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And governments are good at counting on that recurring revenue. Do you think the government wants people to stop smoking tomorrow?

• vinay427 10y ago
  Governments that provide comprehensive healthcare funding have an incentive to want people to stop smoking. Whether some governments actually want that is an exercise in guesswork.
  • dexterdog 10y ago
    That depends on how much revenue the tobacco tax is bringing in and how much they can push the healthcare funding off on the taxpayers.
  • wallace_f 10y ago
    > Governments that provide comprehensive healthcare funding have an incentive to want people to stop smoking. The incentive is to keep people smoking. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, smokers spend less on healthcare.[1] [1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/greg-mankiw-on-the-soda-tax/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/greg-mankiw-on-... Edit: This is consistent with real-world observation. Anti-smoking policy is the greatest in the US where the plutocracy benefits from increased healthcare spending, and relatively lower in social welfare states in Europe.