Dear Mr. Martin,

Below is a short response I wrote to an editorial (this one) which Roland Martin wrote in favor of higher taxes on cigarettes. I emailed it to Mr. Martin through CNN a couple of weeks ago and have (not surprisingly) received no response.

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Dear Mr. Martin,

Until very recently, I enjoyed your commentaries. I found you a thoughtful intellectual, a powerful writer, and a generally agreeable person. I believed you to be deeply committed to equality and freedom in all forms.

Apparently, I was mistaken.

Apparently, you believe that it is okay to disproportionately tax a minority of Americans based solely upon your personal taste.

Well, Mr. Martin, I find your recent argument in favor of high cigarette taxes to be short-sighted, discriminatory, and based far more on personal feeling than intellectual rationale.

To encapsulate your argument (not too reductively, I hope), you have no problem with the federal government nearly tripling the per-pack tax on cigarettes because "There is nothing -- NOTHING! -- that [you] like about smoking." You have no problem with that revenue being used to fund public health initiatives because ""Cigarettes are unhealthy. Period." and, on a personal note, the only smoke you enjoy "should come from a hot, juicy steak." Above all else, you hate that "those who don't want to see it happen are bringing out the usual prop: the poor, poor people."

Pretty accurate summation?

Respectfully, I must tell you that your arguments are woefully weak. It is fundamentally unfair to disproportionately tax any segment of American society based upon any characteristic, whether it be race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, taste in music, or personal habits.

You don't like smokers? That is your prerogative. I don't like crocs-- those obnoxiously bright and porous shoes that seem so popular with the overweight Disneyland-going crowd. But would it be fair to slap a per-pair tax on crocs simply because I think they are annoying?

Granted, that's a facetious example. Your argument is that cigarettes are unhealthy and therefore okay to tax into the stratosphere. However you seem to be ignoring the hundreds of studies which show that diets high in red meat increase your chances of heart disease, colon cancer, and many other conditions. Were the federal government to impose a $5 per-steak tax to promote health you would be singing a different tune, am I wrong? That is an obviously hypocritical double-standard; Americans routinely wear and ingest hundreds of things which are in some measure detrimental to their health. Should they all be taxed higher?

This slope is slippery, Mr. Martin, and putting one foot on it simply because you find smoke displeasurable is foolish. You are also a Christian pastor and probably prefer Christianity to Islam or Hinduism-- shall we create Koran and Bhagavad Gita taxes to discourage people from pursuing religions that you dislike?

As you may have guessed, my argument has nothing to do with "the poor, poor people" and has everything to do with demanding an intellectual rationale for singling out one segment of the population. In all reality, there is no rationale for adding yet another tax to smokers whom, I should add, are already taxed more heavily than virtually any other group.

I agree with you that laws are necessary to prohibit, say, forcing a child to sit in a car with a smoker, but study after study after study has shown that raising the price of cigarettes has virtually no impact on the number of smokers. You know this, of course, yet you are content to hide behind the 'it will force people to quit for their own good' argument. This is a weak camouflage for your personal distaste which has no place in an intellectual discussion.

I don't use this phrase often-- indeed, I generally steer well clear of it-- but disproportionately taxing one group for personal reasons is deeply and fundamentally unAmerican. If our government were to impose a 'black tax', 'gay tax', 'Muslim tax', 'canoe tax', or 'twinkie tax', those would be discriminatory, offensive, and uncalled for, correct?

Just because it's politically popular to discriminate against smokers makes it no less discrimination.

Of course, the piece in question was an editorial, which is by definition rooted in opinion. But generally speaking, those with the national platform that you enjoy use their podium to make clear, concise, and logical arguments. I don't always agree with those individuals, but I can't deny that their reasoning is basically sound.

Your emotion-laden rant about cigarette taxes, on the other hand, was not enlightening, logical, or intellectually sound-- it was just plain sad to see an otherwise intelligent, respectable man resorting to weak logic and thinly-disguised personal attacks to champion a discriminatory practice.