As King5 mentioned in the news tonight, the Squaxin tribe plans to start its own cigarette factory this weekend in Shelton. They’re doing this in order to sidestep adding state taxes onto their cigarettes, which will make them the cheapest smokes in the Northwest. King5’s angle, as far as I could tell, was to interview cigarette smokers saying “this is great because I have no money,” and store owners saying “this is not fair because I’ll have no sales.”

The Seattle Times adds,

And given that some people will smoke anyway, he said, “who better to sell a product like cigarettes than the [tribal] government, where the money goes back into schools and social services?”

Hey King5 and Seattle Times, maybe I’m an idiot or something, but don’t our state’s cigarette taxes go towards funding things like healthcare to take care of those smokers after they’ve gotten sick (and don’t tell me that doesn’t happen, because it says so right on the pack that it does), and anti-smoking programs? Surely you don’t think we’re going to flog the dead horse that is Altria, and continue to get millions out of them for that purpose?

So when the Squaxins (who are very nice people, I’m sure) go selling their cigarettes to your smoking tax-payers, aren’t they in fact decreasing the amount of money available to help said tax-payer to (1) quit, and (2) get better?

But hey — you just keep yanking our chains with the whole “it’s not fair” argument. After all, it’s your TV show, not mine.