15 ms·

Smoking is bad but prohibition is worse. Being subjected to the carcercal system is worse for your health than smoking.

by tedajax 5y ago

kadoban 5y ago
Does this apply to other drugs as well?
- GrumpyNl 5y ago
  Yes
- tedajax 5y ago
  Generally I'd say yes at least for individuals with possession of substances for personal use. There's a lot more justification to go after manufacturers like Perdue Pharma who engage in fraud.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Few drugs are as harmful as tobacco.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    Not all tobacco products are equal because not all tobacco products are intended to be inhaled. Cigars and Pipe tobacco aren't intended to be inhaled and most people will not find them addictive. But there's no nuance regarding them in discussion of tobacco. They do likely have negative issues in terms of potential mouth cancer, but they're way less dangerous than cigarettes.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      I was responding to somebody who lumped all 'drugs' into a single category. Talk to them about a lack of nuance. FWIW, I'm all about safe, regulated supply and harm reduction -- nicotine products included.
- hammock 5y ago
  I wonder this as well, particularly drugs that start with V and may contain mRNA.
woodruffw 5y ago
Being subjected to the carceral system is indeed bad for your health, but there's a gap here: you haven't explained why banning smoking means we have to put people in prison. I would have thought to just fine them, or tax purchases out of existence. No need for shackles.
- selectodude 5y ago
  They’re highly addictive. Banning them turns millions into criminals.
- tptacek 5y ago
  The enforcement of that fining system will put thousands of people in prison, since fining use necessarily means prohibiting sale (or, fining retail sale necessarily prohibits wholesale, etc). This is a thing people already go to prison for, simply because the licensing fees annoy people.
- tedajax 5y ago
  How do people pay fines? If they are unable to pay what are the penalties? You also just created a black market for people who still want to smoke and that'll produce all kinds of fun.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    There's already a massive black market for people who want to smoke in the form of tax stamp fraud. It used to be even bigger than it currently is, but there are two forces working against it: the overall decline of organized crime starting in the 1980s, and the overall decline in the number of smokers. Black markets are a reality under current economic conditions, and they're a reality even in completely legal markets (there's always someone willing to pay XX% less in exchange for YY% more legal risk). Putting extreme taxes and/or fines on smoking might pour gas on that market, but long-term trends just don't support its survival. And as for fines: we already have a legal structure for that[1]. [1]: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/garnishments https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/garnishments
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
The issue was prohibition in the USA was that it indiscriminately criminalised selling, transporting, owning and consuming alcohol. With tobacco, modern countries could simply ban selling while allowing consumption. The risk is that the black market would flourish. I think the current policy of constantly hiking the price is a compromise: it restricts availability while limiting the development of parallel sell channels.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  That hasn’t worked well with cannabis. If the price is too high, that allows the black market to thrive. There are three dispensaries on my street. Yet there’s still street-level drug dealers selling illegal cannabis.
  - tastyfreeze 5y ago
    You can thank the high taxes on cannabis for that. Dispensary cannabis could be much cheaper.
- wyre 5y ago
  Banning prerolled cigarettes while allowing the sale of rolling or pipe tobacco might be a good middle ground.
  - twblalock 5y ago
    That would push a lot of smokers to unfiltered roll-your-own cigarettes.
throwawaygh 5y ago
This, to me, is the only compelling reason. Prohibition is almost always worse. Even just prohibition of production -- not use -- has substantial negative externalities. Almost every other argument is absurd on-face. Even base appeals to "freedom" fall flat given the significant secondary and tertiary effects of smoke exposure, as well as the huge cost imposed on society by smoking.
- antognini 5y ago
  > the huge cost imposed on society by smoking. On your last point, from what I've seen smoking saves society money because it kills people at much younger ages so governments don't have to pay for their health care for nearly as long.
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    I think if the op was talking about non-monetary costs. But if we're limiting this to monetary costs only, I believe you're right. I saw a similar study from the UK circa ~2008ish that compared long term smoker/obese/healthy medical costs, and healthy people are indeed the most expensive (mostly because of tremendous end of life care costs). Edit: I dug around a bit and found the study I was thinking of. It was actually a study on obesity (also not done by the UK), but used (non-obese) smokers as a group for comparison. Link to article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225430/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225430/ See Table 1 for lifetime medical costs.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Surely most living people are worth more than the economic cost of keeping them alive. They don't seem to even mention the economic value of a living person, other than to say that they didn't take into account the difference in productivity between obese and non-obese people.
      - ByteJockey 5y ago
        Given that most smokers/obese people tend to die right around retirement age, we probably aren't leaving much on the table (from a purely economic perspective). Smokers probably aren't missing enough days of work to cancel out the $60k they save the system by smoking (not to mention all the extra taxes they pay). But there's more value to human beings than their economic value, hence my talk about non-monetary costs. There's very real suffering that happens, and I'm not sure that's something you can put down in a spreadsheet somewhere.
gpm 5y ago
Or phrased differently, "we don't know how to stop it without causing something worse". Outright prohibition is massively expensive (prisons, police, loss of taxes), is a gift to criminals who will grow/import it illegally and sell it, and has outsized negative consequences on the people who use it anyways. Partial prohibition (under X years of age), taxes, and public education work to reduce the amount of it, without most of the negative side effects, so we did those. If you could point at other measures that would further reduce the usage, which didn't come with huge drawbacks, I'm pretty sure we would jump on that as well. Unfortunately, it's not clear any such measures exist.
- mjklin 5y ago
  “Suppose, for example, that a legislator should feel himself authorized to undertake the extirpation of drunkenness and fornication by direct laws. He would have to begin by a multitude of regulations. The first inconvenience would therefore be a complexity of laws. The easier it is to conceal these vices, the more necessary it would be to resort to severity of punishment, in order to destroy by the terror of examples the constantly recurring hope of impunity. This excessive rigour of laws forms a second inconvenience not less grave than the first. The difficulty of procuring proofs would be such that it would be necessary to encourage informers, and to entertain an army of spies. This necessity forms a third inconvenience, greater than either of the others. “Let us compare the results of good and evil. Offenses of this nature, if that name can be properly given to imprudences, produces no alarm; but the pretended remedy would spread a universal terror. Innocent or guilty, everyone would fear for himself or his connections; suspicions and accusations would render society dangerous; we should fly from it, we should involve ourselves in mystery and concealment, we should shun all the disclosures of confidence. Instead of suppressing one vice, the laws would produce other vices, new and more dangerous.” - Jeremy Bentham, English (1748-1832)
- js8 5y ago
  There might be a way to actually ban it without causing harmful effects: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59589775 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59589775
  - 5y ago
yalogin 5y ago
I think there can be a place in between allowing it and incarcerating people. Make it illegal to sell and may be heavy fines for getting caught smoking? Sure, there will be a black market for it but a lot of the low effort entrants to the market and many new entrants will be discouraged. Overall there will be less people using it. I generally understand that prohibiting something with the threat of incarceration is wrong, but without some legal interference smoking is not going to go away.
kzrdude 5y ago
What about the current system, where it's not prohibited but people tell you it's bad all the time, where does it fall on the scale? Is it the best solution?
rzimmerman 5y ago
Prohibition has clearly been worse in the case of alcohol and marijuana. You might be right, but I’m not convinced a prohibition on production and sale would produce the same black market for tobacco. Maybe it’s my own bias, but I like to think that most people that smoke don’t really want to. It’s driven by addiction and ease of access. Cravings are ephemeral and it’s not like buying a 6 pack or some pot to have a good time later. There’s a spectrum where prohibition works. The best example I can think of (at the extreme) is plastic bags at supermarkets in California - no black market for that, vs marijuana where it clearly a failure.

Smoking is bad but prohibition is worse. Being subjected to the carcercal system is worse for your health than smoking.

kadoban 5y ago

Does this apply to other drugs as well?

GrumpyNl 5y ago
Yes
tedajax 5y ago
Generally I'd say yes at least for individuals with possession of substances for personal use. There's a lot more justification to go after manufacturers like Perdue Pharma who engage in fraud.
klyrs 5y ago
Few drugs are as harmful as tobacco.
- dageshi 5y ago
  Not all tobacco products are equal because not all tobacco products are intended to be inhaled. Cigars and Pipe tobacco aren't intended to be inhaled and most people will not find them addictive. But there's no nuance regarding them in discussion of tobacco. They do likely have negative issues in terms of potential mouth cancer, but they're way less dangerous than cigarettes.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I was responding to somebody who lumped all 'drugs' into a single category. Talk to them about a lack of nuance. FWIW, I'm all about safe, regulated supply and harm reduction -- nicotine products included.
hammock 5y ago
I wonder this as well, particularly drugs that start with V and may contain mRNA.

woodruffw 5y ago

Being subjected to the carceral system is indeed bad for your health, but there's a gap here: you haven't explained why banning smoking means we have to put people in prison. I would have thought to just fine them, or tax purchases out of existence. No need for shackles.

selectodude 5y ago
They’re highly addictive. Banning them turns millions into criminals.
tptacek 5y ago
The enforcement of that fining system will put thousands of people in prison, since fining use necessarily means prohibiting sale (or, fining retail sale necessarily prohibits wholesale, etc). This is a thing people already go to prison for, simply because the licensing fees annoy people.
tedajax 5y ago
How do people pay fines? If they are unable to pay what are the penalties? You also just created a black market for people who still want to smoke and that'll produce all kinds of fun.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  There's already a massive black market for people who want to smoke in the form of tax stamp fraud. It used to be even bigger than it currently is, but there are two forces working against it: the overall decline of organized crime starting in the 1980s, and the overall decline in the number of smokers. Black markets are a reality under current economic conditions, and they're a reality even in completely legal markets (there's always someone willing to pay XX% less in exchange for YY% more legal risk). Putting extreme taxes and/or fines on smoking might pour gas on that market, but long-term trends just don't support its survival. And as for fines: we already have a legal structure for that[1]. [1]: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/garnishments https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/garnishments

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

The issue was prohibition in the USA was that it indiscriminately criminalised selling, transporting, owning and consuming alcohol. With tobacco, modern countries could simply ban selling while allowing consumption. The risk is that the black market would flourish. I think the current policy of constantly hiking the price is a compromise: it restricts availability while limiting the development of parallel sell channels.

jdavis703 5y ago
That hasn’t worked well with cannabis. If the price is too high, that allows the black market to thrive. There are three dispensaries on my street. Yet there’s still street-level drug dealers selling illegal cannabis.
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
  You can thank the high taxes on cannabis for that. Dispensary cannabis could be much cheaper.
wyre 5y ago
Banning prerolled cigarettes while allowing the sale of rolling or pipe tobacco might be a good middle ground.
- twblalock 5y ago
  That would push a lot of smokers to unfiltered roll-your-own cigarettes.

throwawaygh 5y ago

This, to me, is the only compelling reason. Prohibition is almost always worse. Even just prohibition of production -- not use -- has substantial negative externalities. Almost every other argument is absurd on-face. Even base appeals to "freedom" fall flat given the significant secondary and tertiary effects of smoke exposure, as well as the huge cost imposed on society by smoking.

antognini 5y ago
> the huge cost imposed on society by smoking. On your last point, from what I've seen smoking saves society money because it kills people at much younger ages so governments don't have to pay for their health care for nearly as long.
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  I think if the op was talking about non-monetary costs. But if we're limiting this to monetary costs only, I believe you're right. I saw a similar study from the UK circa ~2008ish that compared long term smoker/obese/healthy medical costs, and healthy people are indeed the most expensive (mostly because of tremendous end of life care costs). Edit: I dug around a bit and found the study I was thinking of. It was actually a study on obesity (also not done by the UK), but used (non-obese) smokers as a group for comparison. Link to article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225430/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225430/ See Table 1 for lifetime medical costs.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Surely most living people are worth more than the economic cost of keeping them alive. They don't seem to even mention the economic value of a living person, other than to say that they didn't take into account the difference in productivity between obese and non-obese people.
    - ByteJockey 5y ago
      Given that most smokers/obese people tend to die right around retirement age, we probably aren't leaving much on the table (from a purely economic perspective). Smokers probably aren't missing enough days of work to cancel out the $60k they save the system by smoking (not to mention all the extra taxes they pay). But there's more value to human beings than their economic value, hence my talk about non-monetary costs. There's very real suffering that happens, and I'm not sure that's something you can put down in a spreadsheet somewhere.

gpm 5y ago

Or phrased differently, "we don't know how to stop it without causing something worse". Outright prohibition is massively expensive (prisons, police, loss of taxes), is a gift to criminals who will grow/import it illegally and sell it, and has outsized negative consequences on the people who use it anyways. Partial prohibition (under X years of age), taxes, and public education work to reduce the amount of it, without most of the negative side effects, so we did those. If you could point at other measures that would further reduce the usage, which didn't come with huge drawbacks, I'm pretty sure we would jump on that as well. Unfortunately, it's not clear any such measures exist.

mjklin 5y ago
“Suppose, for example, that a legislator should feel himself authorized to undertake the extirpation of drunkenness and fornication by direct laws. He would have to begin by a multitude of regulations. The first inconvenience would therefore be a complexity of laws. The easier it is to conceal these vices, the more necessary it would be to resort to severity of punishment, in order to destroy by the terror of examples the constantly recurring hope of impunity. This excessive rigour of laws forms a second inconvenience not less grave than the first. The difficulty of procuring proofs would be such that it would be necessary to encourage informers, and to entertain an army of spies. This necessity forms a third inconvenience, greater than either of the others. “Let us compare the results of good and evil. Offenses of this nature, if that name can be properly given to imprudences, produces no alarm; but the pretended remedy would spread a universal terror. Innocent or guilty, everyone would fear for himself or his connections; suspicions and accusations would render society dangerous; we should fly from it, we should involve ourselves in mystery and concealment, we should shun all the disclosures of confidence. Instead of suppressing one vice, the laws would produce other vices, new and more dangerous.” - Jeremy Bentham, English (1748-1832)
js8 5y ago
There might be a way to actually ban it without causing harmful effects: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59589775 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59589775
- 5y ago

yalogin 5y ago

I think there can be a place in between allowing it and incarcerating people. Make it illegal to sell and may be heavy fines for getting caught smoking? Sure, there will be a black market for it but a lot of the low effort entrants to the market and many new entrants will be discouraged. Overall there will be less people using it. I generally understand that prohibiting something with the threat of incarceration is wrong, but without some legal interference smoking is not going to go away.

kzrdude 5y ago

What about the current system, where it's not prohibited but people tell you it's bad all the time, where does it fall on the scale? Is it the best solution?

rzimmerman 5y ago

Prohibition has clearly been worse in the case of alcohol and marijuana. You might be right, but I’m not convinced a prohibition on production and sale would produce the same black market for tobacco. Maybe it’s my own bias, but I like to think that most people that smoke don’t really want to. It’s driven by addiction and ease of access. Cravings are ephemeral and it’s not like buying a 6 pack or some pot to have a good time later. There’s a spectrum where prohibition works. The best example I can think of (at the extreme) is plastic bags at supermarkets in California - no black market for that, vs marijuana where it clearly a failure.