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This is one of the downsides to socialised medicine - people feel the right to judge people for their weight, for example. Taxes are high on tobacco because of

This is one of the downsides to socialised medicine - people feel the right to judge people for their weight, for example. Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. We already have loads of bans on smoking in different contexts. If politicians could find an easy way to try and force poor people to eat less fast food, they would; they don't have much moral compunction stopping them, rather they feel they have the right, because obesity etc have costs that need to be managed.

conanbatt 9y ago
> Taxes are high on tobacco because of the harms. Here in the UK, there's support for minimum alcohol prices, to stop alcohol getting too cheap. I will argue that the reason taxes are high on tobacco is because its become social suicide to defend tobacco. The taxes are high on tobacco because its an easy case to make that gets no opposition. Alcohol is next in line. I'd argue that if something is bad but popular its hard totax (i.e. special TV tax, special Netflix tax, special Facebook tax), or that something is good but unpopular its too easy to tax (tax foreigners, tax the poor, etc).