I’m so furious with the state of Massachusetts right now, I could scream. Avert your eyes, young ones. I’m pissed!

My great uncle works for a discount cigarette store in New Hampshire and yesterday he says to me, “Get ready, cigarette prices are rising!”

I knew the spendthrifts on Beacon Hill were planning on a tax increase on cigarettes to help pay for the ridiculous, or “revolutionary” as they call it, forced health insurance plan shoved down our throats but I thought I’d have more time. I thought maybe the handful of Republicans up there would slow it down. Nope. You’ll never see the idiots on Beacon Hill work so hard as when they are racing to push a tax increase bill through for immediate passage. So now, as of tomorrow morning, I have to pay an additional $1 per pack.

Before all the “oh-my-God-cigarettes-are-the-devil” folks get on my case, let me remind everyone that smoking is in fact LEGAL for adults such as myself. If you hate it so much, why not press lawmakers to make it illegal… oh wait, they’ll never do it. Why, you ask? They’ve come up with $174 million more reasons why.

From the Globe’s story: “Sen. Harriette Chandler, D-Worcester, said the tax is designed in part to discourage smoking, even as it raises new revenues.” That is such a heaping pile of bullshit, I can smell it through my monitor! I don’t know what Ms. Chandler looks like, but I imagine she had a smirk as she made that statement. They said that with the last tax increase, and the one before that, and the one before that… we smokers don’t quit, we adjust and the lawmakers have extra money to waste.

If your argument is, “smoking causes lots of medical problems that burden our healthcare system,” why don’t we start taxing fat people? Obesity is the new tobacco after all. Maybe we should add an additional $1 to every Big Mac sale? Increase the Massachusetts meal tax by 10%? How ’bout we throw on a sales tax for any plus size pair of pants? Want a pint of Ben and Jerry’s… cough over an extra $3. Oh no, we could never institute a tax like that, it’d be too discriminatory… right? “But smoking is your choice,” you say. So is cramming your face with a large order of french fries and washing it down with a super-sized gallon of Coke.

So, while the smokers once again are targeted because smoking is so politically incorrect, things like alcohol remain tax free. Don’t worry, downtrodden smoker… instead of lung cancer, in Massachusetts you can enjoy the wonders of cirrhosis of the liver! You’ll be too busy breathing easily to notice your jaundice!

Thank God my car is fuel-efficient because I can see a bi-weekly trip to New Hampshire in my future. Ah, New Hampshire… our friendly neighbor to the north. I can almost see the delight on the faces of the Seabrook cigarette retailers now. $$$