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Agreed with your premise in full. Increasing the price isn't necessarily about making it inaccessible to people so they stop smoking (though it is a minor part

Agreed with your premise in full. Increasing the price isn't necessarily about making it inaccessible to people so they stop smoking (though it is a minor part of it that is a nice side-effect), it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products. If people don't stop smoking, then might as well make sure they cover the extra cost they add to the healthcare system. Seems pretty fair. To be clear, this statement I made has nothing to with my views on the specific menthol ban in question, as I am still not sure how I feel about it. I was just discussing the hypothetical non-existent strategy of just more taxing on tobacco products instead of outright banning them.

whatshisface 6y ago
>it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products. That only makes sense in places where the taxes go to healthcare organizations. In the American system, that doesn't happen - there's no way that a city will hand the proceeds of its tobacco taxes to insurance companies.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  Yeah, the point isn't to compensate insurers - they for sure get theirs and charge smokers more. It's to compensate healthcare systems and governments who foot the bill for 1) productivity decreases from smoking in the form of more sick days, more breaks, etc. and 2) people who don't have insurance and get cancer and are treated at the taxpayers expense
  - Clubber 6y ago
    It's a cash grab, make no mistake about it. They can justify it all they want, but they're fooling you. Tobacco companies already pay states a bunch of money from their 1998 settlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre... It's over $200 billion and growing. They're more than compensated. Cigarettes and tobacco products are already heavily taxed for the user. Both the federal government and the state government makes a lot of money off people's addiction, and it's an addiction they can't break (obviously). https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/ https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/ Time to leave smokers alone. Many if not most of them got hooked as kids and as a society we just keep punishing them for their "moral failure."

whatshisface 6y ago

>it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products. That only makes sense in places where the taxes go to healthcare organizations. In the American system, that doesn't happen - there's no way that a city will hand the proceeds of its tobacco taxes to insurance companies.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
Yeah, the point isn't to compensate insurers - they for sure get theirs and charge smokers more. It's to compensate healthcare systems and governments who foot the bill for 1) productivity decreases from smoking in the form of more sick days, more breaks, etc. and 2) people who don't have insurance and get cancer and are treated at the taxpayers expense
- Clubber 6y ago
  It's a cash grab, make no mistake about it. They can justify it all they want, but they're fooling you. Tobacco companies already pay states a bunch of money from their 1998 settlement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre... It's over $200 billion and growing. They're more than compensated. Cigarettes and tobacco products are already heavily taxed for the user. Both the federal government and the state government makes a lot of money off people's addiction, and it's an addiction they can't break (obviously). https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/ https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/ Time to leave smokers alone. Many if not most of them got hooked as kids and as a society we just keep punishing them for their "moral failure."