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>Efforts to increase sin taxes should consider the heavy burdens borne by few households. I think they should consider how much nicer things are now that so ma

>Efforts to increase sin taxes should consider the heavy burdens borne by few households. I think they should consider how much nicer things are now that so many fewer people smoke. I can still remember people smoking on planes, in restaurants, etc. It was terrible. I'm in favor of anything that keeps that from happening again.

Scoundreller 5y ago
It wasn’t sin taxes that stopped those things.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  There is still less smoking regardless, though. Where I live if I see someone smoking in public more often than not they are a student from a country where cigarettes are much much cheaper. A packet of cigarettes is 4.5x cheaper in Poland than the UK for example.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  It is to a great degree. Many acquaintances have stopped smoking because it got too expensive. That many people stopped smoking is what enabled us to ban it in so many places afterwards. The bans are a huge inconvenience to smokers. That's the point, but it would have been political suicide a few decades prior.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - another-dave 5y ago
    though if that's correct, in that case, wouldn't the 'sin' tax have been political suicide if that was brought in first when there was even more smokers?
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      You can make a tax far more gradual than a ban. Slow boiling frogs and what not. And that is exactly what happened with cigarettes, at least here in Europe.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    If you’re just basing this on experience / memory idk if this is true. My memory says public opinion was swayed by advertising and health risks not cigarette prices. Without some hard data on this i think either story is just as likely true
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      > My memory says public opinion was swayed by advertising and health risks not cigarette prices. I'm confident smokers' opinions didn't reach quitting-stage due to ads.
      - kennywinker 5y ago
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775761/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775761/ > Results: On average, smokers were exposed to more than 200 antismoking ads during the 2-year period, as estimated by televised gross ratings points (GRPs). The odds of having quit at follow-up increased by 11% with each 10 additional potential ad exposures (per 1000 points, odds ratio [OR] = 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.00, 1.23; P < .05). Greater exposure to ads that contained highly emotional elements or personal stories drove this effect (OR = 1.14; 95% CI 1.02, 1.29; P < .05)
        WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
        Was this study done in regions without cigarette taxes? Asking because about everyone ex-smoker I know (a LOT) quit after struggling to afford the things. Honestly, I can't come up with anyone who could be so powerfully swayed by ads that they could quit an addiction.
        kennywinker 5y ago
        I don't know, you'd have to read the study. Point was they found a strong correlation between ads and quitting. Obviously the ads were communicating health information, so it's weird to say that the ads were the reason since it was likely the health information in the ads. It's also quite possible your friends feel more comfortable citing the cost over the health impact, since they would have known about the health impact when they started. "It got too expensive" is an easier out than "I used to not care about my health, but I do now"
- CodeBeater 5y ago
  I'm a very big fan of the São Paulo approach, just ban indoor smoking everywhere, period. The only places you are allowed to smoke are inside a dwelling or out in the street (with the caveat that there must be a clear view to the sky). Cigarettes are still cheap, but unwanted smog doesn't bother me anymore.
  - whymauri 5y ago
    Isn't this how it already works in the US?
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Also exactly how it works in UK - no smoking anywhere indoors.
    - dev_tty01 5y ago
      No, many bars still allow smoking.
      - nobody9999 5y ago
        >No, many bars still allow smoking. Where, exactly, is that the case? I've traveled all over the US and haven't been in a bar that allowed smoking indoors in at least 15 years. And as a smoker, I would definitely notice. Edit: As kube-system pointed out[0], there are a bunch of places that don't have indoor smoking bans. Although the Wikipedia[1] link they provided does say that ~80% of American live in a place with some restriction on smoking indoors. I stand corrected. Thanks kube-system! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003693 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...
        rileyphone 5y ago
        Specifically I've been to bars in Tennessee and Florida in the last 8 years that allow smoking inside, as well as a diner in Kentucky that still had a smoking section until a few years ago.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  That's a claim unsupported by research[1]. > Results >From 2001 through 2015, increases in state-level excise taxes were associated with declines in prevalence of cigarette smoking. The effect was strongest in young adults (age 18–24) and weakest in low-income individuals (<$25,000). So yes, taxes actually do at least affect smoking rates in the most vulnerable population. If you don't start smoking in your teens, you're much less likely to become a lifelong smoker. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147505/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147505/
  - Kbelicius 5y ago
    Your source has no relation to the claim that you are trying to refute. That claim being: "It wasn’t sin taxes that stopped people smoking on planes, in restaurants, etc. "
    - tdeck 5y ago
      It has some relation. If people aren't smoking, then they aren't smoking in planes or restaurants.
      - Kbelicius 5y ago
        No, it has none. They aren't smoking in planes and restaurants because it is illegal to do so.
- swarnie 5y ago
  Increasing the price definitely prevents new people from picking up the degusting habit. I just checked and a pack of my old smokes are over £12 a pack ($16 in Monopoly money)! The only problem i see if that it hasn't already broke £20 a pack.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    A weekend to Spain starts to pay for itself.
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  There's a graphic floating around that show cigarette consumption in the U.S. It goes up and up until about 1950 or so then it starts to go down and down. I always wonder about that. I mean, I understand that there were laws and taxes and reports about smoking. Looking at that chart though it doesn't look like that. It looks like everyone went - "You know, I don't want to smoke anymore and I don't want to be around smokers" - and then just slowly gave it up over 30 or 40 years. Was it the laws, taxes and reports? Or were all of those things just an expression of desire?
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Reports on lung cancer became all the rage in the 50's: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22lung+cancer%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20lung%20cancer%20%22%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22lung+cancer...
gowld 5y ago
Banning smoking in public is different from taxing smoking at home.
dk1138 5y ago
Agreed. I also like to think that these aren't necessarily "sin" taxes, but taxes paid up-front for the increased costs to society for the medical/public safety implications that occur from them.
- nickff 5y ago
  There is some evidence that smoking actually reduces total healthcare expenditure, as smokers die more quickly than non-smokers (who tend to linger in hospitals and cost a lot of money at the end of their lives). If true, does this mean smoking should be subsidized?
  - penneyd 5y ago
    Surely smokers die sooner, not quicker. Lung cancer and associated issues vs dying of natural causes are for sure a bigger healthcare burden.
    - jcampbell1 5y ago
      It is pretty well studied and lung cancer is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to die. A lot of smokers also drop dead from heart attacks. Smokers do have higher healthcare costs when young, and miss more workdays, but in the US where government is paying social security and Medicare, smokers dip into the public coffers much less than their non-smoking peers.
      - EForEndeavour 5y ago
        Wow, what? Could you link to some of these studies that you imply support lung cancer being "one of the cheapest and quickest ways to die"? That's so outlandishly beyond the pale of reason as well as my second-hand experience of the disease that it beggars belief and I honestly can't tell if you're joking or something. This page helpfully presents enormous per-patient costs of lung and other cancers, estimating ~USD$100k for care in the final year of life alone: https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/economic_burden https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/economic_burden Lung cancer symptoms often appear in late stages, which might explain the "quick" part of your comment, but come on. We aren't exactly talking death by gunshot or asphyxiation here. Symptoms of lung cancer include chest pain, a persistent cough, coughing up blood, and metastatic bone pain or headache, none of which seem quick or pleasant: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lung-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20374620 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lung-cancer/s...
gonehome 5y ago
"Sin Taxes" is such a loaded term. It's an incentive to change behavior - these work and we use them all over the place. I can't see the article, I just get a 404.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  So we only incentivize and control the behavior of poor people? A $60 parking ticket is earth shattering for someone at or near the poverty line. That same ticket is essentially meaningless for someone making $150k/year. If your incentive isn’t pegged to income or wealth, it’s just creating two tiers of society
  - ericmay 5y ago
    In the parking ticket case I think it's interesting and not clear-cut b/c on one hand you have the "treat all equal before the law" and on the other hand you have desired outcomes. It's hard for me ethically not to fall on the side of treating everyone equally under the law versus trying for specific outcomes. If you wanted to go for outcomes can you help me distinguish why you wouldn't sentence a poor person to lesser jail time or insurance payout (car wreck) or w/e lesser amount than a rich person? Does a wealthy person have more to lose by murdering someone? Less? I just don't think it's clear cut but for my part I'm definitely open minded on it. It's kind of the equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes thing - I'm definitely on the equality of opportunity camp with probably a base versus equality of outcome.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      "treat all equal before the law" could easily mean a fine that has an equal impact. Is it really equal treatment to fine someone in a way that jeopardizes their ability to pay rent and fine someone else in a way that annoys them slightly?
      - ericmay 5y ago
        Idk. Is it? I don’t think there is a clear cut answer. Should the poor serve shorter jail terms since they make less money and therefore have less time post-jail to accumulate lost earnings?
jdavis703 5y ago
People stopped smoking on planes and bars because of outright bans, not sin taxes. What someone does in their own house should be up to them, and we shouldn’t attempt to use taxes to eliminate vice (but requiring taxes to cover the negative externalities from vice is fine, e.g. funding DUI checkpoints).
- kube-system 5y ago
  It is a combination of both. Majority support was needed as a prerequisite to enact bans.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  How about increased taxpayer funded healthcare costs? Note that, politically, there is no problem collecting higher premiums for tobacco use. But apparently alcohol was not politically unpopular enough to be a factor allowed when pricing an individual’s insurance premiums. Or vaccination status.
  - mimikatz 5y ago
    Subtract it from the lower social security costs
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      To be consistent, I would then also want to get into opting out of end of life healthcare which is where a huge, if not majority, of healthcare spend is.
    - conception 5y ago
      Social security is not paid by other taxes. It's its own fund.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I do not find that clerical accounts for government expenses matter for practical purposes. Nominally, they can have various funding sources, but a politically popular expense will get its funding from somewhere, somehow. It seems prudent to just treat all monies paid to the federal government as taxes, and all services/products received from the federal government as a whole when accounting for it as an individual taxpayer.
nobody9999 5y ago
>I think they should consider how much nicer things are now that so many fewer people smoke. I can still remember people smoking on planes, in restaurants, etc. It was terrible. I'm in favor of anything that keeps that from happening again. I'm not sure that those outcomes are really related anymore. Smoking indoors is verboten pretty much everywhere, and has been for quite some time. IMHO, raising or lowering taxes on cigarettes won't change that, nor will it change if more people start smoking. What makes you think that adjusting cigarette taxes would have an impact on such laws/regulations? I'm not being snarky, I just don't see the connection here. Anecdotally, as a cigarette smoker myself, I'm glad that smoking indoors (including on transport vehicles like planes, trains and buses) isn't allowed.
- surge 5y ago
  I hate smokers because they they don't police their cigarette butts and leave the things littered everywhere, including parks, playgrounds, nature reserves... If nothing else, I'd tax them for that BS. It's the shopping cart test, at least 90% of smokers are like this, unable to do function in society unless their incentivized not to cause harm, and I disdain them for it.
  - irrational 5y ago
    Seriously. Recently I participated in a community clean up event. 99% of what we picked us was cigarette butts. It is insane how much trash and litter smokers create.
  - donatj 5y ago
    Some cigarette butt's biodegrade, most don't. I'd be in favor of a law to make them all have to be biodegradable. Still should just throw the damn things away, but changing human behaviour is difficult.
  - elvischidera 5y ago
    Add pet owners to the list :(. Germany seems to have a dog tax or something like that.
  - 5y ago
malandrew 5y ago
Taxes aren't the reason so few people smoke. It might have been somewhat contributory, but the main reasons so few people smoke are social pressure and the fact that it is so much more inconvenient to smoke because there are so few places you can't smoke. Travel around the country and you'll see more smoking in places where there's no lack of places you can smoke and where no one will side eye you for smoking.
- SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  Taxes are not just "somewhat contributory", there are studies that show that taxes do decrease smoking significantly.
crate_barre 5y ago
Lots of young people have taken up vaping. Smoking is on the rise IMO.
- rileyphone 5y ago
  How are these things logically connected, especially in the context of long-term health risks?
lend000 5y ago
I think it's important to distinguish between sin taxes and externality taxes. Drinking alcohol, for the most part (although not entirely), is purely a sin, and does not inherently affect the public. Smoking does, either in a minor and indirect way due to pollutants entering our shared atmosphere or a much more direct effect if someone is smoking in your local vicinity. I'm all for taxing the thing that affects people but isn't so horrible as to ban outright, but not so much the "sin."
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >Drinking alcohol, for the most part (although not entirely), is purely a sin, and does not inherently affect the public. Smoking does, either in a minor and indirect way due to pollutants entering our shared atmosphere or a much more direct effect if someone is smoking in your local vicinity. I'm all for taxing the thing that affects people but isn't so horrible as to ban outright, but not so much the "sin." Please define "sin" in this context. According to Merriam-Webster[0], "sin" is: an offense against religious or moral law Depending on who you talk to, divorce is a "sin." As is sex outside of marriage, eating pork or shellfish or cheeseburgers. Shall we implement high taxes on those things too? Please note that my issue is with the term "sin," as it has strong religious implications which, at least in the US, have no place in the operation of our secular government. [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sin https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sin
  - lend000 5y ago
    You're preaching to the choir.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Scoundreller 5y ago

It wasn’t sin taxes that stopped those things.

mhh__ 5y ago
There is still less smoking regardless, though. Where I live if I see someone smoking in public more often than not they are a student from a country where cigarettes are much much cheaper. A packet of cigarettes is 4.5x cheaper in Poland than the UK for example.
scrollaway 5y ago
It is to a great degree. Many acquaintances have stopped smoking because it got too expensive. That many people stopped smoking is what enabled us to ban it in so many places afterwards. The bans are a huge inconvenience to smokers. That's the point, but it would have been political suicide a few decades prior.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- another-dave 5y ago
  though if that's correct, in that case, wouldn't the 'sin' tax have been political suicide if that was brought in first when there was even more smokers?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    You can make a tax far more gradual than a ban. Slow boiling frogs and what not. And that is exactly what happened with cigarettes, at least here in Europe.
- kennywinker 5y ago
  If you’re just basing this on experience / memory idk if this is true. My memory says public opinion was swayed by advertising and health risks not cigarette prices. Without some hard data on this i think either story is just as likely true
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    > My memory says public opinion was swayed by advertising and health risks not cigarette prices. I'm confident smokers' opinions didn't reach quitting-stage due to ads.
    - kennywinker 5y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775761/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775761/ > Results: On average, smokers were exposed to more than 200 antismoking ads during the 2-year period, as estimated by televised gross ratings points (GRPs). The odds of having quit at follow-up increased by 11% with each 10 additional potential ad exposures (per 1000 points, odds ratio [OR] = 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.00, 1.23; P < .05). Greater exposure to ads that contained highly emotional elements or personal stories drove this effect (OR = 1.14; 95% CI 1.02, 1.29; P < .05)
      - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
        Was this study done in regions without cigarette taxes? Asking because about everyone ex-smoker I know (a LOT) quit after struggling to afford the things. Honestly, I can't come up with anyone who could be so powerfully swayed by ads that they could quit an addiction.
        kennywinker 5y ago
        I don't know, you'd have to read the study. Point was they found a strong correlation between ads and quitting. Obviously the ads were communicating health information, so it's weird to say that the ads were the reason since it was likely the health information in the ads. It's also quite possible your friends feel more comfortable citing the cost over the health impact, since they would have known about the health impact when they started. "It got too expensive" is an easier out than "I used to not care about my health, but I do now"
CodeBeater 5y ago
I'm a very big fan of the São Paulo approach, just ban indoor smoking everywhere, period. The only places you are allowed to smoke are inside a dwelling or out in the street (with the caveat that there must be a clear view to the sky). Cigarettes are still cheap, but unwanted smog doesn't bother me anymore.
- whymauri 5y ago
  Isn't this how it already works in the US?
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Also exactly how it works in UK - no smoking anywhere indoors.
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    No, many bars still allow smoking.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >No, many bars still allow smoking. Where, exactly, is that the case? I've traveled all over the US and haven't been in a bar that allowed smoking indoors in at least 15 years. And as a smoker, I would definitely notice. Edit: As kube-system pointed out[0], there are a bunch of places that don't have indoor smoking bans. Although the Wikipedia[1] link they provided does say that ~80% of American live in a place with some restriction on smoking indoors. I stand corrected. Thanks kube-system! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29003693 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...
      - rileyphone 5y ago
        Specifically I've been to bars in Tennessee and Florida in the last 8 years that allow smoking inside, as well as a diner in Kentucky that still had a smoking section until a few years ago.
mullingitover 5y ago
That's a claim unsupported by research[1]. > Results >From 2001 through 2015, increases in state-level excise taxes were associated with declines in prevalence of cigarette smoking. The effect was strongest in young adults (age 18–24) and weakest in low-income individuals (<$25,000). So yes, taxes actually do at least affect smoking rates in the most vulnerable population. If you don't start smoking in your teens, you're much less likely to become a lifelong smoker. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147505/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147505/
- Kbelicius 5y ago
  Your source has no relation to the claim that you are trying to refute. That claim being: "It wasn’t sin taxes that stopped people smoking on planes, in restaurants, etc. "
  - tdeck 5y ago
    It has some relation. If people aren't smoking, then they aren't smoking in planes or restaurants.
    - Kbelicius 5y ago
      No, it has none. They aren't smoking in planes and restaurants because it is illegal to do so.
swarnie 5y ago
Increasing the price definitely prevents new people from picking up the degusting habit. I just checked and a pack of my old smokes are over £12 a pack ($16 in Monopoly money)! The only problem i see if that it hasn't already broke £20 a pack.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  A weekend to Spain starts to pay for itself.
hackeraccount 5y ago
There's a graphic floating around that show cigarette consumption in the U.S. It goes up and up until about 1950 or so then it starts to go down and down. I always wonder about that. I mean, I understand that there were laws and taxes and reports about smoking. Looking at that chart though it doesn't look like that. It looks like everyone went - "You know, I don't want to smoke anymore and I don't want to be around smokers" - and then just slowly gave it up over 30 or 40 years. Was it the laws, taxes and reports? Or were all of those things just an expression of desire?
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Reports on lung cancer became all the rage in the 50's: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22lung+cancer%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20lung%20cancer%20%22%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22lung+cancer...

gowld 5y ago

Banning smoking in public is different from taxing smoking at home.

dk1138 5y ago

Agreed. I also like to think that these aren't necessarily "sin" taxes, but taxes paid up-front for the increased costs to society for the medical/public safety implications that occur from them.

nickff 5y ago
There is some evidence that smoking actually reduces total healthcare expenditure, as smokers die more quickly than non-smokers (who tend to linger in hospitals and cost a lot of money at the end of their lives). If true, does this mean smoking should be subsidized?
- penneyd 5y ago
  Surely smokers die sooner, not quicker. Lung cancer and associated issues vs dying of natural causes are for sure a bigger healthcare burden.
  - jcampbell1 5y ago
    It is pretty well studied and lung cancer is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to die. A lot of smokers also drop dead from heart attacks. Smokers do have higher healthcare costs when young, and miss more workdays, but in the US where government is paying social security and Medicare, smokers dip into the public coffers much less than their non-smoking peers.
    - EForEndeavour 5y ago
      Wow, what? Could you link to some of these studies that you imply support lung cancer being "one of the cheapest and quickest ways to die"? That's so outlandishly beyond the pale of reason as well as my second-hand experience of the disease that it beggars belief and I honestly can't tell if you're joking or something. This page helpfully presents enormous per-patient costs of lung and other cancers, estimating ~USD$100k for care in the final year of life alone: https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/economic_burden https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/economic_burden Lung cancer symptoms often appear in late stages, which might explain the "quick" part of your comment, but come on. We aren't exactly talking death by gunshot or asphyxiation here. Symptoms of lung cancer include chest pain, a persistent cough, coughing up blood, and metastatic bone pain or headache, none of which seem quick or pleasant: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lung-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20374620 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lung-cancer/s...

gonehome 5y ago

"Sin Taxes" is such a loaded term. It's an incentive to change behavior - these work and we use them all over the place. I can't see the article, I just get a 404.

kennywinker 5y ago
So we only incentivize and control the behavior of poor people? A $60 parking ticket is earth shattering for someone at or near the poverty line. That same ticket is essentially meaningless for someone making $150k/year. If your incentive isn’t pegged to income or wealth, it’s just creating two tiers of society
- ericmay 5y ago
  In the parking ticket case I think it's interesting and not clear-cut b/c on one hand you have the "treat all equal before the law" and on the other hand you have desired outcomes. It's hard for me ethically not to fall on the side of treating everyone equally under the law versus trying for specific outcomes. If you wanted to go for outcomes can you help me distinguish why you wouldn't sentence a poor person to lesser jail time or insurance payout (car wreck) or w/e lesser amount than a rich person? Does a wealthy person have more to lose by murdering someone? Less? I just don't think it's clear cut but for my part I'm definitely open minded on it. It's kind of the equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes thing - I'm definitely on the equality of opportunity camp with probably a base versus equality of outcome.
  - kennywinker 5y ago
    "treat all equal before the law" could easily mean a fine that has an equal impact. Is it really equal treatment to fine someone in a way that jeopardizes their ability to pay rent and fine someone else in a way that annoys them slightly?
    - ericmay 5y ago
      Idk. Is it? I don’t think there is a clear cut answer. Should the poor serve shorter jail terms since they make less money and therefore have less time post-jail to accumulate lost earnings?

jdavis703 5y ago

People stopped smoking on planes and bars because of outright bans, not sin taxes. What someone does in their own house should be up to them, and we shouldn’t attempt to use taxes to eliminate vice (but requiring taxes to cover the negative externalities from vice is fine, e.g. funding DUI checkpoints).

kube-system 5y ago
It is a combination of both. Majority support was needed as a prerequisite to enact bans.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
How about increased taxpayer funded healthcare costs? Note that, politically, there is no problem collecting higher premiums for tobacco use. But apparently alcohol was not politically unpopular enough to be a factor allowed when pricing an individual’s insurance premiums. Or vaccination status.
- mimikatz 5y ago
  Subtract it from the lower social security costs
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    To be consistent, I would then also want to get into opting out of end of life healthcare which is where a huge, if not majority, of healthcare spend is.
  - conception 5y ago
    Social security is not paid by other taxes. It's its own fund.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I do not find that clerical accounts for government expenses matter for practical purposes. Nominally, they can have various funding sources, but a politically popular expense will get its funding from somewhere, somehow. It seems prudent to just treat all monies paid to the federal government as taxes, and all services/products received from the federal government as a whole when accounting for it as an individual taxpayer.

nobody9999 5y ago

>I think they should consider how much nicer things are now that so many fewer people smoke. I can still remember people smoking on planes, in restaurants, etc. It was terrible. I'm in favor of anything that keeps that from happening again. I'm not sure that those outcomes are really related anymore. Smoking indoors is verboten pretty much everywhere, and has been for quite some time. IMHO, raising or lowering taxes on cigarettes won't change that, nor will it change if more people start smoking. What makes you think that adjusting cigarette taxes would have an impact on such laws/regulations? I'm not being snarky, I just don't see the connection here. Anecdotally, as a cigarette smoker myself, I'm glad that smoking indoors (including on transport vehicles like planes, trains and buses) isn't allowed.

surge 5y ago
I hate smokers because they they don't police their cigarette butts and leave the things littered everywhere, including parks, playgrounds, nature reserves... If nothing else, I'd tax them for that BS. It's the shopping cart test, at least 90% of smokers are like this, unable to do function in society unless their incentivized not to cause harm, and I disdain them for it.
- irrational 5y ago
  Seriously. Recently I participated in a community clean up event. 99% of what we picked us was cigarette butts. It is insane how much trash and litter smokers create.
- donatj 5y ago
  Some cigarette butt's biodegrade, most don't. I'd be in favor of a law to make them all have to be biodegradable. Still should just throw the damn things away, but changing human behaviour is difficult.
- elvischidera 5y ago
  Add pet owners to the list :(. Germany seems to have a dog tax or something like that.
- 5y ago

malandrew 5y ago

Taxes aren't the reason so few people smoke. It might have been somewhat contributory, but the main reasons so few people smoke are social pressure and the fact that it is so much more inconvenient to smoke because there are so few places you can't smoke. Travel around the country and you'll see more smoking in places where there's no lack of places you can smoke and where no one will side eye you for smoking.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
Taxes are not just "somewhat contributory", there are studies that show that taxes do decrease smoking significantly.

crate_barre 5y ago

Lots of young people have taken up vaping. Smoking is on the rise IMO.

rileyphone 5y ago
How are these things logically connected, especially in the context of long-term health risks?

lend000 5y ago

I think it's important to distinguish between sin taxes and externality taxes. Drinking alcohol, for the most part (although not entirely), is purely a sin, and does not inherently affect the public. Smoking does, either in a minor and indirect way due to pollutants entering our shared atmosphere or a much more direct effect if someone is smoking in your local vicinity. I'm all for taxing the thing that affects people but isn't so horrible as to ban outright, but not so much the "sin."

nobody9999 5y ago
>Drinking alcohol, for the most part (although not entirely), is purely a sin, and does not inherently affect the public. Smoking does, either in a minor and indirect way due to pollutants entering our shared atmosphere or a much more direct effect if someone is smoking in your local vicinity. I'm all for taxing the thing that affects people but isn't so horrible as to ban outright, but not so much the "sin." Please define "sin" in this context. According to Merriam-Webster[0], "sin" is: an offense against religious or moral law Depending on who you talk to, divorce is a "sin." As is sex outside of marriage, eating pork or shellfish or cheeseburgers. Shall we implement high taxes on those things too? Please note that my issue is with the term "sin," as it has strong religious implications which, at least in the US, have no place in the operation of our secular government. [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sin https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sin
- lend000 5y ago
  You're preaching to the choir.

deleted 5y ago

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