from the Democratic National Committee must have snuck into the White House and forged his signature.

The idea of Republicans wanting to “lighten up” on cigarette smoking may seem facetious, but can you think of any other area of civil rights, economic security, labor protection, and consumer safety where the GOP has not tried to turn back the clock since the Progressive Era (which by the way began under a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt)?

Contemporary progressives have been slow to learn that conservatives long ago learned that there is no such thing as a victory in advancing human rights. There are only ebbs and flow. Beginning with the progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt; followed by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, we have extended basic liberties and economic opportunities to people who previously had no safety net.

Whether it’s contraceptives, civil rights, or health care, the rights for workers to organize, protection from predators, Republicans ardently try to undo progress that has been made. Not too long ago, progressives thought that the feminist movement reached a solid plateau which while not achieving gender equality, at least had raised the glass ceiling. But Republicans continue to work in obvious and hidden ways to undermine the rights of women.

A frequent target for Republicans is the Environmental Protection Agency. They seem to follow the thinking of Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, who said, “If you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all.” Of course, this negates the fact it was Nixon himself who in 1970 signed the act authorizing the E.P.A.

It seems that progressives feel that the battles that they won are now engraved in stone and permanently inked in our history textbooks. Conservatives often see yesterday’s battles as just that, a skirmish that is but a part of an ongoing war. They live to fight another day. All too often progressives have been asleep at the switch as conservatives work to undo the progress of the past.

I don’t know what’s next, but as the great philosopher Roseanne Roseannadanna, said, “It’s always something.” It could be cigarette smoking; it could be something else. In any event, progressives need to be vigilant to see how conservatives try to undo the well-earned progress of recent years.

The post Coming next from Republicans: Cigarette smoking is good for your health appeared first on Occasional Planet.