Judging by how our national press covered the G-20 summit, President Barack "Blue Steel" Obama was off in Europe refereeing his wife's Zoolander-esque "walk-off" against French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Largely invisible in the news was the fact that April 1 marked the implementation of the biggest federal tax increase ever levied on tobacco, a law that may be reaching out for more green than anyone has noticed.
Aside from being a passive-aggressive gambit, such a huge tax on tobacco falls much more severely on the poor. Since the tobacco taxes are scheduled to fund health insurance for poor children and families, one may see this as a defensible piece of legislation.
However, this only further snares our tangled health care situation by winding more governmental regulation around an already twisted private insurance landscape. You don't untie a knot by simply pulling on either end of the rope; just because smoking is bad and health insurance for impoverished families is good does not mean that this bill will be of any quantifiable positive impact to our broken medical racket.
Nobody in the American media really seemed to care.
Those that did run stories about the tax increase all dutifully spouted the official governmental line about how the tax would force people to quit smoking, which inanely simplifies a litany of social and psychological realities.
This 2009 tobacco tax, though, is particularly notable for being the first time the American government has successfully taxed marijuana smoking.
While this law weighs down cigarette packs, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff with 158-percent tax increases, the real money is being made on blunt smokers. The law taxes large cigars more than 700 percent more, while small cigars and "roll your own" wrappers were hit with tax increases over 2,000 percent.
Gas station owners are outraged - the cheeky-eyed customers who buy blunt wraps and papers also end up buying a lot of overpriced chips and sodas.
Experts are predicting Funyuns sales to plummet nationwide.
The April 15 deadline to file federal income taxes, the ultimate American un-holiday, falls right before the 4/20 national marijuana smoking holiday. Since this issue ties into both unruly taxation and the roll-your-own crowd, I hereby suggest a national day of protest for blunt aficionados somewhere in between these two days.
Most of the taxed and blunted will be scrambling to fill out paperwork on the 15th, and on the 20th weedheads will be sinking into couches across the country and will be too busy watching DVDs to take part in an organized protest.
Saturday, April 18 seems like a fair compromise.
I know that organizing smokers to do anything other than listen to music or play video games is a Herculean task, but I even have a nifty motto everyone can chant - "No taxation without legalization."
Just remember - bring your own damn Funyuns.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears on Tuesdays.
