I just looked at the article. Unfortunately it has very little data about how much smoking is reduced by higher taxes. The one bit of actual numbers I found: "O

I just looked at the article. Unfortunately it has very little data about how much smoking is reduced by higher taxes. The one bit of actual numbers I found: "On average, a price increase of 10% on a pack of cigarettes would reduce demand for cigarettes by about 4% for the general adult population in high income countries". That's great, for the small percentage of people who quit smoking. But for the majority who continue smoking after higher taxes, it is indeed as I said, "This ends up just penalizing poor people." It's blatantly obvious if you go to any convenience store that smoking has not been stopped by higher cigarette taxes, and thus a lot of people are simply paying more in taxes while continuing to smoke. It's interesting that the article talks about the effect of cigarette taxes on youth, because currently in the US, retailers are forbidden to sell any nicotine product to anyone under age 21. If anything, it seems that the issue is not taxes but rather our extremely lax enforcement of the law against selling cigarettes to minors.