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How Cigarettes Tax the Poor

• bobby_9x 11y ago
  Who do people still smoke? It's been know to cause cancer for 50+ years and is expensive. It's not like the education isn't there (I've seen anti-smoking ads on TV for the past 10 years and at the theater before seeing a movie). Just like alcohol, it seems to be people that willingly want to be taxed. I don't see it as a problem.
  • snikeris 11y ago
    > Why do people still smoke? They're addicted.
    • alistairSH 11y ago
      Wrong question... Why do people continue to start smoking? I grew up in the US in the 80s and 90s, where we were bombarded with anti-smoking ads, the health effects were well known, and the prices were high. It blows my mind that I have peers who smoke. They would have seen the same ads, had the same facts available, and mostly come from similar backgrounds (middle-class).
      • skyyler 11y ago
        I started in high school because of peer pressure. I've since quit, but I think that the majority of people that start only do so because their friends do. Plus, smoking a cigarette feels really good. Once you're addicted, they don't, but until then they just feel really nice.
        • smt88 11y ago
          Wanting to be like your friends can cause someone to start smoking, but it can also be neighbors, parents, coworkers, or just people on TV. Behaviors are "contagious" that way. Gun violence and suicide have been shown to be "transferrable".
      • LordKano 11y ago
        Self-Medication. Nicotine is a stimulant that elevates the mood almost like magic. The numbers are particularly telling if you look at schizophrenia sufferers. People with schizophrenia are about 2.5 time more likely to smoke than people without.
      • brandonmenc 11y ago
        > where we were bombarded with anti-smoking ads You've answered your own question: rebellion. That was the main reason I was sneaking cigs in the alley after school.
        • grp 11y ago
          True. And maybe more generally, there can't be pro or anti ads (same with good or bad ads). Just ads, ads and ads. That generates a tobacco culture with smokers and non-smokers, but both just saw ads.
      • coldpie 11y ago
        A ton of factors, but there is some reason for hope. The smoking rate among US adults has been dropping at about 0.5% per year more-or-less consistently for decades, and is currently well under 20%! The ads, regulations, and outreach you're talking about are working, but major societal change is slow. Remember, in the 50s, the smoking rate was nearly 50%! Dropping that rate by half in less than one lifespan is pretty good, I think. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762370.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762370.html
      • rglullis 11y ago
        Because addiction has very little to do with the substance itself, and it is mostly a coping mechanism to deal with many of the issues people of all social strata can face: traumas, broken homes, lack of self-realization, isolation, etc... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park Or in comic form: - http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park
      • Finnucane 11y ago
        Have you met people? Can you name a topic where ad campaigns and available facts have been 100% persuasive? It just doesn't work like that. For one thing, people are bad at assessing abstract risks--they figure it won't happen to them, or something else will get them first. Especially since most smokers start young, at a time when they're _especially_ bad at making these kinds of decisions (and the tobacco industry counts on that).
      • wfo 11y ago
        Have you ever done something that's bad for your health in the long term because it feels good /now/? Like, I dunno, eating fast food, drinking soda, drinking alcohol? Stayed up too late browsing the Internet? While most of these are far less severe than smoking (perhaps obesity, drinking give it a run for its money), all of them are bad for our health in the long term and we know it, but we do it anyway. There's plenty of information out there to know about it, it's not like people don't know alcohol or burger king is bad for you. So why do people do it? When you answer that question you'll have the answer to your question. A lot of especially young people just plain do not care what happens to them when they are 70.
      • dionidium 11y ago
        "I started smoking when I was a kid, like when I was ... like 14 and I thought, "I'll look really cool if I start smoking." Because I didn't get along with anybody. So, I started smoking, and wouldn't you know it? I did look cool! All of the sudden, all these broads liked me and everything. Not broads, but ladies, girls, whatever." -- Norm Macdonald
      • tekromancr 11y ago
        Story time! I smoked my first cigarette when I was 20. I was living in chicago, and at the time I was homeless and had spent about an hour and a half sitting on one of the train stops contemplating jumping in front of one. Obviously, I was looking a bit distraught, and a woman came up to me to ask if I was alright. I said I was fine, and she offered me a cigarette. I figured at this point, who cares. I was literally about 10 feet and an impulse away from killing myself, so I accepted. I was able to resist that particular impulse, but the anxiety and depression have more or less followed me. I continued smoking, and my daily use has varied, and even ceasing periodically for months at a time. But I find myself turning back to smoking at times when I am so anxious and depressed that I really want to die. It helps me to calm a little, and placate the suicidal impulse long enough to pass.
      • wtbob 11y ago
        > Why do people continue to start smoking? Because tobacco smells and tastes nice (cigarettes mostly don't, but cigarettes are to the tobacco world as McDonald's is to the hamburger world). It stems the appetite and heightens the mind. Why don't more people start to smoke?
      • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
        I would imagine that the sheer propagandistic nature of the ads themselves would backfire in cases.
    • xyzzy4 11y ago
      Really? I smoked a couple packs of cigarettes in my life and had no problem quitting. In my opinion cigarette addiction is blown out of proportion.
      • burkaman 11y ago
        Addiction isn't that predictable. Lots of people can drink regularly and stop when they want to, lots of people can do cocaine a few times and not get addicted. That doesn't mean alcoholism and cocaine addiction don't exist.
      • smt88 11y ago
        You're right! Now that we have one single data point, we can make a generalization about cigarette addiction as a whole! And now we can just forget about the many decades of research ACS and other organizations have done tracking millions of smokers around the world, because you are the only data point we need!!
      • MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
        Same for me, but don't generalize - some people get easily addicted, some don't.
      • tnecniv 11y ago
        By that logic I can say because I've been drunk a number of times in my life but are in control of the substance, I think alcoholism is blown out of proportion.
        • fluxquanta 11y ago
          I had an operation where I was given intravenous morphine once. When I got out of the hospital I wasn't jonesing for opiates. I think opiate addiction is just blown out of proportion.
      • forgotmypassw 11y ago
        Building tolerance and addiction is highly dependant on the individual, and so is quitting. Besides there's a difference between "a couple packs" and a long term smoking (at which point you're not yet that much addicted but smoke due to different reasons and get addicted in the meantime).
    • ionised 11y ago
      I smoke on weekends, and only if I'm having a drink. That's not addiction, that's just me enjoying a smoke.
    • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      No, because cigarettes are probably the single greatest pure consumption consumer good ever invented. The addiction part lasts weeks; the behavior modification part is for the rest of your life. Life is not a calculus problem...
  • Someone1234 11y ago
    Because it makes them happy. Tobacco activates the pleasure centres of the brain. Just like food, sex, drinking, or some illegal drugs. So you get a "reward" each time you partake, with smoking being particularly rewarding. A lot of poor people are trying to "treat" underlying unhappiness or stress, sometimes without knowing it (sometimes fully aware). It isn't a lack of understanding about the health risks, it is both an addiction, and the "least bad" alternative for what they're trying to accomplish (improve happiness, treat depression, decrease stress, etc). It may surprise the smug but there are a lot of very intelligent people who have addictions (e.g. drinking, drugs, eating, smoking, etc), including doctors, PhD holders, and award winning theorists. You're seriously misguided if you think it is because they lack information/health warnings.
    • maxerickson 11y ago
      I've sat in a dive bar and listened to smokers voices ramble incoherently about the cancer conspiracy. Someone doing that might understand the warnings, but they have rejected them and aren't weighing them against smoking.
      • thoughtpalette 11y ago
        Clearly anecdotal as I've heard the complete opposite. Those who smoke are well aware of most/all of the effects.
        • maxerickson 11y ago
          Yeah, my intent was to convey the anecdote, not to draw a generalization. Also, I wasn't saying they lacked awareness of the medical claims about the harms of smoking, I was saying, in my estimation, that they were not weighing that information when they picked up a cigarette (because they were drunkenly rambling about the suppression of cancer cures...).
  • aianus 11y ago
    On some level people start smoking because it's dangerous and bad for your health. They want to signal to others that they have a risk-taking personality, rebel against their parents, etc.
    • smt88 11y ago
      That's true of some people, but not everyone. People also become addicted to exercise, gambling, sex, and lots of other things, but it's not because those things make them look dangerous. It's because those things create a pleasure response in the brain. Even when smoking wasn't considered dangerous at all, people willingly started doing it. The danger factor is more recent (the last 80 years or so).
  • golergka 11y ago
    It's tasty.
  • ionised 11y ago
    It's pleasurable.
  • fl0wenol 11y ago
    Some tobacco smells or tastes really good when smoked.
• gadders 11y ago
  They tax the stupid. A lot of people of lower intellect tend to be poorer (not all, obviously).
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• ontoillogical 11y ago
  > In the United States, and nearly every other country, smoking is more common among the less wealthy and less educated. In the United States, 26.3% of people in poverty smoke compared to 15.2% for the rest of the population. College graduates are almost a third as likely to smoke as those who did not attend college. Because of this difference in smoking prevalence, Americans from the bottom third in household income spend nearly twenty times more on cigarettes as a proportion of their income than those from the top third. What a strange statistic! It's conflating the difference in cigarette spend and the difference in the incomes of top and bottom thirds to give us a meaningless number.
  • proksoup 11y ago
    It's making 2 points. (1) They are more likely to smoke and (2) It costs them more.
  • adrianN 11y ago
    I also stumbled over this, but later in the article it's explained with more numbers.
  • oldmanjay 11y ago
    "Spend" as a noun is my second least favorite corporatist word next to "ask" as a noun. I automatically assume (unfairly) that the speaker is over educated in some useless way and compensates to appear smarter.
• dbg31415 11y ago
  Aww, I'm so sorry that your horrible vice that ruins the air for everyone else, makes you look like a billion years old, and inflates my dry-cleaning bill when I'm around you costs you more money. Really, can't express how sorry I am. Honestly wish the tax on smoking was 200x what it is now. Fucking disgusting habit that needs to be eradicated.
  • forgotmypassw 11y ago
    People should stop liking what you don't like, right?
    • jawilson2 11y ago
      If it gives everyone around you cancer, yes.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      No, they are fine to like what they want. Just not in our shared air. (P.S. For comparison, when I bring stink bomb spray and spray it where I'm at, people get really offended.) Honestly, I have no problem with smoking as long as no non-consenting person has to be subjected to the second hand smoke. That includes both people doing their daily business in the public in general (designated smoking areas don't count as you have to active walk there, I'm more talking about people smoking in front of entrances to businesses). That also includes people smoking in their homes when they have underage children. But if it only involves consenting people, then do what you want. (I'm even for legalizing many drugs with the same disclaimers.)
      • wfo 11y ago
        Right, similarly you should object any time someone uses a motor vehicle in your presence. God forbid someone drives a truck and you're within 10 feet. You didn't consent to breathe in those fumes, they shouldn't have the right to spread them around anywhere, even in designated driving areas like roads -- they are near sidewalks, after all.
• rcavezza 11y ago
  The lottery taxes the poor in a very similar way. http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/ http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/
  • Kesty 11y ago
    That works for most taxes on consumer products since it's fixed and not based on income. If two people have the same exact habit it will cost them the same amount. If I have a higher income than you I'm actually paying less relative of my income than I would with a normal tax. This is true even not considering the social aspect of it. Some of this taxes are on addictive things like drugs (tobacco, alchool) and gambling (lottery). And one social influence of addictive behaviour is poverty.
    • fennecfoxen 11y ago
      A sales tax on groceries or a sin tax on cigarettes may be regressive because poor people spend a larger portion of their income on groceries and cigarettes, true. The lottery, however, is worse. It is actively advertising to these people, encouraging them to have hopes and dreams about a way out of their situation, but instead it just kicks them while they're down. And it's not just some soulless corporate entity doing this, no: it's the same government which purports to care about their plight, not just exploiting them but encouraging them to passively hope for unearned success, instead of pursuing goals as an independent actor or something which might actually improve their lot. "Hey, you never know!" is a dystopian lie, a few increments worse than "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"
      • xixi77 11y ago
        Buying vs. not buying lottery tickets has very little to do with pursuing vs. not pursuing any particular goals, so I'm not sure why you frame it as a choice between the two. Buying lottery tickets looks irrational on basis of expected value, but it is a very narrow and somewhat self-contradictory definition of rationality.
• Avshalom 11y ago
  EVERYTHING taxes the poor.
  • smt88 11y ago
    You're right that it's expensive to be poor, but I think you misunderstand what "___ taxes the poor" means. It means that there is a disproportionate tax burden on people with less income, otherwise called a regressive tax[1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax
  • elbigbad 11y ago
    They seem to be largely directly unaffected by the Estate Tax, at least in the United States.
• hapless 11y ago
  Cigarette taxes are powerfully regressive. It's completely true. But when cigarette taxes go up, youth smoking goes down. Reductions in youth smoking mean permanent, ongoing reductions in overall cigarette consumption, as young people fail to take up the habit. This is not a controversial assertion. Even priceonomics' cherry-picked sources primarily discuss price inelasticity in adult smokers, who have been addicted for decades. These taxes are cruel, but necessary. It's a pigouvian tax that literally saves lives.
  • rubidium 11y ago
    What to do about this, to make it less cruel and more helpful? As the article says: "To make these taxes more progressive, Farrelly feels that there is “a pretty obvious solution.” He says, “Earmark some of the funds and make sure they are used to support smoking cessation programs that are aimed at low-income smokers.” This is, surprisingly, rarely done."
    • jonlucc 11y ago
      As I understand it, smoking cessation programs have pretty bad success rates. An old article from JAMA [0] that seems to be one of the canonical papers in the field points out that only 23.6% of people in smoking cessation groups quit successfully. There may have been major advances since then, but I couldn't find new data quickly. [0] http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=381957 http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=381957
      • icebraining 11y ago
        23.6% doesn't sound so bad. How does it compare to people trying to quit without the program?
        • themartorana 11y ago
          Those are a lot of lives saved.
        • 11y ago
• golergka 11y ago
  So, not only smoking is not something that people need to do to survive, but people also have an option to roll their own cigarettes to save money. And yet, these authors decided to use a phrase "cigarettes tax", when "tax" is usually something that you don't have a choice whether to spend money on something or not. Medications tax the sick that need them. Cigarettes sure as hell don't tax smokers. (And yes, I smoke myself).
• peter303 11y ago
  They get it back in social medicine.
• pingou 11y ago
  Doesn't seem so unjust to me, as long as the government is efficient. It seems to me that taxes are beneficial to poor people, as government spending benefits the poor the most. At least that's the theory. Or they can directly redistribute the cigarette tax money to the poor.
• SCAQTony 11y ago
  Cigarettes, as a product when used as directed will not only harm the individual 100% of the time but will also tax the remaining non smokers. Cigarettes do not cover existential damages such as harm to nonsmokers, litter, garbage and damage to wildlife albeit through fires, avian or sea life. See Myth 3: The Economics of Tobacco at 'The World Bank' site. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTHEALTHNUTRITIONANDPOPULATION/EXTETC/0,,contentMDK:20365226~menuPK:478891~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:376601,00.html http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTHEALTHNUT...
  • rahimnathwani 11y ago
    s/existential damages/externalities
• propellerhat 11y ago
  I'm not really surprised by this. Starting to smoke and continuing to smoke are bad life choices and indicate a lack of will power and long-term thinking. Yes, cigarettes are incredibly addictive and quitting is hard (I smoked for 6 years when I was a teen and young adult). The same poor life choices and lack of long-term planning also lead to a low-income existence. Not applying yourself in school because you'd rather "have fun now." Not attending college. Not eating healthy foods. Not exercising. Smoking cigarettes. The fact that these things are all related shouldn't be a mystery or revelation. Poor people smoke more because poor people make bad choices in general.
  • steauengeglase 11y ago
    I'd imagine depression also plays a huge role. "Why stop? You are going to die anyway. And don't you deserve to die? You are smoking after all. No point in stopping now. Not like your life was ever going to go anywhere."
  • ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    The media-driven correlation between poverty and smoking is extremely recent. It's been quite the opposite for going on one hundred years. This is due to an active propaganda campaign.
• cmurf 11y ago
  Sugar and foods with processes carbohydrates strongly correlates to diabetes in children. So where's the sugar and process foods taxes? It'd save lives.
  • zimbatm 11y ago
    It's bound to happen but like with cigarettes it takes time. Personally I'm looking forward to horrible picture on the morning cereals.
  • seunosewa 11y ago
    Really poor people benefit from processed, calorie dense, vitamin-enriched food because it's the cheapest way to get fed. The harmful effects barely affect them because they cant afford to over-eat the stuff. So a processed food tax would be more harmful to the poor than a cigarette tax which, though burdensome, saves a lot of their lives. Food is good except its consumed in excess. Cigarettes are bad, period.
• fiatmoney 11y ago
  Why is it objectionable to tax the poor?
  • rtkwe 11y ago
    It's not taxing the poor in general that's bad. It's when the tax has a disproportionate impact on the poor compared to the rich. They're regressive and generally considered bad because when designing a tax to pay for say a welfare project that is supposed to benefit the poor taxing them to pay for it is counter intuitive. I'm split on this tax though since it's a sin tax so on one hand it doesn't really work to tax someone who isn't a smoker but on the other it's not working so why increase the burden on the poor unless it's preventing new smokers?
• dredmorbius 11y ago
  We have two separate problems: 1. Poverty. 2. Addiction to a substance and delivery mechanism poisonous to both the user and those around them. Taxes are among the methods to reduce the prevalence of the latter, as well as to capture negative externalities of their sale. No reason to reduce those. Addressing poverty and inequality generally, however, would be a Good Thing.
• rdlecler1 11y ago
  If revenue from that tax on an individual is exceeded by the increased healthcare costs then it's more like an insurance premium.
• wtbob 11y ago
  Of course, and almost no-one cares. Smokers in 2016 are like blacks in 1900: they're the pariahs everyone loves to hate. Smoking is banned from buildings; it's not even an option in many places to allow it. Smokers are scorned and looked down upon. Historical dramas whitewash smokers out (or make sure that the villains smoke while the heroes don't); smoking is literally photoshopped out of historical photos.
• havefunwiththat 11y ago
  Anti-smoking campaigns were offensive and tiring in the 80s. And whoever brought up pigouvian taxation needs a swift slap upside the head.
  • undersuit 11y ago
    Would you rather the ads try and sell you detergents and cars? The most recent ads by the Truth campaign are great. I'm a very sporadic smoker of pipes and cigars, but those commercials about cutting off the source of money for tobacco companies by going after non-cigarette tobacco really got my attention. If I buy another ounce of tobacco this year I'm going to at least put on my hipster hat and procure some tobacco that isn't produced by some massive multinational company with very questionable ethics.
• charlotteley 11y ago
  Quite smoking please! Good for your health and wallet