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Why should someone being a smoker deprioritze lung cancer research? They’re people who engage in a legal activity and pay heavy taxes to do so. We rarely disco

Why should someone being a smoker deprioritze lung cancer research? They’re people who engage in a legal activity and pay heavy taxes to do so. We rarely discount medicine for the myriad other medical problems that occur from many other activities like eating bad foods (way worse than smoking), avoidable stress (not addictive) and the various substance abuse from pharmaceuticals et al.

fwn 9y ago
A major part of the prevention of tobacco use is education. This is partly done through explaining the health impact on the people affected by smoking (smoker+surrounding), partly through moralizing (since health and the personal responsibility for ones own health are exercised as a value). The latter nicely fits with an externality argument based on scarcity of resources in research & treatment. At this point, if you accept all those premises, lung cancer research for smokers is a negative externality for all the non-smokers in need for research & treatment. And it's not necessary that those premises are accepted on an individual level; it's enough to just teach them. Long term policy making is in many value questions just a proxy for mass education. You currently don't have any of that for the misuse of medicine, etc.
dx034 9y ago
High taxes on tabacco are not supposed to fund treatment, they're supposed to deter people from smoking. While self inflicted illnesses are (and should be) covered by health care, there is a point in trying to avoid those rather than making them easy to treat. Deterring people from smoking while researching treatment for other forms of cancer can save more lives in the long run.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  If we didn't want people to smoke, it would be illegal. Yet, as US taxpayers, we have subsidized a synthetic opioid epidemic for almost 20 years, and state governments use legal settlements against drug distributors to subsidize treatment (which are not standardized) and fund the purchase of more pharmaceutical products (suboxone and narcan).
  - dx034 9y ago
    To be fair, most people weren't aware of the problems prescription opioids cause until very recently. People also smoked for decades until it was established that smoking is unhealthy. Banning a drug will only lead it to go underground. If you ban cigarettes, everything moves to the black market. The US has experienced in past decades that banning drugs and fighting their distribution is not necessarily effective. If you legalise a drug but tax it heavily (and provide other restrictions), you control the supply chain (ensuring quality) and can recover some of the costs via taxes.

fwn 9y ago

A major part of the prevention of tobacco use is education. This is partly done through explaining the health impact on the people affected by smoking (smoker+surrounding), partly through moralizing (since health and the personal responsibility for ones own health are exercised as a value). The latter nicely fits with an externality argument based on scarcity of resources in research & treatment. At this point, if you accept all those premises, lung cancer research for smokers is a negative externality for all the non-smokers in need for research & treatment. And it's not necessary that those premises are accepted on an individual level; it's enough to just teach them. Long term policy making is in many value questions just a proxy for mass education. You currently don't have any of that for the misuse of medicine, etc.

dx034 9y ago

High taxes on tabacco are not supposed to fund treatment, they're supposed to deter people from smoking. While self inflicted illnesses are (and should be) covered by health care, there is a point in trying to avoid those rather than making them easy to treat. Deterring people from smoking while researching treatment for other forms of cancer can save more lives in the long run.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
If we didn't want people to smoke, it would be illegal. Yet, as US taxpayers, we have subsidized a synthetic opioid epidemic for almost 20 years, and state governments use legal settlements against drug distributors to subsidize treatment (which are not standardized) and fund the purchase of more pharmaceutical products (suboxone and narcan).
- dx034 9y ago
  To be fair, most people weren't aware of the problems prescription opioids cause until very recently. People also smoked for decades until it was established that smoking is unhealthy. Banning a drug will only lead it to go underground. If you ban cigarettes, everything moves to the black market. The US has experienced in past decades that banning drugs and fighting their distribution is not necessarily effective. If you legalise a drug but tax it heavily (and provide other restrictions), you control the supply chain (ensuring quality) and can recover some of the costs via taxes.