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So story time.
I smoked in high school and early college and quit before I graduated.
I then joined the Army and went overseas and did not restart smoking. So I oblivious to the cost of cigarettes.
I came back to the states and the first time I bought cigarettes since early college was for my brother around 2001/2002. He was broke and came over for Thanksgiving so decided to get him a carton of cigarets as he was out.
I was floored. A pack of cigarets was 10 bucks a carton cost 100 dollars. 10 bucks a pack.
Cigarettes (and to some extent alcohol) are one thing I think should be very heavily taxed, and therefore very expensive. The high prices are intended to encourage people to quit smoking, and more importantly, discourage people from getting addicted in the first place. Heck, a handful of countries are finally starting to ban cigarettes altogether for people born after a certain year. This is good.
I know I'm speaking from a point of "privilege", I've never smoked in my life and never been addicted to any substance. I know it's just not feasible for some people to quit, and for them, the high prices really suck. But on a society level, I still think it's better if cigarettes are expensive enough to remind you you should quit every time you buy them.
I agree that tobacco products should be heavily taxed, but should cigarettes be banned outright? I'm not sure banning is the right way to go, I mean just look at what the prohibition of alcohol back then did. A thriving, unregulated black market. People should be able to buy cigarettes, that way they can be sure of what it is they are smoking.
Just my opinion tho.
I don't think it's quite the same thing. Smoking has almost zero redeeming qualities. Alcohol has a lot of social value, cultural heritage, crap like that. If you're going to break the law, there are more attractive substances than tobacco.
There are other benefits too: restaurants stop having to dedicate space to smoking tables; people are far less likely to smoke in public places (like bus stops), which is already against the law but people do it anyway, if smoking is banned altogether they'd do it less.
If people are gonna smoke tobacco, I'd rather they do it in secret than out in the open. Also I think even "failed" prohibition likely reduces actual usage by a lot.
Yeah much of the cost of cigarettes is the deterring tax and I agree wth you on using them. Smoking is terrible and one of the best things I ever did for myself is quit smoking them.
I don’t know if there are similar taxes on other tobacco products.
That is what is so disheartening about all the vaping. In this that we had cigarettes and smoking beat. The numbers were going down and then vaping came along and everyone thought/thinks it is safe and now smoking is everywhere again.
Nah, because then you have the situation Australia has now which is that the financial incentive to bring in illegal cigarettes and sell them which creates organised crime groups who keep firebombing each others shit.
The US has the importation issue on a smaller scale because the tax on cigarettes varies between cities and states. Crooks will drive box trucks full of cigarettes from Virginia (which has the second lowest tax on them) to New York City (which has the highest).
A form has to be filled out above a certain number of packs so they'll buy just below that amount at different locations to avoid having the purchases recorded by the state.
Taxing cigarettes without proper redistribution is tricky because taxing cigarettes is also technically taxing poor people since they are the majority of smokers.
If the goal was to prevent people smoking, just put it behind a prescription or something. That way the people who cannot quit smoking, which is a very strong medical addiction, can still exist without paying exorbitant costs. But there's still a deterrent for anyone to start smoking, and it changes public perception of the habit. You also have to convince a doctor to give you the script, which any good doctor will not prescribe cigarettes to a 16 year old who never smoked before.
This "sin tax" bullshit can fuck off. It doesn't actually work or help anyone, as evidenced by the tobacco industry still being obscenely lucrative. Most people I know who used to smoke, still smoke. It's not something you can stop just because it gets expensive, that's not how addiction works.
If the focus was actually on public health, there are many better options, I've only listed one possible alternative. The true goal is and always will be money. The government makes a shit load of sin tax dollars, and the tobacco industry has a captured and addicted market so they don't really care what the final price is.
I the mid-90's I could get a carton of Camels at the reservation for $14.25. Last time I went (around 2004) a carton was $125. I quit smoking long enough ago that I have to assume the price now is somewhere in the $300 range.
It blows my mind.
I figure I quit smoking around 1990. I am not sure what I was paying for a pack, but the number that keeps popping up in my head is 4:25USD.
I smoked Camels filtered and Marlboro Reds.
I was shocked by how much the price had jumped.
I remember cigs being about $2.25 my first years of smoking from '93 in southern California. I used to be able to steal quarters from my brother's jar to buy a pack.
Yeah I can’t remember the exact number but it sure wasn’t 10 bucks.