Ban Smoking Completely

I am not saying this as an advocate for smoking or prohibition. I smoke maybe 10 fine cigars a year, but do not smoke cigarettes at all. I think this has become a mutually beneficial arrangement no matter your position. I will therefore address this issue from both perspectives:

For the prohibitionists/pro-regulation lot:

1. The government is just as addicted to tobacco as smokers:

The tobacco excise raises $9bn annually for the government. They will never give up this income stream, not without a fight anyway. That's 20% of the health budget covered right there. Banning tobacco would end this conflict of interest.

If you want to phase tobacco out in the long term (for instance, if you're Tasmanian), then you ought to nip this in the bud before the entire health budget is paid for entirely by smokers. By that time it will be such an uphill battle.

2. The tobacco companies are making never-before-seen profits off the cartel we've created

Contrary to popular opinion, a large portion of the cost of cigarettes is not tax at all, but price discrimination by the tobacco companies. Because the regulations do not permit ease of market entry, the tobacco market is controlled by a few big players, many of whom are subsidiaries of larger tobacco firms. This has created an artificial monopoly.

Tobacco costs practically nothing to produce. As with beer and spirits, I can create them myself for a fraction of the price ($4/L for spirits). The only reason why the market hasn't approached the cost of production is such competition is illegal. In an environment such as the one the tobacco firms find themselves in, it is possible to make an absolute killing. There's a reason why the exact same tobacco costs 500% more here even excluding taxes.

3. As the sin taxes rise, people move to grey market tobacco - this is easier to combat if tobacco is prohibited.

It's very difficult to combat illicit tobacco while it is still legal to have tobacco in the first place. It is not illegal to declare a pack of smokes from Morocco or the Ukraine and therefore possess them in Australia. Even if it were, it is a trivial exercise to transfer them to a plain packet before leaving the home. If tobacco is prohibited entirely, no such opportunity exists.

15% of our tobacco market is already illicit, no doubt because of the substitution effect: taxes push people to alternatives.

4. The tobacco excise is the most regressive tax on the books:

If you're really up in arms about social justice you simply cannot support the system we currently have. Something has to give - detax it, or prohibit it.

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For the smokers/pro-choice lot:

1. You are being bankrupted.

You are, presumably, addicted to smoking. Even if you are low-income (perhaps especially so), you are unlikely to quit because of a rise in the cost of tobacco. The cartel we have enriches both the government and the tobacco firms at your expense. Money is flowing out of your account and into theirs as a direct consequence of this policy of quasi-prohibition by tax+regulation.

2. We need to organize politically.

If $40/pack smokes won't do it, the only thing which will is complete prohibition. It's time to kick the government+big tobacco habit and start consuming tobacco on our own terms: we need to begin to grow tobacco ourselves on a personal level, and embrace grey market tobacco where we are unable to do so.

One can purchase $4/pack cigarettes from countries where the cartel cannot charge $30/pack because of the poor community. In Morocco I picked up a pack of Marlboro Reds (for hashish ) for 50Dh. When they have to, they will charge you a reasonable price. We need to organize and defend our pastime.

3. It will create the opportunity for an alliance with the anti-drug war crowd.

It has always utterly baffled me how someone can be for legal use and sale of cannabis/other drugs, but be in favor of the tobacco cartel. This is unfortunately still the case a lot of the time - they have bought into the same government BS which they are themselves targeted with. If completely prohibited, our political power all of a sudden expands substantially.

Would anti-drug war types (such as myself) tolerate 12.5% annual compounding excise increases? Plain packaging? Prohibition on growing for personal use so you must enrich the cartel? Perhaps (there are a lot of idiots in the drug legalization camp), but I don't see it as likely.

[video=youtube;gUEjnoWpdao]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUEjnoWpdao[/video]

 

I do not support prohibition

if people enjoy smoking a cigarette, let them, we only live once, and the longest people to have lived were smokers

I also am against the war on drugs and think people should be able to plant any plants they want in their gardens

" the longest confirmed human lifespan on record, living to the age of 122 years "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

"Calment smoked cigarettes from the age of 21 (1896) to 117 (1992)"

when a non-smoker breaks that record, let us know......

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If they ban tobacco where will the $9bn come from? What I'm curious to know is, what percentage of smokers uses health care.... more than 20%? Obesity has overtaken smoking as leading cause of death so perhaps it's time to lower the price of fruit and vegetables and start taxing junk food...

My concern is for users of healthcare who deliberatly indulge in unhealthy activities to have additional contributions to health care in some fashion, taxes by usage appear to be the fairest.

Also, if you look at statistics, the high prices for tobacco is working, smoking is in decline.

are you saying the statistics are skewed because the 15% above is not included in the figures?

ps. thanks the video is funny, there have been times where I wanted to verbally abuse a smoker in the exact same fashion, lighting up right next to my kids, throwing their stubs on my lawn, while I'm eating my dinner secondary smoke making my eyes water and my food taste bland. Secondary smoke in my hair & clothes from a crowded environment. People are tired of inconsiderate smokers and honestly so am I.... stop contaminating my air.

 

I agree, but the current circumstances force me to consider alternatives.

Completely agree. At the very least, growing for personal use should be legal, untaxed, and unregulated. But this is not even a remote possibility in the current system. We must therefore consider alternatives - growing your own or using grey market cigs for $4 a pack is the best option. So is prohibition. It is in the best interests of all involved - the smokers, the non-smokers, the indifferent.

Let's not get too unscientific here, using such a small sample size makes it useless as evidence. The evidence clearly shows that smoking tobacco (like smoking any plant matter) causes tar inhalation and cancer.

That doesn't mean smokers should be shackled to the big tobacco/big government cartel.

 

Smokers are harassed in our country anyway, social outcasts so to speak.
Let them have their smoke as long as they walk 3 meters away, and show respect to non smokers.
Cheers

 

smoking can relive stress, stress kills.. that is scientifically proven

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I agree, set up smoking areas and non-smokers can avoid those locations, simple.. it's getting so crazy now, you can get $50 fine just for smoking in your own car in a parking lot

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So smoking makes you live longer provided it doesnt kill you prematurely like it does to almost everyone who does.
Never smoked a day in my life, Ive been repulsed by it since I was a child. My mother however did, my dad didnt, she is now lugging around an oxygen bottle and cant walk to the kitchen sink without gasping for air. My dad can reroof his house by himself if he needed to. Its not about longevity its about quality of life for whatever lifespan you have. You found one example of a long lived smoker, that makes sense as people that age smoked because they didnt know it was bad. Cigarettes didnt help him live longer his genetics did. Fact is smokers reading this will with almost certainty have severe problems from smoking when they age. This isnt conjecture its fact based on human health records. My mother used to vehemently defend smoking as being harmless now she regrets ever starting even cursing the woman who convinced her to start. Taking 10 minutes to move 10ft will do that to you. Stop smoking bro, its gonna get you. It gets everyone except the one or two guys you found.

 

I don't remeber was this in US or somewhere else but when it comes to deaths that are connected with smoking for every seven smokers a non-smoker dies of passive smoking.

There was a ridiculous suggestion in Finland - due to statistics showing that most people start smoking before or at sixteen or not at all - that buying them would be prohibited from those born after 1998 (or so), from then on the population younger than that would be prohibited from smoking but those older could go on, which would in some hundred years make Finland smoke-free.

The impossibility is in that it would be impossible to execute with the current human rights. It would give others more rights than the rest.

The human rights is just what makes it so damn difficult. Can't prohibit a man smoking or having a beer.

 

is it possible to ban people who keep wanting to ban things?

 

Ok sure and that will work just as well as banning alcohol did.

 

None of your business whatsoever what he does with his lungs.

I despise cigarettes but smoke a nice cigar from time to time, I doubt from that I'll get lung cancer. Far more likely I'll get it from the huge amount of cones I've ripped in my life.

I think his talk on smoked tobacco being benign is really very harmful to those of us who are pro-choice. Smoking clearly kills. So does base jumping. Admit it and defend the individual's right to choose.

 

You may possibly be unfamiliar with the Australian tobacco cartel. We pay $20USD for a pack of 25 cigarettes. They are increasing tobacco taxes by 12.5% per year compounding. Big tobacco is increasing the price discrimination. We are only permitted to have a slime green pack with a rotting lung on it. Smoking is illegal in al fresco areas irrespective of the will of the property owner. It is illegal to smoke in the Perth CBD.

Prohibition isn't already here, but it's knocking on the door. As with guns, they are doing quite literally whatever they can get away with, short of arresting all for possession.

 

Of course they can. Western society has a lot of accidental historical reasons for keeping tobacco and beer lethal, but neither nature or chemistry care about any of that. They are all drugs.

There is no violation of rights through legislation prohibiting the possession of alcohol or tobacco. Tasmania tried prohibiting tobacco possession for those born after 2000, these ideas have been attempted before.

 

Tried sounds like they failed. Then it needs to be all people. And it would require making it a drug. The definition of drug won't change. It's already been defined. Which makes it, tobacco nor alcohol are drugs. The law defines drugs. I look at it as a violation of a person's freedom to prohibit from them what theu used to have a right to just because someone thinks it isn't wise.

 

The Tasmanian proposal didn't fail because of human rights concerns, it failed because it was a (*)(*)(*)(*)in terrible idea.

 

not true, JEL, just eliminate lies

like I said, when you show non-smokers taking over those longest living slots, let me know

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doing anything to excess is bad for you, jogging, ect.... even eating

everything in moderation my friend... and stop stressing, it;s gonna get you... stress kills.. Ironically smoking relieves stress

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where did I say it is my business? He can do whatever he wants with his lungs provided my increased healthcare costs arent subsidizing smokers health issues. Agree or not agree? They can smoke allllll they want provided it doesnt enter my lungs or take money out of my wallet. Problem is smokers smoke while driving and for some strange reason put their windows down forcing the rest us to inhale their smoke behind them. Its disgusting.

 

Im not stressed at all. Nothing like a lung full of fresh air to get oxygen into your system to fend off those free radicals rife in a smokers body. Smoking only relieves stress in a smokers mind, in reality your heart is being stressed, thats why smokers have statistically higher heart attacks and cancer. Because you are stressing your body out from the poisons you are self inflicting. Another thing I never understood is knowingly poisoning yourself while also knowing that tobacco companies add nasty chemicals to keep you addicted so that they cant profit off of you.

 

I think you're right. I'm a smoker but I'm not going to tell anyone smoking is good for them, it's not. There's a lot of hysteria associated with smoking too though. The problem I see is some people do multiple things which are bad for them. Smoking is bad for you but smoking, being overweight, drinking sugary drinks and not exercising is a killer. I think we focus too much on one thing, smoking, and not on the rest of it.

 

Yep you are right, but most people with bad habits usually have more than one. Not always but usually. Secondly good grief I was behind a smoker yesterday at a conv store and she bought a pak and the guy says 10 dollars and change! Do smokers really pay that daily? Or did I hear wrong? This is MA but are guys paying that elsewhere? So say two paks a day thats 560 bucks a month!?

 

In Michigan the cap seems to be about $7.25 per pack.

 

No mate, it's hypochondria. A clinical condition.

 

What is?

 

The reason you are scared of someone smoking in the car in front of you.
It's not a medical problem you are experiencing, it's a clinical one.