'Australia Is Stubbing Out Smoking' (bbc.com)

Australia was the first country in the world to introduce mandatory plain packaging for tobacco products. Now it is taking another strong stand, but will other countries follow suit? From an article on BBC, shared by an anonymous reader: It's not easy being a smoker in Australia. The smoking bans started inside -- in workplaces, bars and restaurants -- and moved out. "Now, smoking is prohibited within 10m (33ft) of a playground, within 4m (13ft) of the entrance to a public building, at rail platforms, taxi ranks and bus stops," said Mark Driver, Sydney's Park and Recreation Planner. Those are the rules in New South Wales, but they are mirrored in many other states. Smoking is banned on many beaches, and most Australian states have now banned cigarettes in jail. All states ban smoking in vehicles if children are present. Fines vary, but in some places you may be fined AUD$2,000 (USD$1,515) if you smoke in the wrong place. And even if you don't, you'll be paying more than that each year by 2020, if you smoke just one AUD$40 pack a week. [...] These days, smoking is often taken up by people who are on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder, Simone Dennis, an associate professor at Australian National University, points out, "and that adds a burden of shame to people who might already be marginalised." If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes.

Comments

The point

[nospam007]

" If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes."

That's sort of the point, making it too expensive for the poor and uneducated.
That this works, has been demonstrated time and time again in multiple countries.

Re:The point

[stone_horse]

This is the correct approach. Banning it would seem silly and oppressive by many, taxing it for health reasons is perfectly fine.

Re:The point

[Oswald McWeany]

Whether it works or not the question is whether they [government] should be doing it.

I've never smoked in my life. I hate being around people who have smoked (I think they grow insensitive to the smell and don't realize how it permeates everything they own). That said, should government be in the business of making everyone stop smoking?

I'm fully behind keeping it out of kids hands. I'm fully behind banning smoking in the same room/car as children, and banning it in public spaces. I'm not behind taxing it so high that it ends up $30USD a box. If people really want to smoke- especially with the knowledge of how horribly bad it is for them, and they do it in their own space in their own time- why are we so dead set on stopping them. Almost seems like they're trying to criminalize smoking without actually having the balls to pass that legislation.

Stopping people smoking in private doesn't seem that different to trying to stop gay people having sex. WhyTF does it matter what someone does in their own home if no one is being harmed other than the smoker?

The world is moving at the moment to allow Marijuana to be legalized (I'm OK with that), but at the same time trying to kill smoking cigarettes. (both contain harmful compounds when smoked.

If there is no victim (other than a fully informed-consented individual doing it to him/herself) why try stopping it? Government shouldn't be in the business of private morals.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? We need to kill off a significant amount of the worker class if we don't want to switch to an oppressively expensive UBE. Our think tank went through every scenario and it's better for us to take the hit on short term healthcare costs as opposed to supporting the masses for an extended period.

Re:The point

[whoda]

The poor and uneducated people where I live still manage to drive around in their Mercedes and BMW's.
Expense doesn't seem to faze them.

Re: The point

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with "vice" taxes is that the state tends to become dependant upon that extra income. Once the actual vice is eliminated, through attrition or just getting fed up enough with the expense to target individuals, the state is suddenly over-budgetted (did I say that right?) and looking for ways to fill in the sudden deficit with taxes that burden everyone.

Re:The point

[amalcolm]

cost of health care? I don't know how it works in Aus but in the UK the costs of lung removals, limb amputations etc. etc fall on the NHS and is apparently a huge burden on the taxpayer

Re:The point

[Anonymous Meoward]

Yep, I think this is perfectly prudent.
Ideally, if you choose to smoke, you should be allowed to do so - but only after signing a waiver to any and all health care (publicly or privately funded) for smoking-related illnesses.
It's not a freedom issue - it's an "I'm tired of paying for the consequences of your horrible life decisions" issue.

Re:The point

[Oswald McWeany]

That's fine if you can justify- it costs the public tax payer "50p" per pack smoked. I don't think you can honestly say it costs the public tax payer £15 in health costs per pack smoked.

The extra tax in most countries has long surpassed the extra cost in healthcare. This is about punishing people who don't think the same way the people in charge do.

Re:The point

[OneHundredAndTen]

This is the correct approach. Banning it would seem silly and oppressive by many, taxing it for health reasons is perfectly fine.

One has to be careful though - things should be such that smoking is inconvenient, difficult and expensive, but not so inconvenient, difficult and expensive that an illegal cigarette industry will arise to satisfy the smoking needs. Can you remember what happened during the Prohibition?

Re:The point

[TheCastro1689]

This is where those fears of death judges or panels or whatever comes from. First the government starts with something like smoking, justification? Tax payers. Well then when do we stop with age, or other diseases? Coal miners? Fuck them for getting jobs? Smokers pay their taxes, more than a lot with the huge taxes on their smokes, so they should be entitled to all that medical care, seems like they're paying more than their fair share in with those crazy tax amounts.

Re:The point

[ChrisMaple]

There is no such thing as a human action of which it can be properly said "Private morals have nothing to do with it."

Re:The point

[91degrees]

But surely it doesn't cost anything like the amount of tax income from cigarettes (approx £10 billion plus VAT). That's what? Around 9% of the NHS budget.

Re:The point

[omfglearntoplay]

You are right. It is totally fine for someone to kill themself in their own home... if nobody lives there with them... and if they never come near me in public and smell like smokey shit. And if they don't throw their fucking butts on the ground in my neighborhood, out the car window to and from work... etc.

So in reality, the government has to be the one to step in and kill smoking b/c there is not one smoker that doesn't step all over every other person's rights. And they don't care about their own body, why would they care about anybody else?

Re:The point

[AmiMoJo]

The tax covers the otherwise externalized costs. Healthcare, cleaning, enforcement etc.

You could argue that any taxation is an attempt to discourage behaviour, but that's clearly not right. Income tax isn't designed to discourage employment.

Re:The point

[smooth wombat]

Because you would voluntarily hand over your money to repave the roads or build bridges, right? All the things you take for granted which are delivered by the government, you would gladly open your wallet so they could be done, right?

Re:The point

[ChrisMaple]

You are proposing that people be punished, not in proportion to the harm that they do, but in proportion to how wealthy they are. Let's see how this might work in practice.

Case 1: Homeless bum steals an axe and uses it to smash your front door to splinters. He has no income and no money, so he pays no fine.

Case 2: Bill Gates leaves a thumbprint on your window, which makes your life worse by infinitesimally blurring the view through that window. Fine: $1 million, because he's rich.

See a problem here?

Re:The point

[alex67500]

I'd like to see how much the Australian government collects in taxes on cigarettes versus smoke-related healthcare costs.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

I hate being around people who have smoked (I think they grow insensitive to the smell and don't realize how it permeates everything they own).

This isn't true. It's true for current smokers, but it's not true, in my experience, for people who are former smokers. (You said, "people who have smoked", which implies former smokers.) Instead, IME, the former smokers are frequently the most ardently anti-smoking people you'll ever meet, and seem especially sensitive to the smell of cigarette smoke, and complain about it the most.

The world is moving at the moment to allow Marijuana to be legalized

No, it's not. The US was, but now that Trump is elected and Sessions is about to be appointed AG, that's going to come to a quick halt as the Federal government starts throwing pot smokers in prison for decades for simple possession. Jeff Sessions is a huge anti-marijuana crusader. Luckily I'm not a user of that, but I know people who are, and who are also big Trump fans, and it's really funny (and sad at the same time) to see them justify their fandom of Trump/Sessions (and specifically Sessions) and try to handwave away Sessions' anti-pot position, all because they hate Hispanics and Muslims so much.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

Do you have some sort of evidence that smoking does *not* cause massive long-term health problems like emphysema and lung cancer?

If not, then yes, he *does* know what's best for people.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

The problem with your argument here is that, in reality, "the rich" don't smoke remotely as much as the poor. The rich seem to be too smart for that. I'm sure there's a few exceptions here and there, but there's a reason you don't see cigarettes and chewing tobacco sold in fancy boutique shops on Rodeo Drive and other such places.

Re:The point

[butchersong]

Would smoking be the only life decision you would choose to deny health care for? This reminds me of the department of education. The only real authority it has over the states the the threat of denying additional funding. If the government can deny you health care (life essentially) if you don't live the way it approves of, is there any facet of your life outside of the government's authority?

Re:The point

[v1]

Chemical addiction stinks. If you're truly hooked, "whether or not you can afford it" isn't really a question that's up for debate. It's like air, you have a hunger for it that can't be ignored, and causes a person great distress when denied. Other "less important" things like utilities and clothing and food will have to step aside to feed the chemical dependence.

Though I'm not arguing against it, raising the price while still making it legal in ever-shrinking situations is probably the most effective way to wean people off their drugs.

The money raised can also be plowed back into the social services that are there to help provide support for the addicts. In the end, the tobacco companies will see their "profit from the misery of the public" shrink into nothingness over time. We can't get there fast enough.

Re:The point

[Oswald McWeany]

Sorry, I meant to imply anyone who had smoked recently but is indeed past tense. When someone has smoked recently, they frequently don't realize the smell hangs around for hours.

Re:The point

[mrbester]

This. There's lots of handwringing rhetoric from politicians about the cost for treatment for conditions related to smoking but they always conveniently forget to mention that the income from taxation is at least 10 times that amount. The amount that alcohol related conditions costs compared to the tax income is a lot closer, yet they never bang on about that. Instead it is extremely rare that spirits go up in price whenever a Budget is announced so over time they become cheaper but a pack of fags gets at least quadruple the rate of inflation (CPI or RPI, whichever is greater) added on each time.

Re:The point

[butchersong]

I have evidence that sitting is possibly more or at least dangerous http://www.livescience.com/530...
If you are chasing some sort of optimized outcome for each individual you need to start addressing daily habits like sitting and diet before focusing on smoking. If you are willing to go that far, I'm not sure we have even the illusion of individual liberty or self determination left.

Re:The point

[The Grim Reefer]

Can you remember what happened during the Prohibition?

Are you talking about alcohol? Or the current prohibition on recreational drugs? Just look at what it has done for US prisons and the cartels in Mexico and central and south america.

Re:The point

[Opportunist]

If you make an addictive drug expensive, take a wild guess what a poor person (who also happen to be the ones with low education, low impulse control and poor judgement skills) will do.

Hint: It's not going on withdrawal.

If you need further hints, take a look at areas with poor people who're hooked on expensive drugs.
Another hint: I'd use binoculars to take that look. Going there isn't advisable.

Re:The point

[geekmux]

" If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes."

That's sort of the point, making it too expensive for the poor and uneducated. That this works, has been demonstrated time and time again in multiple countries.

Anyone with an IQ above a warthog understands that cigarettes are not good for you in ANY way, so one can hardly point to education as a factor here. Society holds no illusions regarding this, unlike half a century ago when you would find the family doctor pimping his favorite brand of cancer sticks to your kids.

And given the manufactured addiction embedded within cigarettes (that probably should be illegal), we should be careful with this make-it-expensive approach. When it is only the social elite who smoke due to the cost, that same group will be looking to use their influence to manipulate anti-smoking laws to reverse them in their favor. The last thing we need is Big Tobacco lobbyist reinforcements.

Re:The point

[Penguinisto]

Originally, he was talking about Prohibition, but yeah, same-same.

Tax it high enough, and smuggling/home-growing/stolen black-market tobacco becomes profitable and enticing to folks who have enough creativity and the means to do it.

Believe it or not, this was a big thing in the 1970s-1990s in New York state, where smokes would be smuggled in from Kentucky (or other places where they were cheap), then sold at a price far lower than the New York smokes - yet was still highly profitable for the smuggler to do it.

Now Australia is rather isolated, but a large fishing boat or two and a determined bunch of black marketeers could still make out fairly well...

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

You're missing something with sitting: 1) people can't stand up all day long (that also leads to health problems), and 2) people need to sit down to do many jobs which are necessary for society. The only problem with sitting is when people do it too much, and never get any other exercise. Well, no shit sherlock. Otherwise, there's plenty of people who spend a decent amount of time sitting, and are living longer than people ever did in history.

By contrast, what argument do you have in support of smoking? What benefit does it provide? There is none. It's entirely unnecessary and bad. There is simply no good reason to do it at all.

As for diet, there's plenty we can be doing there too, but a lot is like sitting: too much of some foods is bad for you, but in certain amounts isn't a problem (or possibly even healthy, as some contend with red wine). But we already do have government action to make foods a little healthier, such as the trans fat ban. Trans fat is undeniably bad; there's simply no good reason to use it at all, and it causes real health problems, so banning it was the right move. Food doesn't need it for taste, it was only used so food companies could save money and increase profits.

Re:The point

[SirSlud]

Well, if you don't think can honestly say, than it must be right. (Just joking - chances are you actually have no idea what the health care costs are.)

Re:The point

[Misagon]

Oh, that is an age-old argument that has been debunked time and time again.
The extra cost of health care for smoking-related diseases eclipse the tax incomes many times over. That goes for the UK, Germany and many other countries in Europe.

Also, it can be somewhat difficult to know what exactly caused some health problem. Yes, smoking increases the risk of suffering from cancer, but lay people don't often know about the link between smoking and cardiovascular disease - which is even more significant.

Re:The point

[gnick]

things should be such that smoking is inconvenient, difficult and expensive

Why? Many health care plans already factor in smoking to their rates based on a subscriber's tobacco use. If an adult chooses to spark up a cigarette in some location where he's not inflicting harm on others, what's the big problem?

Re:The point

[lhowaf]

Why not just making selling tobacco illegal? If you want to smoke, fine, grow your own. Remove the profit motive from the equation.

Re:The point

[tsqr]

Back here in the real world, lung transplants are generally not advised for treatment of lung cancer, so your logic is somewhat flawed.

Re:The point

[bondsbw]

It's a bit easier when it's a national tax. National borders are set up to more effectively enforce tariffs and smuggling laws, while there is little enforcement of use taxes between states and pretty much nothing that can be done about such a black market.

Re:The point

[johanw]

Making it that expensive means they are creating a huge black market. That's what always happens when the difference between production price and sales price is artificially made huge.

Even in Europe a lot of drug criminals are now in illegal tobacco products (i.e. otherwise legal products for which no taxes were paid). Chance of getting busted is much lower, the penalties are also much lower and the profit is still huge.

Re:The point

[torqer]

Exactly this happened in Canada.

As prices rose in the mid 00s, suddenly there was a booming market for cigarette runners into the US and an abundance of indian/native american cigarettes selling 200 cigarettes in a bag for $10... instead of $70 per carton.

If there is a demand, there will be a supply.

Re: The point

[BarbaraHudson]

Most civilized countries have a public health care system. Smokers who quit will cost less to the public health care system, so that helps with the loss of revenue from taxing smokers. Also, since they'll live longer they can work longer and consume longer - and sales taxes and other consumer levies are must-haves for most tax systems.

Re:The point

[totallyarb]

in the UK the costs of lung removals, limb amputations etc. etc fall on the NHS

Total taxes collected in the UK annually on cigarettes: £12 billion
Total budget of the entire NHS: £120 billion

Unless you're going to tell me that you think that cigarettes on their own account for a full 10% of all healthcare-related costs, I think it's safe to say that the "burden on the taxpayer" argument doesn't stand up even on its own merit (setting aside the moral question of whether offering people free healthcare gives you the right to control their behaviour).

For what it's worth, the Department of Public Health at Oxford University estimated that burden at £5 billion (in 2009, so let's adjust for inflation and call it £6 billion). Sounds to me like smokers are contributing about twice as much as they're costing, right?

Re:The point

[Attila Dimedici]

Studies suggest that despite the additional healthcare expenses incurred by smokers during their lifetimes, the shorter life expectancy for smokers makes their lifetime healthcare expenses total to less than non-smokers.

Re: The point

[DewDude]

But try to tax sodas and people lose their minds.

Re:The point

[BarbaraHudson]

Back in the real world, it's because of the lack of donors. There are plenty of smokers who quit to get on the heart transplant list, get a transplant, and then, ingrateful fucktards that they are, light up again.

Re:The point

[ColdWetDog]

Might even be easier. One stamp to counterfeit.

One of the reasons that it was relatively easy to smuggle cigarettes is that the tax stamp was placed in country. At large warehouses where a couple of containers could be lost or damaged. No smuggler craft needed.

Running tax exempted drugs into a country is an old, old profession.

Re:The point

[AmiMoJo]

Forcing people to pay for the health care of other adults is wrong.

It's absolutely right and one of the best things about countries with social/subsidised healthcare. Shame on America for abandoning it.

Re:The point

[tripleevenfall]

You're forgetting that politicians are too addicted to tax dollars to help out the poor and foolish who are addicted to nicotine.

Re:The point

[BarbaraHudson]

Bullcrap. Illegal drugs are cheaper than pizza.

Re:The point

[thinkwaitfast]

Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.

Although smoking cessation is desirable from a public health perspective, its consequences with respect to health care costs are still debated. Smokers have more disease than nonsmokers, but nonsmokers live longer and can incur more health costs at advanced ages. We analyzed health care costs for smokers and nonsmokers and estimated the economic consequences of smoking cessation.

And no I don't smoke and didn't vote for trump standard disclaimer.

Re:The point

[thinkwaitfast]

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...

If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.

Re: The point

[dryeo]

Smokers who quit will cost less to the public health care system

And you know this how? Smokers usually die quicker, so don't burden the system as much. My Dad died from smoking, once he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, most of his health spending was on morphine with just a few days of hospital care. My Mom, who is a non-smoker, developed Alzheimers 15 years ago and just keeps hanging in there, in a condition that if she was a dog, would see us sentenced for animal abuse, eating up tons of healthcare dollars as she is completely incapable of caring for herself

Re:The point

[thinkwaitfast]

What about people who live a healthy lifestyle and spend 40 years in a nursing home?

Re:The point

[ColdWetDog]

Dunno, this is going to be interesting. Lots of his supporters want to smoke pot. The world is different now. It's not just some marginalized lower economic unfortunates that do drugs. It's everybody.

Worse, states now make money off of marijuana. Try to wean them off that....

Grab the popcorn. But leave the funny smelling green butter alone.

Re:The point

[tsqr]

How did we get from lungs to heart? If you're concerned about the shortage of donors, you may find comfort from learning that 40% of donor lungs come from donors who smoked.

Re:The point

[thegarbz]

Stopping people smoking in private doesn't seem that different to trying to stop gay people having sex.

One is an overly addictive habit of putting random poisons in the body with zero benefits and a long list of drawbacks that serve only to line the pockets of a few private corporations while creating a burden on society in health costs, lost value out of a person, and inefficiencies due to people having to get their fix.

The other is just a guy sticking their penis somewhere that some 3rd party that remains completely unaffected by the situation doesn't like.

Re:The point

[spire3661]

Pointing out that taxation is using force is NOT the same thing as saying 'i dont want to pay taxes'. Using force to shape society like this is incredibly distasteful to me. Im sorry all you moral busybodies thinks its ok to wield force to shape your neighbor's behavior like this.

Re:The point

[johanw]

Well, a smoker's life is on average shorter than that of non-smokers, so they die off before they get REALLY expensive because they get Alzheimer or Parkinson and need continuous treatment during the time their healthy bodies keep functioning.

Re:The point

[dryeo]

Actually the taxes are worse in Somalia. Upon arrival you'll be grabbed by a local warlord and be informed that you better come up with X dollars (usually a few thousand, they're not too unreasonable) if you want to live, here's a phone. And they will kill you if you don't find some way to raise that money.

Re:The point

[johanw]

I have to pay for the pensions of all those healthy people because they grow too old and need a lot of care before their healthy bodies finally give up in their late 90's.

Perhaps it is un-American, but if a group of humans wants to develop a society above the state of the farmer/hunter settlements of 6000 years agoo, where each member could survive on its own in nature, you need to pay for things that might happen to others. Others pay for what might happen to you. I prefer to pay more for my healthcare than I receive in return: it means you don't get sick too often.

Re:The point

[ColaMan]

Australia is unique in that it is an island continent. You can't just drive across the border to get some smokes.

You can fly in with your suitcase full of packs of cigarettes and have them taxed to hell and back in customs, or you can use a boat to go from the northern coast of Australia to PNG / Indonesia, which is not a short trip by any stretch.

Then you have to get your boatload of cigarettes that are boxed in bright, attractive packaging to your customers without arousing suspicion, because every pack of cigarettes in Australia is plain white with pictures of mouth cancer &etc on it by law. So you stuff about and put them all into little baggies, or whaterever, increasing your labour and distribution costs further.

So what will happen is that you'll have a few large black market operators that are regularly picked off by Customs, and black market cigarettes will be hard to come by, and hopefully people will just save themselves the hassle, quit smoking, and drink themselves to death instead with the money they've saved.

Re:The point

[dryeo]

Actually in civilized countries, you usually have the choice to not pay taxes by refusing the benefits that come with taxes. You can drop out in various ways from moving into the bush to being simply homeless and living out of the garbage. With uncivilized countries you'll be expected to pay up whether you have the means or not and if you don't, they'll simply kill you.

Re:The point

[lactose99]

I'll agree to this as soon as the masses have to sign a waiver promising no healthcare for weight-related difficulties while they continue their lack-of-activity-with-doughnuts spree.

Re:The point

[Alumoi]

Meh, I'd use a rifle scope, but you're right.

Re:The point

[lactose99]

What benefit does it provide? There is none. It's entirely unnecessary and bad.

Whether or not you agree with this particular method, stress relief certainly is necessary.

Re:The point

[johanw]

Case 1: fine him. He can't pay up, so he either goes to jail (much more expensive when you're not running a slave labour gang like the US prison system) or he robs someone to pay the fine. I would just sentence him to community service.

Case 2: nothing wrong with that. Of course, the next day my car is "officially" the property of some poor homeless guy who can't pay the fines when I speed with it.

Re:The point

[MightyMartian]

Lot's of thing are "force" if you choose to define things that way. The social contract is effectively a kind of force, peer pressure is a kind of force. But the use of the word "force" is intended to suggest violence, as in "it's an act of violence that I have to pay taxes", which is about as sensible as saying "it's an act of violence to demand that I drive the speed limit".

Re:The point

[fox171171]

And if they don't throw their fucking butts on the ground in my neighborhood, out the car window to and from work.

When I was growing up, nobody in our family smoked. Yet once a week on trash day, I always found myself cleaning up about 50 cigarette butts along the front of our property.

Re:The point

[MightyMartian]

But even the homeless will pay some taxes, as they do tend to have some cash transactions. Yes, mountain men might be able to pull it off, though the traditional mountain man still had some dealings with civilization, if for no other reason than it was unlikely he was going to be able to manufacture steel, guns or bullets. Even those crazy survivalists who imagine themselves as fortresses against society still have to buy supplies. There really are very few people at any point in genus Homo's history who could be considered to have been wholly independent, and the opportunities to do so have been shrinking for thousands of years. Not even the people who live in the deepest darkest Amazon somehow exist outside of some sort of cooperative society that places expectations on its members as to the contributions they will make. Those contributions aren't taxes in the sense that civilization requires, but they are certainly antecedents, and demonstrate that humans are social animals, and not just lone wolves (not even lone wolves are really that either, canines are another species that bond as strongly and work as cooperatively as humans).

Re:The point

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

Because Prohibition worked SO well.

Re: The point

[lgw]

Smokers who quit will cost less to the public health care system,

Thoroughly-debunked urban legend. People should be embarrassed repeating this on these days. Smoking-related deaths are average-cost ways to die.

lso, since they'll live longer they can work longer and consume longer - and sales taxes and other consumer levies are must-haves for most tax systems.

I can only hope you're being snarky here, but there are people who would sincerely argue that you don't have the right to die early, or to risk your life in any way, because that would deprive the state of needed tax revenue. Those people are assholes.

Re:The point

[lgw]

So you're agreeing that taxation is a form of force, then?

Also worth noting, "repaving the roads and building bridges" is less than 15% of what a typical government spends money on. Certainly in the US, our government is a pension plan with a military, that does "all the things you take for granted which are delivered by the government" as a very small side-business, budget-wise.

Re:The point

[spire3661]

Government, by definition is monopoly-on-violence. ALL government action is force. Its important to remember that. When you take $20 in taxes from someone in this manner, you have reduced their resources and power. That is measurable 'force' and cant be hand-waved away.

Re:The point

[nedlohs]

It's nice that you exist to tell everyone else what is and isn't right and wrong.

Whatever would we do without you?

Re: The point

[BarbaraHudson]

Here's the figures:

9.6 percent of Medicare spending, 15.2 percent of Medicaid spending and 32.8 percent of other government healthcare spending by sources such as the Veterans Affairs department, Tricare and the Indian Health Service, were attributable to smoking.

Of the $170 billion spent on smoking-related healthcare, more than 60 percent was paid by government sources, they wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The majority of the costs of health care for smokers are paid for by the public, not private insurance. And this doesn't take into account the lost revenue from taxes when they can't work or die early.

Re:The point

[nedlohs]

Since that suggestion isn't prohibition that doesn't seem relevant.

"manufacture, sale, or transportation" is just obviously broader than "sale".

Re:The point

[dryeo]

So true. We can expand it to any risky behaviour. Want to drive, that's risky, better sign a waiver. Work at an office job that involves sitting all day, that's risky, sign a waiver. Have sex, that's really risky, sign a waiver. And of course as others point out, there are a lot dietary decisions that end up costing healthcare dollars.
And the most risky, leading a healthy lifestyle, living to a ripe old age costs perhaps the most healthcare dollars, sign a waiver in case you live longer then the mean and cost extra.

Re:The point

[Streetlight]

I assume the taxes used to support Britain's NHS substitute for health insurance. For the US, I found the following about Health insurance:

"For 2012, the previous report, annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $15,745, up 4 percent from 2010, with workers on average paying $4,316 toward the cost of their coverage. A single or Individual employee's coverage cost $5,615, with the worker on average paying $951 out-of-pocket." (http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premiums.aspx)

This is for 2012, five years ago! For sure, costs haven't gone down.

You're going to pay for health care one way or the other. So, which system do you want - socialized medicine or that which the US has? The whole idea of insurance is to spread the risk. Some folks will never have cause to use much of the benefit because they are healthy, live long and suddenly die. Others will have incredible demands on the care system even if they have short lives.

One thing about the US system that opponents of government sponsored health care is that folks who don't pay anything for health insurance will still get health care. They will go to an emergency room or clinic for care and never pay for it. The care giver will recover their costs from those who do have insurance raising the cost of insurance. Hospitals, clinics and health care providers are not going to lose money else they would be out of business, even for non-profit establishments.

Re:The point

[nedlohs]

Australia has the ever so slight advantage of being an island in the middle of nowhere. Sure running cigarettes between the US and Canda/Mexico is easy. Running cigarettes between european countries is easy.

You need something other than a truck and someone willing to take the risk to do that into Australia though. They take their customs checks pretty seriously too since that island part means they have avoided quite a few pests and diseases that they'd prefer to keep out.

Re:The point

[number17]

And when reading the Discussion portion of their results:

This study shows that although per capita health care costs for smokers are higher than those of nonsmokers, a nonsmoking population would have higher health care costs than the current mixed population of smokers and nonsmokers. Yet given a short enough period of follow-up and a high enough discount rate, it would be economically attractive to eliminate smoking.

And and at the end of that discussion:

Since we as a society are clearly willing to spend money on added years of life and on healthier years, the method of choice in evaluating medical interventions is cost-effectiveness analysis, which yields costs per year of life gained. Decision makers then implement the interventions that yield the highest return in health for the budget.28 We have no doubt that an effective antismoking policy fits the bill.

Re:The point

[number17]

My reply to the same comment above.

And when reading the Discussion portion of their results:

This study shows that although per capita health care costs for smokers are higher than those of nonsmokers, a nonsmoking population would have higher health care costs than the current mixed population of smokers and nonsmokers. Yet given a short enough period of follow-up and a high enough discount rate, it would be economically attractive to eliminate smoking.

And and at the end of that discussion:

Since we as a society are clearly willing to spend money on added years of life and on healthier years, the method of choice in evaluating medical interventions is cost-effectiveness analysis, which yields costs per year of life gained. Decision makers then implement the interventions that yield the highest return in health for the budget.28 We have no doubt that an effective antismoking policy fits the bill.

Re: The point

[TrumpShaker]

Like state lottery proceeds where I am, that are supposed to go to education but instead go to ?????. Maybe they should go to fighting gambling addictions?

Re:The point

[alvinrod]

Something can be morally wrong, but still the pragmatic and correct choice when viewed from societies perspective. For example, few people would argue that using taxes to pay for police is bad idea, though there are some who make that argument. Personally, I would say that locking someone in a small cell for the rest of their life at age 16 is morally reprehensible, but from the government's point of view letting some criminals out into society is only likely to cause more total net harm, so the pragmatic choice is a lifetime sentence or execution. Neither of those a free, so naturally you have to force other people to pay taxes to build the prison and hire the guards.

Social or subsidized health care only works as long as it can add more total net value to a society than it takes from it. Like other social programs its great when it can more easily transition members of society who have fallen on hard times into productive members of society again. If it fails to do that (or worse yet enables or encourages individuals to remain unproductive), it becomes a burden on society and possibly not worth the cost to society.

No one wants to die and healthcare costs are essentially unlimited, but even a society that devotes all production not tied up in agriculture or other necessary services cannot produce enough healthcare to satisfy the needs of society. So it just becomes a matter of how a society is willing to spend. If you deem it a person's absolute right to have as much healthcare as they want, then it becomes everyone's obligation to pay for it, either through taxes or by requiring them to devote some of their labor towards providing that healthcare.

If you're going to be pragmatic and argue that having a required single-payer government monopsony on healthcare is a net positive, I think you also need to be pragmatic and willing and able to determine when its no longer reasonable to provide a person with as much healthcare as they want, as at a certain point any medical procedures are just prolonging someone's life so that they can consume more medical procedures without that person being able to contribute any reasonably amount of productivity back to society.

In the modern world it's all but impossible to escape from society. There's no frontier at present where an individual can go to be free of all laws save those of nature. If you can always argue that another person should be compelled to use their labor for the benefit of society at the expense of the individual, at some point you cross from just collecting taxes to what is essentially serfdom.

Re:The point

[dryeo]

There's quite a bit of evidence that smoking helps various mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Note that it is usually poor people that smoke and people are often poor due to mental illness.

Re:The point

[AthanasiusKircher]

If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.

THIS. There are literally dozens of economic analyses that have concluded the same thing. In fact, over 20 years ago, it was debated whether to bring this argument up in the Big Tobacco litigation (see, for example, this NY Times article from 1996). More recent analyses (such as here and here) agree. Philip Morris even commissioned its own study a while back to argue in the Czech Republic that it was actually saving society money because of decreased lifespans. But the study ended up just making cigarette companies look even more hated, so they backed off of it.

Bottom line is: "healthy" elderly people still cost society a LOT of money to keep alive -- in pensions and Social Security, in assisted living, and yes -- even in generic health care. If you include all of those things, there's NO QUESTION that smokers cost society less by dying earlier.

But even if you take health care costs on their own, it's pretty likely smokers cost less. "Healthy" older people end up living longer and needing hip replacements or treatment for minor cancers or hospitalization over a cold that turns into pneumonia (which doesn't happen as often with younger folks) or whatever -- that stuff adds up greatly over the years. Add an extra 5 or 10 years of "elder care" for non-smokers, and on average those "healthy" people will cost more than the additional costs from a smoker who dies early from a heart attack or whatever.

None of this is an argument in favor of smoking. And perhaps there's still some ethical argument to tax smoking more in order to promote "healthy" living or whatever, which perhaps some governments will make. But let's not be disingenuous about blaming smokers for overall societal cost, when they're mostly "taking one for the team" and giving up their Social Security or whatever for you.

Re: The point

[skam240]

"I can only hope you're being snarky here, but there are people who would sincerely argue that you don't have the right to die early, or to risk your life in any way, because that would deprive the state of needed tax revenue. Those people are assholes."

Sure, those people sound pretty bad but I hear that there are people that will actually just make up false naratives so they can be outraged about something or demonize a group.

Fortunatly that never happens on internet forums.

Re: The point

[cyber-vandal]

That's already happening in the UK.

Re: The point

[cyber-vandal]

What's your alternative system to pay for things that are important to society that won't be done by the private sector such as roads that anyone can use?

Re:The point

[AthanasiusKircher]

Your post is definitely insightful in terms of how smoking policy is determined, but it also doesn't address how many anti-smoking arguments can be disingenuous about attributing societal or health-care costs to smokers.

If the argument is "We need to tax smokers because it's in society's best interest for everyone to live longer," that's a reasonable way of presenting the argument. BUT many public policy statements say something instead like, "Look at how much smokers cost us! Here are some numbers about how much we spent on healthcare for smokers per year! [No comparison figures for healthy folks are generally offered.] Smokers cost more for each year they are on health insurance/a national health plan! They're costing us money, so we need to ask them to pay their fair share!"

That's simply an incomplete set of facts that is incredibly misleading. Smokers die earlier and save society (and health care) money overall. That's the reality. Admit that, and then come up with a policy argument that still reflects your goals. To do otherwise is to be disingenuous.

And no, I'm not a smoker. Never have been. Don't desire to be around them. But I hate bad argumentation.

Re:The point

[Kielistic]

Canadian here, Tonnes of people go to the native reserves to get cigarettes here because they are prohibitively expensive. Now the government gets no tax and the people get unregulated and less safe cigarettes. But hey, the tobacco companies report less sales so the system must be working.

Re:The point

[AmiMoJo]

The basis of your argument is flawed. If tax is taking time away, the stuff it pays for more than gives it back. In the case of healthcare, it's insurance that most people could never afford on their own. Insurance that covers existing conditions, for example.

More over, the value of things like infrastructure and an educated population are difficult to calculate but undoubtedly valuable.

Re:The point

[GameboyRMH]

Oh but that's not taxes, it's just crime, could happen anywhere, it's simply much, much worse in the ungoverned regions of Somalia. Because it's ungoverned. But there are no taxes!

Re: The point

[hey!]

I'm sorry to hear about your mom; same thing happened to my mom.

That said, quick death isn't the only kind of complication you can get from smoking. Some complications, like COPD, also require long term nursing care. Quick death of course is the financially best result; after that comes catching disease early. But the worst case may be borderline cases where heroic measures are taken in an attempt to save the patient's life. That's why 30% of healthcare expenditures are spent in the last year of peoples' lives.

And just because you don't smoke doesn't mean you won't have a swift and affordable death. Hopefully that comes after you've lived a long time in good health. My mother-in-law never smoked, but passed away at age 95 from lung cancer after a healthy life. From diagnosis to death at home took two months, and she was lucid until the last day when the morphine carried her away.

Re: The point

[spire3661]

This isnt a dichotomy. I dont like sin taxes, its really that simple. You have people in countries with socialized medicine who now think they have the right to decide other's lifestyle choices without ever addressing things like coal miners and other hazardous jobs.

Re:The point

[MightyMartian]

It's also important to remember that in the United States, the people who pass taxation legislation are elected. The American Colonies who revolted against Britain weren't against taxation, they were against taxation without representation. And the world goes around with taxes. There is no other way, and if you just let people decide when and how they'll pay, the system will collapse. That's why Greece is the mess it is in, because for years tax evasion was practically a national pasttime, with the Greek government's ability and will to catch evaders being very ineffective.

Being forced to pay taxes has the same constitutional basis as being forced not to speed or to defecate on sidewalks.

Re:The point

[dryeo]

True, though their is the balance with a homeless person who probably gets some government handouts. Do they take in more tax dollars then they give back?
Of course the ultimate is to simply kill the tax collector and spend the rest of your life in prison where the taxes you pay are really minimized, especially if you arrange to spend it in solitary. I think that most everyone would rather pay taxes then spend life in solitary.
It's still a better deal compared to what a local warlord in a society without government will give, arbitrary tax or death.

Re: The point

[cyber-vandal]

You do know that health insurance works like that too don't you?

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm tired of paying for the consequences of your horrible life decisions"

I felt the exact same way last time I was at the grocery store. I was stuck behind a woman who was haggling with the cashier over how her foodstamps work (not actually foodstamps, it's a card nowadays). While her 4 brats were running around alternately screaming and fucking with everything.

My taxes are evidently quite happy to pay for the food and housing of people who don't seem to care how birth control works. I don't see why they can't pay for the health impacts of people who don't understand how smoking works while we're at it.

Re:The point

[fox171171]

I hate being around people who have smoked (I think they grow insensitive to the smell and don't realize how it permeates everything they own).

I had a friend who never smoked, but his parents did, and his wife did. I grumbled a bit about the awful smell. He always got mad about it. Then he divorced, and lived in a smoke-free home for awhile. Then he told me he hated the smell of smoke and smoke on people's clothes, and said he couldn't believe he smelled like that all the time.

It's gross.

As a kid, I picked up a donut at a Tim Horton's, and when I got home with it, I couldn't believe how bad it smelled of smoke. I tossed it out without taking a single bite.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

I agree that lots of people, including his dumb supporters, smoke pot these days. But that doesn't mean that Sessions is going to care about that. Making money (and lots of it) off MJ is irrelevant to him; immigration (both legal and illegal) makes a lot of money too, but Sessions is an anti-immigration crusader too. Money isn't the factor here as it is with traditional pro-business Republicans.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great argument for eliminating government health care through taxation. If my choices damage you through higher taxes then the problem is the taxation - not my choices.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like smokers are contributing about twice as much as they're costing, right?

That leaves off other factors, including trash and fire damages.

But from your own source:

It had been thought that smoking cost the health service between £1.4 billion and £1.7 billion, but the new research pushes the figure up to £5.7bn, which is still thought to be an underestimate.

So you're off by more than a tenth in your representation, but even then, it's not fixed.

Sorry, but your argument isn't convincing.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialized health care gives government the right to tell people how to live their lives far more than ever before, as the parent noted.

"Gov can tell people not to smoke because gov pays for healthcare."

After smoking, then what?
Drinking?
Driving your vehicle manually, instead of using mass transit/Tesla?
Driving a motorcycle, ever?
Consuming too much sugar?

Re:The point

[hxnwix]

Socialized medical care makes it my business what you do to your health, and in that sense, is an un-American as it gets.

Take your "shame" and cram it up your ass.

Re:The point

[afgam28]

As you said, smokers stink, and they often don't realize that their smell impacts others. And their deaths are not private incidents - it causes grief and pain for their family and friends, and there are economic costs like medical expenses that are paid for by the public healthcare system. So is this really a case of "private morals"?

If governments legalize marijuana but don't tax it as heavily as Australia taxes cigarettes, then they're doing it wrong.

Re: The point

[dryeo]

Interesting, but seems American biased, a country with high healthcare costs and low tobacco taxes.
Down the page there are a few references to studies done with the NHS which show the opposite. Probably need a meta-study to compare the different studies and take in different health systems.

Re: The point

[dryeo]

Yes, it's a complex problem where it is really hard to say what the various costs are. BarbraHudson referenced one study that says one thing, down the page I saw other studies that say another thing.
One thing for sure is that at some point the increasing tobacco taxes will bring in more money then the healthcare costs of smoking.

Re:The point

[plague911]

Smokers on average have harder requiring more care for more years. It just starts significantly earlier.

Re:The point

[dryeo]

Depends on how you define taxes. Some define all taxes as theft, which is a crime, and others could define the local warlord as government needing to raise revenue. The point stands that going to Somalia is likely to cost, much as living in civilization costs.

Re:The point

[coastwalker]

I don't suppose the c*nts have banned alcohol though as it kills more people with cancer than anything else once you stop tobacco. Of course they also criminalize all the safe fantastic recreational drugs discovered since the invention of alcohol and tobacco. I suggest you ask your elected representative what the fuck they think they are doing?

Re:The point

[BlueStrat]

A very large proportion of many voluntary activities/behaviors that can affect health in the U.S. falls to Medicaid and Medicare, i.e. you and me.

FTFY

We need a government list of approved and non-approved activities, diets/foods, and behaviors (default unapproved until/unless reviewed & approved) legislated into law.

After all, if something negatively affects a person's health it puts a burden on everyone. We could put all the people unemployed due to automation, high minimum wages, and bad economies to work monitoring individuals for compliance.

What could possibly go wrong?

Or, maybe we could make health care costs a mostly individual responsibility for all but the poorest so that we don't have to try to control individual behaviors & activities and/or suffer when someone else acts irresponsibly.

Strat

Re: The point

[chentiangemalc]

There is already black market for cigarettes developing here in Australia...

Re:The point

[johanw]

No need to smuggle them in from the outside. Australia has huge uninhabited areas, just grow the tobacco somewhere just as they do with mariuana.

Re: The point

[gnick]

The only problem with "vice" taxes is that...

... the government has no business telling me which "vices" I should be allowed to indulge in.

Re:The point

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting the secondary effects of smoking. Things like the increased prevalence of asthma in kids whose parent(s) smoke, decreased birth weight and health for those whose mother smoked while pregnant, as well as other medical issues. Smoking doesn't only impact the smoker. Therefore the 10% may be reached when you include all medical issues related to tobacco use.

Re:The point

[labnet]

Australia has socialised health care, just like every other modern western country EXCEPT for the USA; which has always puzzled me.
Poor people don't have private insurance and tend to smoke more, thus the burden for their health care falls on the public system.

I don't know anyone in our social group who smokes. Of our workplace of 50, none of the engineers/programmers/management smoke. About 3 of our production staff smoke. Its actually terrific living in an almost smoke free country.!

Re: The point

[lgw]

Yes, smoking-related illness is expensive. So is every other non-sudden way to die.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

If that's indeed the case, there's other ways to deliver nicotine into the bloodstream than to burn it and force everyone around you to smell it. Chewing tobacco has been around for centuries. There's even nicotine "patches" which avoid most of the health problems associated with other delivery methods.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

Oh bullshit. Federal laws and enforcement always trump (no pun intended) state or local laws. States can pass whatever crazy laws they want, but when the Federal government and its laws overrule them, they're unenforceable. The only reason the states have been getting away with this stuff is because of weak Federal enforcement in the past decade. An AG and DEA run by anti-pot crusaders can change all that in a heartbeat. The states could try to tie it up in court by suing the Federal government over this idiotic Prohibition law, but that's not guaranteed to get far; after all, it's been illegal (and Schedule 1) for decades now, with no signs of this changing despite all the state actions. Of course, this can also turn into an ugly fight between the States and the fed, with state/local governments refusing to cooperate with the DEA, but that can only go so far too; the federal government can activate the National Guard if it really needs to if it seems like the states are in open rebellion.

Re:The point

[Bert64]

If you park in a handicapped bay you are depriving someone who is genuinely handicapped of the space they might actually need...

A physically healthy guy driving his million dollar supercar parks in the handicapped bay because he's too lazy to walk or feels he's too important to do so. He gets a fine which amounts to less than the cost of the gas he used driving there. He just pays it as a routine expense of driving and thinks nothing of it.

A healthy guy who works hard and can barely afford the old beat up car he drives to work in parks in a handicapped bay. He gets a fine which cuts into his budget for food that month because he has to spend all of his earnings every month.

The first guy won't think twice about parking in a handicapped bay, the fine is simply the cost of parking to him and its a trivial cost relative to what he's already spending on his car.
The second guy will actually be deterred from parking in handicapped bays and is unlikely to do so.

Punishments are supposed to deter someone, fixed fines don't deter those who are rich enough to trivially pay them.

Re:The point

[Darinbob]

As opposed to the second camp of politicians addicted to lobbying dollars that ask them to oppose any and all taxes. I have yet to see a significant third camp of politicians that aren't addicted to money, which means is is difficult to form a hypothesis about how they would behave.

Re: The point

[Darinbob]

This is why I think such supplemental taxes should be earmarked for a particular purpose only. Ie, vice taxes pay for prevention services or health costs, gasoline taxes pay for roads, and so forth. Sticking this money into a general fund is what causes problems.

Re:The point

[Vinegar Joe]

Can you remember what happened during the Prohibition?

The Kennedy family certainly did pretty well.

Re:The point

[Vinegar Joe]

But the use of the word "force" is intended to suggest violence, as in "it's an act of violence that I have to pay taxes", which is about as sensible as saying "it's an act of violence to demand that I drive the speed limit".

When 6 armed IRS agents surround your house at 8AM over a tax question from 10 years ago, I'd say there's a certain amount of force and violence involved. BTW, the tax question was over a $250 refund...........that they owed me.

Re:The point

[Vinegar Joe]

That is the American cost. No one else pays nearly that much. Healthcare procedures in the UK are typically between 1/6th and 1/2 the cost Americans pay.

Americans have many more lawyers and they all have to eat. Import 5,000 American lawyers and see what that does to your health costs and NHS.

Re: The point

[skirmish666]

Are you referring to this part?

In that analysis, 9.6 percent of Medicare spending, 15.2 percent of Medicaid spending and 32.8 percent of other government healthcare spending by sources such as the Veterans Affairs department, Tricare and the Indian Health Service, were attributable to smoking.

Re:The point

[Grishnakh]

"Substantial interest" is irrelevant when Federal law says it's illegal, the new Administration has people who hate it (particularly the guy about to be confirmed as AG), and there's zero evidence that Congress is going to change the law.

Re:The point

[Pfhorrest]

Make it absurdly inconvenient, difficult, and expensive to smoke in public places where other people are affected by it -- and then let smokers hide out in private places if they really really want to continue smoking, and don't bother trying to stop them there. Problem solved.

If the only thing prohibited during Prohibition was public drunkenness, there wouldn't have been a problem. (Well, except inasmuch as prohibiting something harmless like that is a problem in itself, but none of the subsequent problems of fueling a black market and crime and such).

Re:The point

[Pfhorrest]

A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned.

The warlords in Somalia are the government, and the money they demand you pay them (or else) is consequently a tax.

Taxes are just what we call theft by government. Good governments will put the money toward public goods, and there are practical arguments to be made about the necessity of those public goods and how else one might or might not fund those public goods without tax money, but the provision of public goods in return is not a requirement for the money collected to count as a tax. When a monarch demands money from his peasants so that he can continue paying his knights to defend his power, including the power to demand money from the peasants, that's still a tax even though the peasants don't get anything for it and didn't do anything to deserve it.

If you are guaranteed something in return and the loss of that something is the only consequence suffered for not paying, then it's not a tax, it's a fee, like you'd pay any private merchant. If you can avoid having to pay it by avoiding certain behaviors designated 'bad', then it's not a tax, it's a fine. If you have to pay it, no matter what you do, no matter what you want in return, no matter what, period, or else, then it's a tax. Or if someone besides a government is demanding it, just plain theft.

Re:The point

[Pfhorrest]

What makes an imperative into a law is the threat of force behind it. Actual literal physical violent force. A law saying "do this" really means "do this or else pay us money or else pay us more money or else go sit in this jail cell or else we'll drag you into that jail cell ourselves or else, if somehow we can't manage to do that, we'll shoot you." Without the last bits there, it's just a suggestion. If you can not do something you've been told to do, and all that will happen in response is they tell you to do something else or in addition, but you can choose to continue ignoring those commands indefinitely and never suffer consequences for it, then it's not really a law.

I sometimes think there should be two sets of law books to placate the people who fail to think that through. One of them is a body of unenforced law, which is basically a list of things that people demanded that politicians publicly denounce as bad things you shouldn't do, but not things worth stopping at the point of a gun. The second is the actual law in the normal sense, backed by violence like real laws are, which ought to be much smaller, limited to the set of things it's really worth backing up with violence, which is basically only prohibitions on violence itself.

Re:The point

[Pfhorrest]

I'm curious about the story behind that. Were the garbage men smoking? (Seems like too many butts for a few guys on one smoke break). Or were you picking up garbage before the garbage men came, and the butts were from... neighbors? Strangers? Who always stood around the front of your property smoking? Or pedestrians walking by? (Did neighboring properties have as many butts along their edges?)

Re: The point

[dryeo]

Yes, if you follow the referenced link, it's an American study. Their numbers are probably fine (9% of healthcare spending basically) but it leaves open the question whether tobacco taxes cover the public cost of tobacco related diseases and ignores the fact that other countries have higher taxes on tobacco.

Re:The point

[iggymanz]

this creates a lucrative black market.

this has been proven time and again.

you don't know how your world works

Re:The point

[iggymanz]

guess again: http://www.news.com.au/finance...

you people that try to control others with taxes are hilarious. also wrong.

Re: The point

[james_gnz]

I can only hope you're being snarky here, but there are people who would sincerely argue that you don't have the right to die early, or to risk your life in any way, because that would deprive the state of needed tax revenue. Those people are assholes.

The intention of paying tax is to contribute to the common good, that we all benefit from. If people decide to do something that means they will contribute less (without proportionately taking less), then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to make up the difference. The alternative is that everyone else carries them.

Now, don't get me wrong, if due to misfortune, or inability, someone contributes less, then I'd like the state to carry them. However, if it's a choice, then I'd like them to pay for it themselves. "Chooser pays", I guess.

Re: The point

[james_gnz]

Part of the drawback of a public health care system is that you now have to help pay for the stupid decisions which other people make. But this then gets used an excuse to be able to Dictate to other people what they do with their bodies.

How about if commercial sale is taxed, but individuals can grow plants for personal use?

Re:The point

[james_gnz]

We need a government list of approved and non-approved activities, diets/foods, and behaviors (default unapproved until/unless reviewed & approved) legislated into law.

I wouldn't have a problem with a tax on the sale of foods containing high levels of sugar or fat, or participation in hazardous extreme sports, or whatever, so long as it only applied to commercial activities, targeted things that were known to increase health-care costs, and was actually workable. That said, perhaps none of these things would be workable, but I think tax on tobacco is.

Re:The point

[Dashiva Dan]

What will happen? People addicted to nicotiene who can't afford it will cut costs on other things so they can: First any luxuries, then social outings, then children. All around them suffer. Perhaps an approach might be investigating a way to address the addiction, etc, rather than just saying "That chemical you're addicted to is bad for you, and while you can't function without it, we'll jack the prices up to ridiculous amounts, rather than work on the problem. This does help prevent as many new smokers from starting, but isn't 100% there either, and it ensures all those who do smoke are suffering twice as much, and their families also. I vape now, have been for about a decade. Can't get off the nicotiene, but I can avoid 99% of the health and lifestyle issues. How about focusing on medicine and technology to solve the problem rather than just taxing it harder and harder.

Re:The point

[gangien]

> Because you would voluntarily hand over your money to repave the roads or build bridges, right?

(Going to ignore the idea that the government must build the roads) But yeah, why wouldn't i? I don't have a problem paying for food or drink. Or my entertainment. Or my car. Not sure why you think roads would be different. In fact, I'm rather fond of tolling(some privacy concerns though). I travel on a major freeway twice a day. Why shoulnd't I pay more than someone who uses that freeway once a month?

> All the things you take for granted which are delivered by the government

Most all the things i REALLY take for granted are provided by capitalism.

Driving is the most dangerous thing we do in our daily lives. Also probably biggest direct interaction with government laws and infrastructure. It's not a coincidence.

Re: The point

[Dashiva Dan]

We're talking about Australia here. Having lived in both the USA and Australia for over a decade each, let me assure you, the healthcare systems and government approaches are nothing at all alike. Citing statistics from the US health care system has zero relevance here.

Re: The point

[Dashiva Dan]

Thoroughly-debunked urban legend? Then why zero attribution or links to any debunking at all? Cause unless you provide that, you're simply having an unsupported opinion, which we'll all ignore. Saying something doesn't make it so, 'specially on the interwebs. (Also, please don't reply to this with american data - we're discussing australia here)

Re:The point

[kayoshiii]

Australian here.
1) Most of the "uninhabbited" parts of Australia are not particularly conducive to most kinds of agriculture..
2) The police here take growing tobbacco as a much more seriously than growing weed.

Re:The point

[ColaMan]

Well, we could also just outright ban them, but that would make cigarette companies sad.

Re: The point

[shilly]

I agree that the arguments for preventing smoking ought not to be primarily economic; it's about adding "years to life, and life to years", to use a phrase that any British health policy folks will find nostalgic. I also agree that looking only at the costs of managing ill-health due to smoking is an incomplete analysis. But any comprehensive analysis needs to go beyond looking at the direct care costs of a smoking vs non-smoking cohort. It's also important to do contextual analysis (e.g. "What would be happening to smoking rates if we didn't intervene, and what would that mean for overall costs of care?" and it's also important to account for non-care costs, indirect costs, intangible costs, and opportunity costs and upsides of both intervention and non-intervention (e.g. "What will people do with the extra years of life, and what economic value will that generate?")

Re:The point

[Gussington]

One has to be careful though - things should be such that smoking is inconvenient, difficult and expensive, but not so inconvenient, difficult and expensive that an illegal cigarette industry will arise to satisfy the smoking needs.

Maybe, but Australia has reasonably tight borders and effective law enforcement. And when Cocaine is $350/gram, why would anyone bother with $1/gram for cigarettes?

Can you remember what happened during the Prohibition?

Yes but you can't just say banning things doesn't work because Prohibition. Banning some things works, eg we ban elephants as pets and no-one has those. There is no underground pet elephant operation underway because of the strict elephant owning regulations.
Prohibition of essential times has shown to fail, but alcohol is a lot closer to essential for a lot more people than cigarettes are. I don't know many people under 18 that don't drink, and know none that want to give up. Whereas the few people I know who smoke, wish they didn't, and all want to quit.

Re:The point

[Gussington]

Now Australia is rather isolated, but a large fishing boat or two and a determined bunch of black marketeers could still make out fairly well...

Except Australia has very good maritime border control, and a fishing boat full of large boxes might stand out a bit at the wharf.
Also a few boxes of cigarettes wouldn't even pay your fuel costs, and the risk of going to jail for a few thousand dollars isn't worth the effort when you can pull the exact same operation with Cocaine and make millions instead.

Re:The point

[Gussington]

you people that try to control others with taxes are hilarious. also wrong.

By "you people" you mean all of us? Tax is an effective control as demonstrated by all the developed nations that use taxes to create a higher standard of living. Just because a minority of people break the rules is hardly a case for not having rules in the first place. The only thing hilarious about that is your poor ability to apply logic...

Re:The point

[Gussington]

For what it's worth, the Department of Public Health at Oxford University estimated that burden at £5 billion (in 2009, so let's adjust for inflation and call it £6 billion). Sounds to me like smokers are contributing about twice as much as they're costing, right?

I can't remember the stats, but I had this argument once too. Here in Australia the tax generated was more then twice the cost of all the medical costs. So you're right, Smokers are a net gain for the rest of us.

Re:The point

[totallyarb]

If tax is taking time away, the stuff it pays for more than gives it back.

Read my post again. This is one of the possible second-order effects that I mention! But you seem to be treating it as axiomatic, and it's very much not. There's no such thing as a free lunch - everything has both costs and benefits; and while you can certainly argue that the costs might outweigh the benefits, you can't just assume that.

Insurance that covers existing conditions, for example.

I'm afraid that that is a contradiction in terms. Insurance that covers pre-existing conditions is not insurance, it's just paying for the treatment of the condition. The whole point of insurance is that it's about pooling risk - if in any given year there is a 1% chance that my house will burn down, and I know I couldn't afford to rebuild it if it did, I (or more likely, an insurance agent) find 99 other people in the same position and we each put 1% of the value of our houses into a common pot each year, and that money is used to rebuild whomever's home happens to burn down. That, at its essence, is what insurance IS. But if my house is already on fire, the probability of me needing to claim the money from the pot is 100% - so my contribution TO the pot must be the full rebuild cost of my home, or what I'm doing is not buying insurance, it's taking other people's money.

Re:The point

[AmiMoJo]

Some people a born sick. In places without social healthcare, people often can't get the cover they need before they reach a certain level of income. The idea that you must take out insurance before you get ill just means that people with certain conditions won't get treatment unless they are rich. It's not a viable system for healthcare, as the US proves.

Re:The point

[totallyarb]

Some people a born sick. In places without social healthcare, people often can't get the cover they need before they reach a certain level of income.

Yes, and as I've said, it is perfectly legitimate to make a utilitarian argument that taking money away from some people in order to spend it on other people's healthcare is morally permissible. But a) It is dishonest to pretend this is "insurance", and b) It is dishonest to pretend that when you take money away from one man in order to pay for the health care of another man, you are not doing harm to that first man. Acknowledge that you are. Argue that the good you're doing for the second man outweighs the harm you're doing to the first, sure, but don't just pretend you're not doing any harm.

Hell, you can even argue that, in some roundabout way, paying for the healthcare of the second man ends up benefiting the first man by more than the cost of what you've taken. I think that's a tough sell, and even if you could prove it in financial terms it still wouldn't necessarily solve the moral problem (if I break into your house, steal all your furniture and leave behind other stuff which I think is worth as much or more, am I not committing a crime?), but I'm perfectly willing to listen to your arguments. But my point is: You need to actually MAKE those arguments. You can't just assert that free healthcare is an "absolute" moral right.

Re:The point

[Oswald McWeany]

Back when smoking was more popular in South Carolina every stop sign and traffic light had butts littered all around them where drivers had stopped and flicked them out. It was really quite disgusting.

Re:The point

[stealth_finger]

This is the correct approach. Banning it would seem silly and oppressive by many, taxing it for health reasons is perfectly fine.

Let's see them apply the same approach to alcohol, which is responsible for more deaths than tobacco.

Re:The point

[AmiMoJo]

Well, okay, you can make a reasonable argument over calling it insurance. That word has various meaning though, for example in the UK we have National Insurance that covers everyone for healthcare, even if they have not contributed yet or didn't contribute very much. The deal is that you are always covered, and in exchange if you work you must pay in.

But yes, from a certain moral perspective I can see your point. For my argument, I'll just say that in the EU, for example, basic healthcare access is a human right because we decided that we have a moral obligation towards other human beings to provide it, to alleviate suffering and give everyone the freedom to be happy and fulfilled. For more detail you can look at European notions of freedom and human rights, but they are big topics that I don't have time to go into.

Re:The point

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The cheapest spirits are $40-$50 per liter, contrast with the U.S. where basic rotgut plastic-jug vodka is generally under $5/liter...

Really? That sounds rather excessively taxed.

I live in "over-taxed" Denmark, and I can get a perfectly drinkable bottle of vodka for AU$12 (700ml), of which AU$7.50 is tax. But as the tax is based on the ABV, not the sale price, it's completely negligible on more expensive, higher quality spirits. An AU$200 bottle of whisky at the same 40% ABV is still only taxed AU$7.50.

I guess it hits a bit harder for people with low incomes, but since the tax is so low in absolute terms, it's not much of an impact.

Re:The point

[KozmoStevnNaut]

A country-wide ban of alcohol was tried in the US, in the 1920s. It did not work out.

You're not going to get your favorite drugs legalized by demonizing other drugs. It doesn't work like that.

Re:The point

[KozmoStevnNaut]

You can function perfectly fine without nicotine, no matter how addicted you are. Going cold turkey is going to suck for a while, but it won't kill you, and you'll be fine after a week or two.

Re: The point

[donak]

Here in Australia it's called "chop-chop" and a few years ago a van full was stopped on a highway just west of my home town. The driver got 2 years to consider the folly of driving a van full of around a tonne of black market tobacco. But ... it was reported at the time that actually spotting one of these vans was difficult.

Australia is a land mass roughly the size of the continental U.S.A. but with a population less than a tenth of U.S.A. Patrolling our borders is done constantly, but there's a hell of a lot of coastline to be covered.

There are also a lot of tobacco farmers way up north who have been put out of business, but know how to grow tobacco really well. The more costly you make the legitimate product, the more tempting a little black market trading becomes.

Re:The point

[iggymanz]

please tell me what percent of my U.S. federal taxes create a higher standard of living, I'm curious. I'm also thinking you are an idealist and naive

Re:The point

[iggymanz]

the black market companies and bootleggers would be so happy. Instead of 15% share in Australia they'd have 100% market share. I can't believe the ignorant twats here saying taxation and bans are effective way to control people's behavior

Re: The point

[LinuxLuver]

Exactly. This attempt to portray taxes and restrictions on smoking as an attack on the poor is just the latest propaganda from the cancer-stick industry. If they don't want to be poor and stigmatised, STOP BLOODY SMOKING!

Re: The point

[LinuxLuver]

Universal basic income can be easily funded by printing money. But don't print too much money. That's why the word "basic" is there.

Re:The point

[CrimsonAvenger]

And your point is? If I can load ten tons of cigs on a ship, land it pretty much anywhere along thousands of km of coastline, and sell the cargo for more than the ship cost, I'll make out like a, if you'll pardon the expression, bandit doing so....

Re:The point

[minstrelmike]

Most of the laws against _smoking_ are for the folks who don't use tobacco. Waiters, co-workers, kids on playgrounds, shoppers entering stores. Granted, the high cost of cigarettes is aimed directly at smokers, but not the laws that regulate smoking in public around other people. Non-smokers have rights too.

Re:The point

[syntotic]

You do not believe but I can tell if someone smokes or not: non smokers look gone and distant and ghostly, smokers all look solid and very much in this World. now I am going OUT to take a smoke while my coffee lags in this cafeteria... when it is so easy to promote the air conditioning industry instead and require air extractors in coffee shop places...

Re:The point

[david_thornley]

Or, maybe we could make health care costs a mostly individual responsibility for all but the poorest so that we don't have to try to control individual behaviors & activities and/or suffer when someone else acts irresponsibly.

That evidently doesn't work. The rising costs of health care pretty well forced insurance companies to intervene, who could only make money with reasonable premiums by selling group coverage, etc. etc. etc. It's really easy for someone in the middle class to be bankrupted by health care costs, if they don't have insurance.

The only health care systems that work reasonably well are universal ones.

Re: The point

[david_thornley]

The free market simply doesn't account for externalities, which have to be accounted for somehow for a reasonable economy. A tax on a substance whose normal consumption causes external costs can look identical to a sin tax.

Re: The point

[BeaverCleaver]

[citation needed]

Re:The point

[david_thornley]

What bothers me about excluding people who do certain risky things from healthcare: First they came for the illegal drug users, then they came for the smokers,...,then they came for the somewhat overweight who don't exercise nearly enough, and was left to speak up for me? I don't really care if my taxes go up slightly to pay for the health of people who do stupid things, because a lot of my taxes already go for people who do stupid things (like invade Iraq or drive drunk).

Re:The point

[doccus]

Yeah, but.. they ARE banning it just about everywhere. They've already had these laws here in BC for years.. Pubs and taverns cried foul, but their business has only dropped 40%, and they eventually found loopholes such as smoking outside in a patio, away from any door, which keep getting shut down, the ashtrays eventually returned to the doorways when it was found that the streets were suddenly littered with butts. The crack industry is now booming as it is the only employment left, because the monthly income's support on disability is almost less than a month's pack a day , although most people on disability harvest butts.
See? There's always a way, where there's a will....

Re:The point

[lsatenstein]

" If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes."

That's sort of the point, making it too expensive for the poor and uneducated.
That this works, has been demonstrated time and time again in multiple countries.

Experience in Canada (which parallel's Australia in this health issue), is that it is the poorly educated. Most youngsters do not smoke. The smokers are the old generation. Regarding smoking, we just had the harmful smoking week publicity. Here is what we are told "One of every two smokers will die from smoking, and the dealth wll be painful".
We cannot smoke in public, in restaurents and where kids are present. Restaurants with summer patios are also taboo for smokers. They may drink, but they cannot smoke. Drinking is not tobacco smoke that can float to the faces of others.

Re: The point

[bluegutang]

Apparently smokers do have higher medical costs per year than non-smokers (but lower costs over a lifetime because they die sooner). source source

I think the reason for this is that on average smoking causes more damage via heart disease and emphysema than via lung cancer.

Re:The point

[Baki]

There is no real difference.
Prohibition of Cannabis started with taxes, that became "prohibitively" high.
Do we really still believe in prohibition to "regulate" drugs?

The idea of "sin taxes" is wrong IMHO: It creates the wrong impression, what is not very very expensive cannot be too unhealthy.
However, most things, even drugs, are pretty harmless if taken in moderate amounts and if the user has some discipline.

Once the general wealth of the population rises, sin taxes stop working, and the pupulation, wrongly motivated by money alone, won't be able to control itself.
Instead, we should educate children and keep it out of their hands until they are adult. After that, we have to accept that people make their own decisions.

Re:The point

[Baki]

If anything, it is alcohol being accountable for a significant portion of total healthcare costs.
Do we see any exorbitant sin taxes on alcohol in australia?

Re:The point

[dddux]

Yeah, people will always find something, some bad habit, to enjoy. It is in our blood. If they don't get cigarettes, they'll drink more, smoke more marijuana, or even harder drugs. You can't take life away from people. They are already forced to live only a couple of hours per day, 8 hours of sleep, 12 hours of work. All they need is to get even more oppressed. Thanks government.

Re:The point

[Nunya666]

things should be such that smoking is inconvenient, difficult and expensive

Why? Many health care plans already factor in smoking to their rates based on a subscriber's tobacco use. If an adult chooses to spark up a cigarette in some location where he's not inflicting harm on others, what's the big problem?

Because many people who smoke don't have steady jobs that provide health care. Or they work 2 or 3 part-time jobs, which do not provide health care. Or they "live" on welfare, and their health care is "paid for" by tax payers.

Re:The point

[Dashiva Dan]

Holy crap! don't tell everyone, or you'll make addiction problems a thing of the past! Nobel prize is clearly in your future.

Re:The point

[Gussington]

please tell me what percent of my U.S. federal taxes create a higher standard of living, I'm curious.

All of it. You can choose to live in the jungle and pay no tax, or you can live in a society that has schools, roads, a functioning legal system, and army etc and see which is better. I assume by the fact you haven't chosen to move to the jungle that you prefer what you have now.

I'm also thinking you are an idealist and naive

Of course you do, because when you hear information that questions your beliefs you feel threatened. That is a natural reaction.

Re:The point

[Coren22]

In some very specific situations, but generally, no.

You have to be in a poorly ventilated room (or bar?) and exposed over the course of years for any noticeable effect.

Re:The point

[BarbaraHudson]

Have you considered kids with parents who smoke?

Re:The point

[Coren22]

That would fall under the specific circumstances I was describing. Now, please explain the second hand smoke risks of smoking outdoors? That is one of the things banned by Australia (and also in Maryland, where I live), but only in certain areas.

"Now, smoking is prohibited within 10m (33ft) of a playground, within 4m (13ft) of the entrance to a public building, at rail platforms, taxi ranks and bus stops,"

This is getting well beyond the health risks, this is getting into legislating behavior, which is wrong.

Re:Black market

[DontBeAMoran]

Is there enough African-Australians to sustain a cigarette market?

Obligatory South Park

[DontBeAMoran]

https://cdn.meme.am/cache/inst...

How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[butchersong]

How long will it take the government to extend this to diet and other lifestyles? Diet correlates more strongly than smoking to decreased lifespan. Do we have a nationally enforced vegan lifestyle? Since homosexual lifestyles for men result in larger health risks should we fine men for being gay? Selfishly, I would like to see this as a law here because I have loved ones that I would like to stop smoking but... slippery slope.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[TimothyHollins]

The things you bring up, while valid points, do not in any way impact other people (outside of emotional stuff). Cigarette smoke does not stay with the smoker, it moves around and gets caught in the lungs of those around the smoker too (which is why these laws talk about 10m from playgrounds and 4m from building entrances).

Banning cigarettes can be done without breaking any libertarian philosophies or irritating the ghost of Jefferson.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Oswald McWeany]

Many locations are trying to pass laws extending to diet and lifestyle. Some of them I approve of, some of them I don't.

I approve of ones that inform the consumer (show calorie content). I don't approve of ones that force the consumer to not have choice (New York banning drink size).

There is a right and a wrong way to handle this. The right way is to inform the consumer. This has been done pretty well most places regarding smoking. If you don't know smoking is bad and how bad it is... you're never going to know.

That said, if you know how bad smoking is and still do it- I might question your judgement, but I fully support your right to smoke (in private).

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[skids]

Probably not as long as it takes them to seriously tackle PM2.5 air pollution and indoor air quality, which might be never. If it's a law that lets the majority of people feel superior to a smaller group of fellow citizens, it'll be pretty popular, but if it affects corporate bottom lines, it'll never see the light of day.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[skids]

That problem is not exclusive to socialized health care; it applies to any such insurance, obviously. (Just like the fictitious "death panels" would have be equally scary were they composed of corporate bean counters instead of government bureaucrats.)

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Calydor]

Alright, then let's at least increase the price on alcohol tenfold because of drunk drivers, violent tendencies when people get drunk etc.

Wait. Didn't the US try banning alcohol before? Does anyone have a link to a study of what happened?

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[omnichad]

I don't approve of ones that force the consumer to not have choice (New York banning drink size).

That was one of the worst ideas, not that I live there.

If I'm being cheap somewhere, I'll buy a large drink and share with my wife. One large is less than two smalls. And it has the added effect that since it's being shared, I don't feel entitled to "free" refills either. Overall, that means forced smaller sizes would be worse for my health.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[skids]

I'm on the fence about drink size... portion size is a tacit endorsement of expected "normal behavior". It's a gray area, but even so legislation seems a bit heavy handed... which may still be justifiable anyway in some cases, for lack of any better mechanism to simulate shame among the pathologically shameless.

Anyway, you're mostly on my wavelength... remember it's the fact that tobacco companies concealed information from the consumer that got them in legal trouble, and better information should be the case across more industry IMO.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[quenda]

How long will it take the government to extend this to diet and other lifestyles?

We have had a high tax on alcoholic spirits since forever. This succeeds in getting people to drink beer and wine instead, which supposedly reduces harm.
More recently, a similar tax has been applied to "alcopops" - sugary pre-mixed drinks. But beer and wine? Not a chance.

Fat tax is a silly "thin end of the wedge" argument. But there has been pressure on fast-food businesses to offer healthier options at the same price.

Cigarette tax is the only one that has broad support. Even smokers want to quit. So no, will not be extended.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Oswald McWeany]

The problem is that when you follow an unhealthy lifestyle, society ultimately pays the price.

You make a valid point for people living in countries that actually have a public health care system instead of some backwards "rich people deserve better medical care" system. I agree with you- if something costs public health care extra money there might be a justification. Are we going to have a "sit on your bum all day" tax as well though for people who don't exercise?

Again though, make it relative. If government pays health care costs then, fine, add a 1% unhealthy-choice tax on pizza or ice-cream. The point should be about recouping costs though, not being punitive or trying to force some sort of morality. If you can justify a cost by empirically saying "eating this Ice Cream will cost the public 1cent more in health costs" - fine add a cent to the cost of that ice-cream.

Saying you can't have a big drink because it's unhealthy or adding 20% to the cost of a chocolate bar because it's unhealthy isn't about recouping public health costs - it's about forcing a "be healthy" morality on lard-arses and being smug about what is vice and what isn't.

Yeah, people who eat burgers and pizza all the time probably should eat a salad and exercise from time to time, but I don't think it's really government's business to tell them that.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[nwf]

Wait. Didn't the US try banning alcohol before? Does anyone have a link to a study of what happened?

Yep, it led to the creation of a whole genre of movies: gangster movies. Otherwise, not much else lasting effects.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[ChrisMaple]

You don't have to invoke socialized health care to identify real physical damage caused by sexual promiscuity. Many diseases are spread by sexual intercourse, some by actions as minor as kissing.

Your bias is evident by your classification of "weapons ownership" as "unhealthy." Not "shooting people", but "weapons ownership." Please think before posting.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Joce640k]

Do we have a nationally enforced vegan lifestyle?

Do you have any evidence that vegans live longer? Where are all the communes full of 120-year-old vegans?

(or even 90-year-old vegans)

Nope. Vegans die at the same rate as everybody else.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[butchersong]

You're probably right about alcohol. It likely has some kind of statically significant impact on the population at large. Let's take the fat tax idea though for a spin. There were a few studies recently that compared sugar to cocaine and concluded that sugar may be more addictive. I have some reservations about that but it is at least a possibility. You have then a group of people that make up a more significant percentage of the population than smokers that are obese and addicted to sugar. These people are costing us as a society significantly more that smokers do. Why would this smoking fine not be applicable to them / sugar?

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[swb]

As a general rule, we're moving to a much more closely managed lifestyle across the board. Any personal habit which creates a cost somewhere down the line is being scrutinized. It's just like corporate finance guys squeezing costs out of a business, 50-60 years ago they lacked the tools to easily model and analyze costs, so there was a lot more built in slack in the system and now that the tools and data exist, they're coming up with all kinds of ways to squeeze costs and jack up profits.

Healthcare is experiencing the same effect, whether it's insurer driven or government driven under the rubric of program funding or public health. Nobody wants to pay for expenses they think can be eliminated.

Based on a lot of the new thinking surrounding sugar, I think one easy thing they could do is create an excise tax on sugar manufacturers and importers. Price increases on sugar at the source will force up the price of products with added sugar. Food manufacturers will have to either cut the junk sugar they add to juice flavor or charge a higher price and be less competitive.

If you could cut total sugar consumption in the population by 20% you'd probably work wonders with obesity and type II diabetes rates.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Khashishi]

Better leave idealism out of the decision, and base it on cost-benefit. The cost depends on how acceptable the solution is to the public. You will get demonstrations and targeted disruption by banning homosexuality. I'm vegan myself, but I know you'll get widespread riots if you enforced a vegan lifestyle, and you wouldn't last long.
The goal is to try to find a solution that allows smokers to continue to get their fix, but prevent new smokers from starting.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[BarbaraHudson]

Then by your reasoning you should ban cars too, as they do harm people walking on the roads.

And cities are doing exactly that, because the air is an unbreathable unhealthy smog. Banning cars from parts of cities is spreading.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[BarbaraHudson]

Bad analogy - the problem isn't drunks - it's drunks who drive. That's why in many countries it's a criminal offense to be drunk behind the wheel - even if you're not actually driving, just having the keys in your pocket while you sleep it off in the back seat - because you have the care and control of the vehicle while intoxicated.

There are plenty of Americans who don't realize that a simple DUI means that they are inadmissible to Canada because, while it's not a criminal offense in the US, it is in Canada, and a US DUI requires they be treated as any other criminal offense.

It's also why even though some states still criminalize adultery, because it's not a criminal offense in Canada, a criminal conviction of adultery isn't a bar to coming into Canada.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[BarbaraHudson]

Just one question - will eating pizza every day (not that cardboard crap they sell at the stores or at pizza chains - I'm talking REAL pizza) actually cause a heart attack? Seems to me that a slice of pizza with lots of green peppers and red peppers and tomato sauce and mushrooms and olives and 3 different cheeses and sausage and pepperoni and bacon and salami and onions and anchovies and jalapenos and would be pretty nutritious.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[BarbaraHudson]

Nope. Vegans die at the same rate as everybody else.

I'd expect them to die younger - what's life like without BACON!!!!

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Pfhorrest]

It absolutely should be illegal to force other people to eat and drink things they don't want to eat and drink.

Oh wait that already is illegal.

Banning smoking in public places is like that. It's about keeping you from forcing your drugs on OTHER PEOPLE by putting them into the common air we all have to breath. It's not about your own health. You can kill yourself as quickly as you damn well please, nobody else gives a fuck, just keep your death-sticks to yourself.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[fox171171]

Yeah, instead of "upsize" or such language, they should just say "Would you like to big fat pig size that today?"

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[Joce640k]

Nope. Vegans die at the same rate as everybody else.

I'd expect them to die younger - what's life like without BACON!!!!

Or vitamin B12.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[fox171171]

But there has been pressure on fast-food businesses to offer healthier options at the same price.

Unhealthy food is certainly an issue. There has been some improvement from the fast food outlets, but the grocery store is still bad for it. Good quality food is expensive. The cheapest is crappy hormone and chemical laden junk.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[hambone142]

What a out sports? Playing baseball and football cause expensive injuries. So does riding a bicycle.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[quenda]

compared sugar to cocaine and concluded that sugar may be more addictive.

What a pointless comparison. Neither cocaine nor sugar are at all addictive like tobacco.
Sure, sugar hits the reward centres of the brain, but its a very stretched analogy. You cannot treat obesity with Naltrexone.

But the relevant point is: governments are willing to listen to health lobbyists on tobacco only because the ideas have long had strong public support. There is no support for similar alcohol restrictions, let alone something as stupid as a sugar tax. Whether sugar is actually as evil as you make out is irrelevant to the question.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

It created the gangsters. Organized crime as we know it tiday in the US started during prohibition.

It also caused a shift in drinking culture. The overall average consumption fell, but people started binge drinking (why only have one or two drinks when you're at the speakeasy anyway? Have some more, while you can!), and they started drinking hard liquor instead of beer and wine, because it was easier to smuggle.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

It won't cause a heart attack by itself. There may be some minor issues with acrylamide in slightly burnt parts of the crust, as with any high-temperature cooking method. However, a normal size pizza is somewhere around 12-1500 calories by itself, even more if you load it up with multiple kinds of cheese and lots of toppings that aren't vegetables. That doesn't leave much room for other food during the day. Can you live on pizza alone? Sure! But it probably isn't healthy, unless you're very careful about it.

Also

a slice of pizza with lots of green peppers and red peppers and tomato sauce and mushrooms and olives and 3 different cheeses and sausage and pepperoni and bacon and salami and onions and anchovies and jalapenos

Dude, take it easy with the toppings, you're overcrowding it and murdering the entire concept of pizza.

Thin crust, tomato sauce, cheese and a maximum of one(1) meat topping and optionally one(1) veggie topping. That's all you need. Let the ingredients have some room instead of smothering them and causing them to cover up their individual tastes.

Re:How soon until this is extended to other areas?

[david_thornley]

If you don't have guns around, your toddler is not going to shoot you, you're not going to have an accident, you're not going to panic shoot someone, no intruder will consider it vital to take you out ASAP, and it will be harder to carry out a suicide. Yeah, I know some of these are due to people being stupid, but we'll always have stupid people. Unless there's a specific need for a firearm, you're really safer without one. (That doesn't mean people shouldn't own guns, but they are health risks.)

Re:What is she suggesting?

[Nutria]

ISTM that she's advocating "poor shaming".

It's a stress reliever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having no money and no options can be stressful. Does smoking there cost more than using illegal drugs?

Re:Black market

[Oswald McWeany]

Racist. The correct term is African-American Australians.

Ontario Already has Those Rules

[Luthair]

Sounds more like they're catching up - https://www.ontario.ca/page/sm...

Re:Ontario Already has Those Rules

[fox171171]

Sounds more like they're catching up - https://www.ontario.ca/page/sm...

Too bad it wasn't "script-free Ontario"! All I got to see was a list of scripts it had to run to show me anything. Just closed it.

Re:Black market

[skids]

...and a rising epidemic of schizophrenia, maybe. We'll see. Glad I'm not in that particular policy laboratory.

Re:Black market

[Oswald McWeany]

Unless they move to New Zealand, then they are African American Australian New Zealanders.

Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[ErichTheRed]

I live in New York, and prices for cigarettes are incredibly high (for the US.) Go to South Carolina, and by comparison they basically give them away because SC is a tobacco state. It's been proven over and over again that long-term smoking causes expensive end-of-life health problems, and when the majority of people who smoke are poor and uneducated, everybody pays in the form of increased charity health care. And in the US, if a smoker makes it to 65, Medicare has to pay a lot more to get the average smoker through the end of their life so everyone pays regardless of the person's income in Medicare taxes. In my opinion it's fair to tax cigarettes to a high degree as long as the proceeds go directly to health care or smoking cessation programs.

In NY, smoking is a very expensive habit and it's hard to even smoke in public anymore. Go elsewhere in the country (Texas, Nevada, lots of Southern states) and everyone can smoke in public along with most businesses being smoker-friendly indoors. The problem is that the US isn't a monoculture and a small country -- each state has its own agenda. New York is dealing with a city the size of a small country combined with a poor rural upstate region...that's why high tobacco taxes make sense. A smaller state is going to have lower overall public health expenditures regardless of ability to pay just based on population. Also, tobacco-producing states aren't going to be happy with any taxes because they want a market for their product. Back in the 50s, the majority of men smoked and something like 35% of women did too. Now, it's way less than that and dropping.

I think taxing tobacco heavily is a good compromise. Unless you want an outright ban (which I don't think is the best idea even if it would improve public health,) this is the best way to recover the additional costs a smoker places on society.

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Notabadguy]

As a Texan, where in the hell are you getting your information that "[sic] in Texas...everyone can smoke in public along with most businesses being smoker-friendly indoors."

As a New Yorker, is this propaganda that you get spoon-fed by your nanny state? Did you copy/paste that from a ministry-approved pamphlet?

Because my Texas-approved pamphlet says that New York is full of people who believe guns belong only in the hands of criminals, the citizens want to pay more taxes to expand government control over every aspect of their lives, and that the only good soda is the kind that has been sized, measured, and received a stamp of government approval.

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[skids]

It's been proven over and over again that long-term smoking causes expensive end-of-life health problems

Please cite these proofs. Its quite easy to find studies showing the opposite... treating dementia for a decade or so is much more expensive than treating lung cancer for a year, for example.

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to have a hissy fit about a statement, address the statement, not the person, douchebag...

So, Is the following statement true or false? Is it true all over the state or only outside Austin?

"everyone can smoke in public along with most businesses being smoker-friendly indoors"

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Nutria]

It's been proven over and over again that long-term smoking causes expensive end-of-life health problems

The obvious liberty-maintaining solution is for the government to refuse to pay for such care.

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Oswald McWeany]

You make a valid point, if you posted this 15 years ago and Slashdot only just published it.

The fact is, you can't smoke in public in most places in the South anymore.

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Attila Dimedici]

Oh no, the poster is correct, long-term smoking causes expensive end-of-life health problems. HOWEVER, the length of time during which a smoker experiences those end-of-life expenses is a lot shorter than the length of time a non-smoker spends dealing with end-of-life health problems (and that is not counting the many more years a non-smoker spends before starting to need end-of-life healthcare).

Re:Should be done in the US too, but won't be

[Anubis IV]

So, Is the following statement true or false? Is it true all over the state or only outside Austin?

"everyone can smoke in public along with most businesses being smoker-friendly indoors"

As a Texan who's been living in the College Station area (where Texas A&M University is) since 2002, I can't think of anytime in the last decade that I've seen smoking indoors. And I'm an asthmatic, so I tend to take note of people smoking around me.

I still remember the not-so-fond days (i.e. the '80s and '90s, for me) of places like Cracker Barrel using an open lattice to separate the smoking and "non-smoking" sections of the restaurant. These days though? The last time I remember seeing anyone smoking indoors was at a bar back in 2005 or so. I'll admit, I don't frequent bars, so it wouldn't come as a surprise to me if smoking was still allowed at some or all of the ones in town, but other than that, I can't remember the last time I saw anyone smoking indoors, whether we're talking about a restaurant, a store, or some other indoor establishment. And while it's generally allowed outdoors, it's such a rare occurrence to actually encounter someone smoking in public that when my wife and I were on a cruise this last December, we were struck by just how unusual it felt to have so many smokers around us when we went out on the deck of the ship.

Really, about the only time I see people smoking at all around here is when I visit the university campus. I'll see clusters of international grad students at the cigarette disposal receptacles 30 ft away from the entrances to major buildings on campus, since they're required by law to maintain that distance if they want to smoke.

No Sympathy

[stereoroid]

Ireland has similar rules too, including no indoors smoking in anything that could be called a workplace. This includes pubs, which had a major impact, as you can imagine.

I have no sympathy. Smoking is entirely unnecessary. People keep doing it only because they are addicted to it, not for any other positive reasons. It can go entirely without any objectively negative impacts whatsoever.

Re:No Sympathy

[KozmoStevnNaut]

But then where do you stop? Will you ban alcohol as well?

Re:No Sympathy

[Major Blud]

Fuck off you idiot.

Your slippery slope argument is a bullshit fallacy. Smoking is being banned across the world and rightly so, yet the sale of alcohol and cars (toxic fumes) are not. Therefore no slippery slope

In short: you stop at banning the sale of cigarettes you moron.

ORLY?!?!? Seems like the the bad on stuff that is unhealthy has already tried to move past the point of a ban on cigarettes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:No Sympathy

[Khashishi]

They don't cause any problems in the bar. The problems are when they drive home.

Re:No Sympathy

[totallyarb]

"I have no sympathy. Smoking is entirely unnecessary."

That, I'm afraid, is the perfect totalitarian mantra: "I think it is unnecessary, therefore I will ban it."

"People keep doing it only because they are addicted to it, not for any other positive reasons."

[Citation Needed]

What you seem to be saying is actually "*I* don't enjoy it, so it is impossible that anyone else does."

"It can go entirely without any objectively negative impacts whatsoever."

So, you're the sort of crude utilitarian who assumes there are objective standards of which activities are enjoyable and which are not? And moreover, that your judgement of these "objective" standards is objectively perfect? Wow. Just wow.

I don't smoke, have never smoked, no stake in this game; but your post is a crime against logic and reason.

Re:No Sympathy

[lbalbalba]

I have no sympathy. Civilians owning guns is entirely unnecessary. People keep doing it only because they are addicted to it, not for any other positive reasons. It can go entirely without any objectively negative impacts whatsoever.

Fixed that for you.

Re:No Sympathy

[SuiteSisterMary]

Except that it's entirely possible to own and use guns for a lifetime with no health damage to any living thing. It's impossible to smoke without incurring health damage.

Here's an experiment: What would happen if the government decreed that, henceforth, smoking anywhere was perfectly legal, but that no smoking product could have any amount of nicotine?

Re:No Sympathy

[JustNiz]

Good luck with successfully hunting or defending yourself with just a cigarette.

Re:No Sympathy

[The-Ixian]

Here's an experiment: What would happen if the government decreed that, henceforth, smoking anywhere was perfectly legal, but that no smoking product could have any amount of nicotine?

You would end up with marijuana legalization....

Re:No Sympathy

[b783719]

I have no sympathy. Farting is entirely unnecessary. People keep doing it only because they are addicted to it, not for any other positive reasons. It can go entirely without any objectively negative impacts whatsoever.

FTFTFY

Disclaimer: This post is not responsible for any /.er action caused by reading the post, nor responsible for any sound or smell enhancement to /.er rooms caused by reading the post.

Re:No Sympathy

[KozmoStevnNaut]

So you've completely missed the news about various cities (and even countries) around the world looking to ban cars with internal combustion engines over the next 5-10-15 years?

And the alcohol monopolies in countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland, and various US states? And the associated heavy taxation on higher proof alcohol, which is meant to deter people from consuming it?

Actually, there are a few cases smoking benefit

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Hello,

    There are in fact a few positive reasons for smoking. Nicotine helps schizophrenics regulate their illness. Also, nicotine helps some intestinal disorders.

    However, seemingly the use of e-cigs or nicotine patches or other safer nicotine delivery would provide the same benefits at far lower risk.

--PM

Re:Actually, there are a few cases smoking benefit

[skids]

However, seemingly the use of e-cigs or nicotine patches or other safer nicotine delivery would provide the same benefits at far lower risk.

A competent harm reduction strategy for nicotine consumers would require the abstinence-only anti-tobacco nut-jobs to allow new tobacco/nicotine products. E-cigs (still horribly under-regulated and under-studied) and such were perfectly possible in the 60s, but we got nowhere because we have fanatical idiots on one side of the issue and the shameless corporate lackeys on the other. It was only through a "flash mob"-like phenomena and the advancement of consumer-level tech to the point where a horde of hard-to-regulate single-owner e-commerce businesses could produce such technology profitably that e-cigs have gotten where they are today. They got so popular so fast (despite the crazy lack of any sort of real quality control) that the genie got out of the bottle before the crazier elements among the anti-smoking crowd could step on its throat.

Nicotine patches are IMO a pretty useless product; the lack of self titration is too huge a step away from the smoking experience for most... and I'd bet by the time you'd cut down to the point where you just wanted a baseline delivery rather than a rush, you'd be able to do without the patch.

Re:Actually, there are a few cases smoking benefit

[skids]

"harm reduction" is not the same as "help you quit".

Re:Actually, there are a few cases smoking benefit

[The-Ixian]

Clearly not, it is signed "PM" not.... oh...

Re:Actually, there are a few cases smoking benefit

[Kielistic]

I have seen many people quit smoking by using vapes. I could probably throw a water bottle at 3 from where I am currently sitting.

Joy Joy Feelings for all

[GLMDesigns]

Yeah! Let's increase the police power of the state. Let's make states even more intrusive. Let's ban everything we think is immoral and wrong and just plain nasty.

Then we will have utopia. And we will all inspire joy-joy feelings in all those around us.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[thegarbz]

Let's increase the police power of the state.

I would be right there with you, if it were the state vs the person. It's not. There is not a single benefit to smoking. This is the state vs a corporation that makes money from trying to kill you as slowly as possibly.

Fuck the police state.
Fuck filthy smokers even more.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[Pascoea]

Whose morals are we going to use?

Probably those from the book of Sylvester Stalone, Westley Snipes, et. al. for those who missed the reference

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[GLMDesigns]

Wrong. This is not an individual v corporate issue.

You should be free to f*k who you want.
You should be free to smoke tobacco, weed, crack, whatever.

Either you own your own body or you don't.

If you don't have a right to smoke tobacco you don't have a right to drink or take any other substance that some all-knowing, do-gooder bureaucrat thinks is harmful.

Either you make the decision for yourself or the state does it for you.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[thegarbz]

I fully agree. I should be free not to breath in your smoke.

And the fact you don't think it's a person vs corporation issue when someone is selling you a product that provides you with zero benefit at all to the end user... well that says a lot.

But just like any drug addiction smoking has negative affects on people around you. Unlike most drug addictions smokers have shown an inability to keep their habit to themselves.

Seriously fuck smokers. Karma / mod points be damned. The vast majority are filthy entitled scum who feel like their habit should be all that matters and then whine when managers complain about the amount of breaks they take or people complain that they don't want to smell smoke while eating, or god forbid a workplace shall have an atmosphere that doesn't cause cancer. Lock them in their homes and close all the windows.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[Pfhorrest]

I own my own body.

I get to choose what goes into it and I have every right to use any means up to and including violence, including state violence if available, to prevent other people from putting things into my body that I don't want there.

So keep your fucking drugs inside your own body and we're fine. Start putting them in the common air and thus into my body and we've got a problem, and either the state will do something about it for me, or I'll do it myself.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[Gussington]

Let's ban everything we think is immoral and wrong and just plain nasty.

Flying off the handle a bit there. Non-one said to ban everything, only somethings that are known to cause death to the users and even the innocent people around them. Or is being killed by someone you don't know a fair price for freedom in your world?

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[GLMDesigns]

By that token how do you account for the medications and drugs you piss out of your body and put into the "commons". The amount of harm done to you by cigarette smoke coming while walking outside is trivial compared to the harm done by the sun to your skin, eating too much sugar, sitting too much, drinking (alcohol) too much, pollution from cars, from factories making your phone, from generators powering server farms.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[GLMDesigns]

We could substitute alcohol for tobacco. A lot of people think the same way about weed. Wow. What a boon to society that has been. Let's up the foockin' ante and criminalize tobacco.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[thegarbz]

We could substitute alcohol for tobacco.

We already do. The point is an outright prohibition does not end well. To resolve any drug addiction on a social scale you need to chip away at it in bits. Kind of like introducing restrictions on doing things while under the influence, restrictions on where you can drink it, where you can buy it, who can buy it, or taxing it out of reach of some.

Kind of like all the things that are being done with alcohol.

Re:Joy Joy Feelings for all

[GLMDesigns]

We are not trying to outlaw alcohol and pretending we are only "taxing" it. We could put a $100/liter tax on alcohol; pretend that we're not outlawing it; and then be "surprised" when an underground economy arises; and that there is violence enforcing the law.

In NYC selling individual cigarettes (loosies) is illegal because it cuts down on the tax revenue. A couple of years ago, to increase revenue, NYC cracked down on the sale of loosies. A guy refused to comply with the police and died of a choke hold. Everyone is blaming the racist, fascist police. The true blame belongs on the administrators who made selling loosies a crime and decided to send the police to enforce the ban.

Ultimately each of these law you pass requires an armed response. And then you're surprised and outraged that there is violence and abuse.

Screw govt oppression

[lamer01]

I am all for snubbing out 2nd hand smoke as one's rights end when you infringe on another's but forcing people's will through economic means is still using force and it should not be tolerated. Govt has no right to control what I do with my body...

Re:Screw govt oppression

[Khashishi]

As long as you have smoking, you have second hand smoke though.

Re:Black market

[ChrisMaple]

persons of a less white shade of pale.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[ruir]

Thanks for the warning, wont ever go to Las Vegas.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[Grishnakh]

The US doesn't need laws like that, at least not nationwide. Instead, it should be done state-by-state, and people who come from pro-smoking states should be forced to pay higher taxes when they move to non-smoking states, to compensate for the higher burden on the public health system they'll present.

If Nevada is too dumb to enact some decent anti-smoking laws like everyone else, then its citizens should pay the price.

But not in Sydney

[aoism]

I just came back from a business trip in Sydney, and the thing I noticed most of all besides the Ibis birds was the amount of people smoking, everywhere. People on the sidewalks, taxi drivers waiting on a fare, people getting out of the train station hanging out in Wynyard Park. I applaud this well meaning attempt to curb smoking, but the reality for me seems to be that its one of those laws that the police only enforce if its convenient for them.

Re:You'd have thought they'd be more focused on

[Opportunist]

Take a wild guess who the heavy smokers are...

They will shoot themselves in the food

[kuzb]

Yeah, because you're essentially initiating a prohibition without the prohibition. Remember how well that worked out for alcohol in the US?

The entire thing is stupid and interferes with something that makes a subset of people happy. Yes it's bad for you, we know that and so do they. Yes it should be inappropriate in certain public spaces. However this has past the point of protecting people who don't want to smoke - it's now forcing other people's ideals on to them for the sake of doing it. That's wrong on every level. These people really aren't hurting you with their habit.

If you want to head towards a demolition man-like police state where everything potentially bad for you is banned, this is how you do it.

Re:You'd have thought they'd be more focused on

[ChrisMaple]

I know I'm reading the words of a deranged leftist when I see the phrase "brown people".

Fuck the world

[AndyKron]

Fuck everybody who tries to force me to do something.

Re:Fuck the world

[Pfhorrest]

Yeah! Fuck those fucking smokers who put their goddamn drugs into the common air and thereby force me to do their drugs with them whether I want to or not!

Re:Fuck the world

[The-Ixian]

2nd hand smoke seems to be the central argument against smoking. It allows for a nice "won't you think of the children" plea.

What would happen if there was a cigarette that did not put out any 2nd hand smoke. Just imagine that it would be possible. Would that change the regulations around smoking at all? Or would the argument change to something else...

Re:Fuck the world

[Pfhorrest]

I can't tell you what the rest of the world would do, but I for one would be thrilled and have no problem with it. I don't care if people eat THC butter brownies even though I hate marijuana smoke as much as cigarette smoke. I don't care if people pop pills or shoot themselves up (though I might care about some of the behavior that might be likely to cause, but the behavior is the problem, not the drugs themselves). Keep it to yourself and you're fine by me, just don't force me to participate.

Those distances

[codeButcher]

smoking is prohibited within 10m (33ft) of a playground, within 4m (13ft) of the entrance to a public building, at rail platforms, taxi ranks and bus stops

I wonder how they come up with those distances. Some evenings I sit in my house, and get this penetrating smell of smoke, and start some anti-invasion house clearing procedures, since there are no smokers living there. Then I look out the window and see it's just some bloke walking past in the street and smoking, some 30m (+-100ft) from the closest point to my house.

Just a little more and ...

[transami]

The black market for cigs is going to make for some awesome gangster films in 50 years. Thanks Aussies!

Affordability

[c]

If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes.

They won't.

They'll buy black market cigarettes for a fraction of that price.

Re:Affordability

[gravewax]

Not in Australia they won't, while there is some black market for cigarettes it is neither cheap nor widespread due to the cost and difficulty of getting it here. Australia is an Island nation so establishing an effective blackmarket for something like cigarettes is extremely difficult

Re:Affordability

[Gussington]

If it's the poor who are now the most likely to smoke, it's hard to see how they will ever afford the AUD$40 (USD$30) pack of cigarettes.

They won't.

They'll buy black market cigarettes for a fraction of that price.

Well you say that, but having lived in Australia for the last 20 years and knowing tons of smokers and drug users, I've not once seen black market cigarettes. Apparently the Chinese immigrants get into them a bit, but I seen precisely zero among my regular circles.

Re:Affordability

[c]

Huh. Weird. What are addicts using instead of nicotine, then?

Re:Affordability

[gravewax]

cigarettes are perfectly legal, they are just very expensive. smoking has been on the decline in Australia for quite a while now, basically the rate has halved in the last 20 years or so. Many also use those vapour devices instead. regardless the decline in smoking here is definitely pleasant, makes you really notice now when a smoker gets in a lift with you as the smell is so obnoxious and unusual.

Consent

[fox171171]

If there is no victim (other than a fully informed-consented individual doing it to him/herself) why try stopping it?

The problem is, the industry has worked for years to increase the nicotine content to ensure that customers are more likely to be unable to stop using the product to ensure revenue. Many simply cannot quit. So the consent is a little shaky. If you are unable to revoke consent, is it really consent any more?

Also, there can be other victims. The people who care about these people who die sooner than they otherwise likely would. The people who have to pay for the extended healthcare for these individuals. Tobacco companies should have to foot the bill.

Re:Consent

[david_thornley]

That's another issue. Similarly, obesity rates are very high, and it isn't because people have changed because they haven't.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[Khashishi]

Hey, Nevada isn't being dumb. It's lucrative being a den of sin.

Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

Seriously.

I've been a long time smoker. I stopped smoking a while ago. Didn't want to anymore. Honestly no big deal, at least for me. Likewise, it's no big deal for me if someone does smoke.

Now, of course I can see it in places where people who do not enjoy smoke have to go. Public offices and buildings, especially when kids are involved, absolutely off limits when it comes to smoking. I can also see how smoke takes away the experience of a good dinner at a restaurant. Absolutely d'accord.

But frankly, what's wrong with smoking in a bar? I finally found a place that's still sane, where people can get together, enjoy their cocktails in a cultivated atmosphere, some of the people enjoy their cigars, yes, that adds to my experience. I love that. I can go there and simply relax, unwind, have a good and entertaining conversation and spend an evening drinking, talking and enjoying the smell of cigars.

If you don't, well, there's other places to go to. Nobody forces you to go to my bar, it's far from the only one and there are plenty of non-smoking places now.

Why does it have to be mandatory non-smoking? Could anyone explain this to me? Why not allow the owner of the pub, bar or even restaurant to decide whether he wishes to allow smoking? Good ol' capitalist logic tells me that the market dictates that a product that the customer does not want will vanish and the one offering it shall perish, why not let the market sort it out?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Yunzil]

If you don't, well, there's other places to go to.

There's other places for you to go to smoke, too. Such as your house.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[AmiMoJo]

But frankly, what's wrong with smoking in a bar?

It's bad for the bar staff's help.

Imagine if it was paint fumes. The decorating company says to its staff, "you just have to put up with paint fumes and the damage they do to your lungs, or get another job". That wouldn't fly in most places, the law requires jobs that expose workers to hazards to provide protective equipment.

In other words the bar staff would need breathing equipment, and would be required to wear it by law to prevent unfair competition (i.e. individuals opting out of safety equipment to make themselves more employable).

There are exemptions for things like actors who smoke for a role, but just wanting to operate a smoking room in a bar is not one of them.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[JeffOwl]

In my old neck of the woods your argument came up over and over. The response was that it was unhealthy for the employees. Then the arguments went thus.... "Unsafe work environment." "They don't have to work there, they can go somewhere else." "That's easy for you to say, finding a job isn't always so simple." "They know full well that it is a smoking establishment when they hire on." "The same could be said for any work place hazard, but we still regulate." And on and on and on...

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[thegarbz]

But frankly, what's wrong with smoking in a bar?

Maybe non-smokers want to be in the bar too?
Maybe the bar maid is just trying to make money to get by and deserves the right to do it without being in an atmosphere hazardous to her health? I like that you used the phrase "cultivated atmosphere".

it's far from the only one and there are plenty of non-smoking places now.

Yeah I wonder why. Because from what I can remember prior to the stead increases in smoking bans in public places the number of smoke free bars in Australia was zero.

Why does it have to be mandatory non-smoking?

Because smokers have shown an inability to consider others when undertaking their habit.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[misexistentialist]

Should be illegal not to have robot bartenders.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Zibodiz]

The real problem is the addictiveness of cigarettes. If it were an activity that everyone could stop whenever they felt like it, it would be no worse than any of the many dangerous sports available to us. The difference is that skiing isn't addictive to the point where people spend an hour or more every day, 365 days/year doing it, and have withdrawals if they have to skip a few days.
I've had 3 family members killed by smoking. All 3 were hopelessly addicted, wanted (and tried) to quit, but couldn't. You're the lucky one, and you're in the minority; your ability shouldn't be used to an excuse to sentence others to death.

Re: Where the fuck is the problem?

[ljw1004]

I think that free market is incompatible with addiction - pretty much by definition.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[ras]

But frankly, what's wrong with smoking in a bar? ... Nobody forces you to go to my bar

As others have pointed out the staff can't go elsewhere. Non smoking bar staff have successfully sued their employers after getting lung cancer.

I wouldn't worry overly about it. I'm an Australian, and it looks like is end of the line for Australia's actions on smoking. The two areas that annoyed voters were their kids starting smoking due to peer pressure and slick ads, and the mess smokers left around with 2nd hand smoke and butts. The kid problem has been cured by making it expensive and making the packs so ugly it wasn't cool to be seen with one (seriously: no one looks cool with a picture of a gangrenous foot near their mouth), and the 2nd hand smoke was cured by banning it from public places.

If it does stop here it will be one of those rare successes in public policy. It leaves people are still free to do whatever they dammed well please in their private life, while stopping them from effecting others with their less healthy habits.

I'm hoping our nanny state government will notice the success and apply the same techniques to the illegal social drugs. Making them legal, putting high taxes on them, and regulating the purity will solve a myriad of problems. Stopping people dying from injecting bad shit is one of them. Using those taxes to get people to pay for them rehab down the track is another. Removing the money from the swaps created by illegal gangs is another. Win. Win. Win. It is a nanny state, so I guess it won't happen. But I can dream ...

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

Let's for a moment imagine I wrote "If you don't like that people smoke, just stay home".

Well? How'd you like that?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

Do you really know a single bartender that doesn't smoke? I don't.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

So ... it's more profitable to run a smoking bar?

And ... we still force bars to be non smoking areas.

Who put the commies in charge?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

You're by no means obligated to smoke, you can just enjoy your drinks there. I don't smoke and nobody ever bothered me about it, it's not like people start to ask or even demand from you that you light one up.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

So instead I should sentence them to a life in misery because they cannot enjoy what they want to enjoy?

That's cruel.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

Again, this is hardly the only bar in town and by far the non-smoking bars outnumber those that allow smoking. It's not like you lose anything by this bar allowing smoking.

Ok, you do, it's a very good bar with a really awesome bartender who knows his business well and makes the best White Russian this side of the pond, but shop around, maybe there's another one. And I don't even know whether you like White Russian.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[jaminJay]

I started smoking when I was performing in bars (musician). I stopped when smoking was banned inside bars. People can still smoke in the DOSA (Designated Outdoor Smoking Area).

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

And the only thing these areas accomplished was that all the smokers now go outside and talk there while I can choose to either sit inside alone and ponder the contents of my glass 'til they're done with their cigarettes or join them.

Where the fuck is the difference? Except that it's cold outside during the Winter and hot during the Summer, and in neither case I have my drink with me.

Re: Where the fuck is the problem?

[jaminJay]

A lot of people only smoke socially, so it's busier inside than you assume. Furthermore, people inside now have a choice not to sit in smoke.

Re: Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

No, instead I now have the choice to either go outside with the rest and freeze/fry for no good reason whatsoever, and to add insult to injury, without my cocktail.

So standing in smoke is somehow better than sitting in it?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[thegarbz]

You're by no means obligated to smoke, you can just enjoy your drinks there.

sigh

Thankfully due to all these anti smoking laws I now can be.

Re: Where the fuck is the problem?

[jaminJay]

I don't know where you're at, but no DOSA I've ever been in excludes alcohol. That just wouldn't fly.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

Again, there's plenty of non-smoker bars around town, why does it have to be this one?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[totallyarb]

unfair competition (i.e. individuals opting out of safety equipment to make themselves more employable).

So, in your world, someone who smokes 2 packs a day and works as a bartender would not have the option of saying to an employer, "hey, a little extra second-hand smoke is not going to make any difference to me; how about you don't bother with all that expensive equipment, and I get a job where I don't have to go outside every time I want a cigarette?" - because that is somehow being "unfair"?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[AmiMoJo]

Yes. It would encourage other people to accept the health damage in order to compete on an even footing with the bartender who smokes anyway.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[david_thornley]

One problem with smoking in pubs and such places is the safety of the workers. Since people are basically forced to accept jobs where they can find them, we have an interest in making them all reasonably safe.

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[david_thornley]

I know two people who went through bartending school, but didn't find work in the field, who don't smoke. Does that count?

Re:Where the fuck is the problem?

[Opportunist]

How about going to a non-smoker bar, then?

Re:Not the first

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Australia did the horrible images thing first, Canada borrowed it from us.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[skids]

higher burden on the public health system they'll present.

[ Citation Needed ]

Re:taxation

[skids]

What health care savings money? The money we spent on grandma's parkenson's drugs which we would not have had to spend if she'd got lung cancer?

(I'm not saying smoking should not be discouraged, just that no public health system, or taxpayer, should expect to save a dime from stopping it.)

Re:Black market

[rossdee]

If rugby players smoked, they wouldn't make the grade to be on the (All-Black) NZ team, or even the Walabies (Oz team)

Re:Black market

[DontBeAMoran]

And there's one person who's beyond the pale.

How the fuck...

[Khyber]

...is this news for nerds?

This is a site for Tech news. Not this bullshit, Whipslash. Take your agenda elsewhere.

Signed, the smokers of slashdot, who keep your ass from going down because we're too busy laughing at your laughably-secured e-mail system to do shit about what we're seeing.

Re:What is she suggesting?

[BarbaraHudson]

If you're already broke and you insist on spending what little you have on smoking, maybe you SHOULD be ashamed. Actually, there's no "maybe" about it. There is nobody alive today who has not heard about the ill effects of smoking, so there really is no excuse. Governments have implemented free patch and drug programs to help those same poor people quit, and their excuse is always the same - "I'll quit when I'm ready. I'm not ready yet." The whole idea of nicotine replacements and antidepressants that remove the urge to smoke as much is to help you quit even though you're "not ready" - because we all know that you will never be ready otherwise, or you would have already quit.

Re:Black market

[houghi]

So calling them Orcs or Hobbits is not an option?

why not China

[Khashishi]

Of all the places to do social engineering, I should expect China to do something about smoking. It's a real problem there.

Re:why not China

[Zontar The Mindless]

Give me a break. It's about the only place left where I can light up at the table after a meal out.

Re:What is she suggesting?

[Nutria]

If you're already fat and you insist on spending what little you have on more food, maybe you SHOULD be ashamed. Actually, there's no "maybe" about it. There is nobody alive today who has not heard about the ill effects of being overweight, so there really is no excuse. Governments have implemented free exercise programs (aka sidewalks) to help those same poor people lose weight, and their excuse is always the same - "I'll lose it when I'm ready. I'm not ready yet."

FTFY.

Oh, wait. Fat shaming is Eeeeevil.
http://new3.fjcdn.com/pictures/Fat+shaming+friday+comp+_6d849f_5267853.jpg

study says so

[Anonymous Coward]

since I'm lazy

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html

I remember a study was done which said smokers and fat people die sooner, so they require less health care.

Re:study says so

[BarbaraHudson]

The study you link to was done in Holland, not the US. Holland hospital care is far cheaper, so stop with the apples-vs-tomatoes comparisons, mkay?

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

It also didn't include the lost tax income from consumers living longer after they stop working. Al the money they continue to spend circulates in the economy, creating jobs and taxes. And many of them continue to work after 65, generating more work income to put back into the economy.

A dead person don't do any of that.

Re:study says so

[dryeo]

Aren't you Canadian, and aren't we talking about Australia? Anyways, using my parents again, my Dad died at 66 after retiring at 64 (job got outsourced to America), my Mom collects $2000 a month in pensions, which all go to her care, basically a wealth transfer from the federal government to the provincial one, so 15 extra years of collecting pensions.

Re:taxation

[skids]

Did you factor in her social security disbursements? Of course not, because that's not "health care savings"

Do you want to create a black market?

[in10se]

Do you want to create a black market for cigarettes? Because this is exactly how you'd start one.

Re:What is she suggesting?

[BarbaraHudson]

We need to get back to the point where its okay to shame people for unhealthy health styles, rather than be afraid it will hurt their self image. Telling kids it's okay to be obese is not doing them any favors. Because no, it's not okay to eat your own body weight every month.

Now

[The-Ixian]

Now we just need to make it illegal to throw your cigarette butt on the ground.

Why do people do that?! It's way more aggravating than 2nd hand smoke ever was.

Re:What is she suggesting?

[Nutria]

You have a very steep, very politically incorrect fight on your hands. Most University students (trained in moral outrage by your friends on the left) would tar & feather you, then ban you from every county that voted for Hillary.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[lactose99]

You realize most health and life insurance plans ask you if you're a tobacco user right? They do factor that in.

Re:Please bring this to the US!

[lactose99]

Dammit, meant to reply to the parent, not the guy that's making my same point.

Leave us alone

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to be told how to live my life. I moved to an area when I was young where I can do almost anything, as long as I pay my tiny property tax. (can't avoid the tax).

The fear about smoking is utter bullshit.
By any measure, the air you breathe at a paved 4-way road intersection over a 4 minute period is many times worse for you than smoking for that same 4 minutes.
The chemicals that are in the air from various combustion sources, which are not in cigarettes, are all known carcinogens.

I have worked with a department of transportation, and every big city in the u.s. knows this fact and does some 'odd things' as a result.

Stop being sheeple and giving away your right to do what you want.
NO ONE knows you better than you know yourself, so NO ONE can justify telling you how to behave.

Do not allow anyone other than your parents to tell you want you can and cannot do.

Re:Protection from SELF-STUPIDITY results in TYRAN

[moeinvt]

If you don't believe laws are enforced at gunpoint, try not paying your taxes this year.
You'll probably get a few polite letters and phone calls, but eventually, gun-toting government employees will come around to drag you off and throw you in a cage. Resist being thrown in a cage and you will be shot.

Re: Bobbitize A Busybody

[HanzoSpam]

Especially SJW's!

Prohibition Revisited

[Gim Tom]

Alcohol prohibition got the US more problems that it solved with the rise of organized crime and undermining a general respect for the law. We have not really recovered yet. I wonder what it will do to the land down under.

Too bad the poor

[Vinegar Joe]

Can't afford coke like the rich. It's cool to do coke.

Downside

[Sqreater]

Eighty percent of schizophrenics smoke, and scientists have recently found that nicotine increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex of the brain, lessening some symptoms of the disorder. Are there other reasons for self medication with nicotine?

How to have government without taxes

[Pfhorrest]

Well let's just think this through shall we? Let's start with the general case.

What would you call something like a government that didn't have the legitimated use of force at its disposal as real governments do? An incorporated body of people in big one organization, without owners, not driven by a profit motive but instead by some kind of charter (or constitution, if you will) to serve a public good? That'd be a non-profit organization.

And without that use of force at its disposal, how would such an organization go about collecting money from the economy at large, so as to provide its services at no cost (or at least, at subsidized rates on a sliding scale to provide equal access to people of all income levels)? Well, it would have to have some kind of passive income, like from owning a bunch of stock. If it needs some percent of the GDP in order to fund those public goods it provides, then it would need to own a large enough percent of the productive capital -- enough stock, etc -- to provide that kind of passive income. In fact real non-profit organizations often have associated "Foundations" that are enormous investments like that, donating their proceeds to the non-profit proper to fund their work.

So a government that didn't use force to raise taxes would look like an enormous non-profit organization with an enormous diversified stock portfolio funding it.

How to set such a thing up in the first place is a hard question, but consider that the question of how to set any government up in the first place is a hard one. You had to get a bunch of people to contribute a bunch of time and resources like money to get the thing rolling in the first place. If you're trying to set up a liberal, democratic government, then those people are going to be donating all that time and money for nothing in return but the society they're building, which is a big thing to ask of enough people, which is why setting up good governments is hard -- much easier for powerful people who want something in return to put their power into making a government that enriches them personally and gives them a more direct return on that investment. So it makes sense that putting together an even better government that doesn't rely on force to raise revenue would be even harder; you'd have to get large swathes of society, including those already in power, to come together and donate a lot of resources to create the investment that would go on to fund the services provided to society at large.

Of course in real history, good governments, liberal democratic ones, didn't just get built from scratch out of nothing by donations of time and money from common people out of the good of their hearts. There was usually already a big powerful organization with tons of resources at its disposal pre-existing, one that acquired those resources and that power through illegitimate, violent means over a long period of time -- the previous, usually monarchic or feudal, government. The better-hearted liberal democrats then took over that enormous machine and used its ill-gotten goods and status to build a better government to replace it. So why not use that same kind of mechanism to set up a better, tax-independent government out of the ones we've already got? Use its existing illegitimate source of revenue, taxation, to slowly build up that investment portfolio that will then in turn accelerate the revenue available to grow it and in time reduce the tax burden on the people. At the very least, something like corporate welfare could be restructured such that whenever the government pays out money to some company, it gets stock ownership in return. (Which it can then trade away for more general, diversified holdings; the point isn't to own a controlling interest in any particular company or meddle at all in their day-to-day operations).

Although in the particular example case you give, the solution is much simpler. Roads are a network, and we already monitor and charge for access to that network (you and your vehicle must b

Re:What is she suggesting?

[BarbaraHudson]

Do I look like I give a sh*t? Manufacturers of unhealthy processed foods (see Kellogg's latest commercials) are spending big bucks convincing people that being fat is okay. It's NOT. Obesity kills. It should be treated the same way we dealt with smoking. Taxes, public shaming, banning of advertising for unhealthy products, packaging with pictures of what obesity does to your insides, and educational programs.

Nothing else will work.

Re:What is she suggesting?

[Nutria]

Do I look like I give a sh*t?

I don't know what you look like. What I do know is that you need to be sent to a reeducation camp for thinking that shaming poor, defenseless poundage-challenged people is a good idea.

Ah! They are reinventing Human Being! What now?

[syntotic]

We ll smoke electric sparks now that we **invented** electricity? I just realized all my drinks are based on herbs, everything I drink is a herb or some other herb. Obviously when inventing Fire we invented smoke and... smoking. They will realized something is missing but maybe too late. OR do you think Britain crossed half planet to go to India and get... spices... some cummin (now missing from most supermarkets here) or saffron? They went to get the SMOKES. This is not very well documented, but we do not document underwear much either, though any grown up knows about it. Truly, no other animal can smoke, only US. WE are the Animal That Smokes. This alone can distinguish a Human from any other animal for any hypothetical Extraterrestrial.

What about education for the poor?

[martinfb]

People that smoke are apparently unaware of the harm, in more than one form, that is done.
Even not-so-dumb people see the value in not smoking - or in tolerating withdrawal from the addiction.

I say make cigs cheap,or free, and deadlier. Then we can clean the gene pool and leave the rest of humanity that much more advanced!
And, the world get free of that stench and the trashy butts!

Re:What is she suggesting?

[david_thornley]

I look at it a little differently. If you're already broke, and you insist on spending money on smoking to the exclusion of essentials, then there's a reason why you're doing it, and we really need to find out why first and shame later (if at all).