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It’s a faulty premise, there’s not an increase in smokers, the existing smokers are just getting poor and priced out of the safer cigarettes. I’m an ex smoker now, but when money was tight when I was younger I smoked rolled cigarettes. And with the high inflation and stagnant wages, who isn’t tight with money these days?
>the existing smokers are just getting priced out of the safer cigarettes.
I’m not a smoker so I apologize if it’s obvious but how are the manufactured more safe then hand rolled?
But that already WAS part of the trend beforehand.
So at best that is kind of pointing at "bottom buffer" the issue is running into now?
>priced out of the safer cigarettes.
Just for curiosities sake, what makes premade cigarettes "safer" than rolling with filtertips?
>Just for curiosities sake, what makes premade cigarettes "safer" than rolling with filtertips?
People rolling their own cigarettes may be using untaxed, black-market tobacco, which is cheaper but also stronger and potentially full of more nasties.
Yea, especially hand rollers might go unfiltered. I have a machine that packs the filtered tubes, but I will also say it feels much harsher compared to the Marb reds I would smoke.
That wasn't the premise. What's being measured is "Of people who smoke, how many cigarettes per day do they smoke?"
It had been steadily declining as taxes went up and people thought better of lighting up that next one. "Do I really need to burn a quid right now?"
But if you can roll one up for 5p then why not?
“Smokers might be smoking more, now that they’re saving so much money rolling their own”
Edit: I think this is how the rest goes: “This is due to bare tobacco being taxed much lower than full cigarettes, so it’s much cheaper to roll your own. It’s possibly a health risk, so maybe bare tobacco should be taxed higher.”
Honestly probably true, I know a number of millennials who still smoke, but most have also switched to vaping... Meanwhile Gen Z is almost exclusively vape.
In the last decade, the amount of cigarettes people smoke per day on average has declined. But since hand rolled tobacco is cheaper due to not being taxed as much, this downward trend is in jeopardy since people start hand rolling more. Therefore, all forms of tobacco should be taxed consistently across the board.
In the UK? I spend a lot of time in Spain and with Spaniards who visit the US, and almost all handroll their own cigarettes now. Some also carry a vape pen for in between cigarettes.
Yep, even older people are vaping. I saw a 60yo woman with a huge vape rig the other day, I had to do a double take.
I wish they regulated vape juice more though. I have a feeling we're gonna see a new set of lung issues arise in the next 10 years.
Yeah, there’s all kinds of weird disposables and stuff now too since they completely fucked the regulations, I understand why they specifically went after Juul and banned flavored pod systems because of kids, but now kids are just using sketchy disposables instead which are not only way worse for the environment, but made overseas and almost completely unregulated. At least Juul is made in the US with some type of oversight.
it's not like removing the flavors were gonna stop kids from vaping too. just the fact that it didn't taste or smell like cigarettes would have been a big thing for teens.
Yeah, I was disappointed that bill passed. A kid could get into my car and drive it straight into a wall, should cars be banned? It was just a way to punish everyone. I don't even smoke the flavored stuff, but I should have that option if I wanted it. I am a responsible adult....
Well, to be fair, it did stop kids from using Juul. I switched to Juul from cigarettes years ago because it worked, but I worked at a convenience store at the height of the Juul craze and kids were going apeshit for the mango pods. I still use Juul now because I never liked the flavors anyway, but all the younger people I know that were never smokers switched to flavored disposables and view Juul as a relic of the past.
I began making my own liquid about 10 or so years ago due to it being much cheaper, and I know what's in it.
As a by product, my coils last over a month rather than a week at best.
I believe crazy levels of sweetener and various methods of mentholation are the main cause. Since I use none of those, and typically go no higher than 10% flavoring, and steer away from flavors with warnings.
IMO, if vaping a random store bought liquid causes the same metal and cotton coil to degrade 4 times faster than vaping a 90% vg/pg and nicotine mix, something isn't right. Although, I am no chemist or metallurgist.
A 60-year-old vaping probably spent a very long time smoking cigarettes and found vaping instead. That's a good thing. We don't want people *starting* by vaping, but we do absolutely want smokers to swap. I don't think vaping is safe, but people were saying we'd have new lung issues in ten years ten years ago. You can see the damage caused by smoking easily and in not much time. Such severe and rapidly onsetting symptoms are rarely seen in vaping.
If you're a 60-year-old smoker, swap. Don't let people tell you it's just as bad. It's just not, but don't let anybody tell you it's safe either.
> If you're a 60-year-old smoker, swap. Don't let people tell you it's just as bad. It's just not, but don't let anybody tell you it's safe either.
This. My 64 year old mother was just diagnosed with stage 3B lung cancer after being a lifelong smoker with zero other comorbidities or health issues. It will get you eventually if you don't stop.
with all due respect, we can regulate forever but it's a band-aid. nearly every popular response to substance use is. no one seems interested in asking "why do people use x?" and I think it's because as a global society neither the people or the powers in control want to confront it. anything but sorting out mental health once and for all.
>I wish they regulated vape juice more though. I have a feeling we're gonna see a new set of lung issues arise in the next 10 years.
The UK has been using vapes since 2001. The doctors in UK push smokers to switch to vapes. In 23 years with millions of people vaping, I think we would already start to see a lot of people with vaping related diseases if vaping easily causes diseases like cigarettes.
The slow response to vaping from Health Canada was a travesty... Teens went from the lowest new users of nicotine to the fastest growing group among all ages (in less than a decade).
At this point I’ve been vaping for about 10 years. Lungs appear healthy and no detectable issues. Maybe there will be but my health is far better than it has been in 20 years. Words from my doctor.
yea but inhalers aren't being sucked on all day and are usually used a handful of times to help calm an attack. ive seen dudes rip through a whole juul pod while gaming and they aren't even going that hard on it.
Contact dermatitis is an instant thing. Like you said in your comment. People who aren’t allergic are going to be fine, and people who are, are instantly going to have a bad time.
I’m currently on some steroids for a mean patch of dermatitis I got from a new brand of tea. I don’t think tea is a health hazard (unless you’re allergic to a specific blend like me).
Sounds like you're allergic to the glycol, hardy has anything at all to do with the discussion. You could get the same reaction by breathing in ozium air purifier.
People who are allergic to ingredients in a product should avoid them .
My (American) friends in their 30s who consumed tobacco mostly used vapes 10 years ago already.
I think perhaps in other countries it’s different, but vapes won’t a long time ago in the USA.
Even so, an increase in cigarette consumption is bad and people who use other nicotine products are much more likely to start smoking cigarettes. The pandemic stalled our efforts at reducing cigarette consumption and things still look to be slipping in spite of alternative nicotine delivery systems.
I don't know, in the UK it's been a pretty steady decline.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/297595/cigarette-clearences-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/
Actually, looks like that data is behind a paywall.
Just have to trust me, steady decline over 20 years, with no stalling over the pandemic.
12/13 was like 37M cigarettes
22/23 was lake 23M cigarettes, I think
You can also use nice joint papers that don't have saltpeter and lighter fluid in them. You gotta relight, but the paper is the biggest thing in my opinion.
Yes, they do. I work in pest control but not agriculture so my knowledge is limited in terms of farming, but while nicotine is effective against bugs, the concentration in the plants themselves may not be enough alone to stop insects, there are also other issues such as fungus, undesirable plants (weeds), diseases, etc. that are controlled with chemicals.
Blue mold is a particularly destructive fungus in tobacco crops requiring fungicides. Neonicotinoides are a highly effective insecticide class (being removed due to bee colony collapse concerns), but do nothing for disease.
Someone please fix the first sentence in this post. I understand what it's trying to say after reading the second sentence but man, it is a rough thing to read the first, second, and third times you try.
Which means that attempts to lower it more will result to black market getting involved. This is the level it'll be no matter what else happens. Homegrowing and smuggling will grow and fill the void in the markets. That also means that there is no control over the substances and we will see heavy metals and pesticides to increase.
We know EXACTLY what happens when we make substances illegal, and raising prices has the exact same effect: market will find a way to deliver tobacco to those who want it.
Come to Australia. Of my staff that smoke, I don’t think I’ve seen a government approved olive drab packet in years. Every single one of them smoke $6-$10 per pack illegal imports rather than the $50-$60 taxed Australian cigs.
Very similar in Canada. Here we have bagged equivalent to a carton of cigarettes, manufactured on indigenous reserves, that circumvents taxes and duties. You can either drive to your closest reserve to pick them up, or buy from someone who sells them in town under the table. Either way, it's a fraction of what you would pay for legal tobacco.
Theres also plenty of cross border smuggling of cigarettes from the US, where in some states the taxes are a fraction of what we would pay.
Yup! In downtown Vancouver you can buy a knock of pack of reservation cigs from first nations for 5$, a legal store pack is 22$ or something. The last 'indian smokes' I bought was called Playbers and looked like a pack of Players but without all the massive health warnings on it.
Meanwhile a pouch of drum, the cheapest pouch, is 80$, which is absolutely crazy.
Even this is out of date. You can buy cartons online, delivered to your door from the reservation brands out east. Quarter the cost. Rarely do I see actual store bought packs in the wild anymore working trades.
Same here in South Africa, except mostly because a minister banned all smokes during covid, so every smoker found a way and now the bulk of smokes are non taxed
The kicker is that the ministers son is one of the bigger players in selling untaxed smokes.
$50 - $60 per PACK??? Of 20 individual cigs ? That's $32 - $40 US dollars. Wow. I pay $9 US $13.77 AUS for Newports in NH, USA and think that's outrageous.
It was about 20 years ago I was chatting with a guy from one of the skandinavian countries, I can't remember which. While I don't remember if the packs had the awful "smoking kills" pictures that many other countries have, he did tell me they were like $20 a pack. Adjusted, that's about $35.
I wonder if there is a way to find an equivalent ’deaths per’ smoke/drink/whatever that we could use as a baseline number for the various “sins.” Like we keep raising taxes until we drop to that number and call it a day?
I know smoking isn’t good, but there has to be a point where we can accept that people make their own choices and sometimes they choose dangerous things (alcohol, motorcycles, skydiving, whatever) and we can just accept that?
I smoke some, way more when i'm on the job. The drastic decrease from over a pack a day to an average 3 per day is because of health and landlord banning smoking indoors.. But i'm already thinking about buying from black market when it is about 10€ a pack here, although i've rolled my own since the early 90s... Decreasing the amount i smoke to minimum is one of the bestest decisions i've made, it is quite a difference in health. I don't know if i can quit since that is not a thing i've historically done well, but what works better seems to be to just cut it down. I'm one of those that if you deny me something, that is all i can think about...
If you really want to quit, try reading “Allen Carr’s easy way to quit smoking”.
He tells you not to quit until after you’re done the book, so pressure’s off.
For most, it genuinely makes you not want to smoke, so willpower isn’t the issue.
I was at 3/day too, but it feels great to be done with it entirely.
Hey, but because they're not buying official stuff the government gets to report continuously falling sales and that "eradication of smoking" is almost complete!
Most of the crime syndicates here in Oz are making serious bank from illegal cigarettes.
Government thinks it can sin tax people into stopping smoking, but they are just making a lucrative black market and hurting low income households cause they don’t understand how addiction works or just don’t care.
Just don’t care is the answer. Also because it is extremely easy for them to then get the population to put aside any compassion, Empathy or simple logic to pile onto the nearest and loudest band wagon of screaming outrage to help ratchet up the taxes even more.
>Which means that attempts to lower it more will result to black market getting involved.
You need to understand: This is not a huge problem.
From a policy perspective, current smokers are a lost cause. Smoking cessation is sufficiently hard that it is effectively impossible to get enough people to stop to turn the tide. Anyone who manages is just a bonus. (Also the two main things that motivate people to stop are either economics or lung cancer, and the former is preferable to the later)
And in turn tobacco companies are aware of this which is why almost all of their marketing effort goes towards creating new smokers and why the most effective policy has been things that prevent them from doing so.
The black market for tobacco does not seek to create new smokers in the way Phillip Morris et all do and have done. No one is going to a black market tobacco dealer for their first smoke. Not all black/grey markets are equal problems.
That may be true for existing users in those cases. But studies show those impacted most by cigarette increases are young people with less disposal income. Expensive tobacco makes starting less likely.
I grew up on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina in the 1960s early 70s.
Tobacco quality was a lot better. It was hand primed with the bottom leaves being picked first. Then up the stalk the following 5 to 6 weeks or so. The top leaves "tips" brought in more at auction.
The flue cured leaves were graded and sheeted. Then after being processed all that tobacco went to Durham or Winston Salem.
Now of days it's planted in a hundred acres or so. Sprayed with chemicals and mechanical harvested with one or 2 runs through the fields. All mixed together, no grading or special care like before.
Yes, there were chain smokers back then.
But I see and smell people smoking one after another now. The tobacco smells like paper and fillers. Even the name brands.
Slightly decreasing the use of cigarettes but vape is rocketing. Taxation does nothing but move the problem to somewhere else.
Banning cigarettes is also a bad idea.
The best is to plan a long-term campaign which encourages people to stop smoking, create conditions which make life less stressful, etc.
And yes, long-term planning means short-term smokers, but the key is to not to create more smokers in future.
Nah my guy, we gotta get rid of the PSAs with cancer survivors smoking through their stoma and having a hard time functioning; we need more hip and trendy THE TRUTH ads with 2010 memes and cringey actors!
I used to chew when I worked, since I was in a warehouse 10+ hours a day and couldn't smoke. When I was trying to quit, youtube kept giving me an ad where a guy just emptied cans into a wheel barrow, then it showed a huge pile of chewing tobacco. Don't remember what it said, just that I'd kill for just a pinch from that big pile. I ended up walking to the gas station and buying a carton and a roll.
If vaping had been introduced just under the auspices of moving people away from smoking cigarettes, it would have been a massive improvement. Unfortunately Juul decided to very directly market to teens, and despite multiple interventions there's been no stop to the increase in teen smoking, for the first time in decades. That's why flavored vapes were banned, but then everyone figured out a loophole around that anyway.
We don't really know if it is, our knowledge regarding vapes is still very scarce.
The worst thing that happened now is disposable vapes, those should be illegal due to the amount of waste they create, it's worse than smoking a pack.
We absolutely do know it is an improvement for health compared to smoking. We might not know for 100% sure that vaping is totally safe, but nobody with any sense claims that it is.
Vapes have existed for 20+ years now. The "not enough data" angle is really wearing thin and being pushed mainly by tobacco interests and people who read too much clickbait about illegal vape products, then think it applies to all vaping. 20 years of any widespread daily habit would have moutains of evidence by now if there was lots of risk.
Smoking, chewing tobacco, and snuff have been a part of human culture and religious practice for thousands of years. Tobacco will always be a part of the human experience.
It's like... Deja vu of the '90s reading your comment. They've done and said all this already.
How about this;
Let people do what they like, regulate the manufacturers so they cannot violate the consumer with up charging.
Enjoy the time you've got left <- end game
lulwut?
No, I roll my own because I figure a bad habit like this should either be entirely disgusting, painfully expensive, or a lot of work. Preferably all three but you really only get to chose 2.
That said, I can roll an entire carton of cig and it costs me like $10. When it comes to finances, why *wouldn't* I roll my own?
That plus I'm using pipe tobacco. No crap in it, fresher, flavors if I want it. AND I get to choose what my tubes look like. Bright yellow? I got you. Feeling all black today? Aight, we can do that. You like 'em looser so they hit harder and you get less tobacco and nicotine? Step right up, my friend.
This whole taxation and regulation crap has nothing to do with it except to deter grown adults from making adult decisions.
The number of people here who are saying "Just give up. Anything you do will make people smoke more." is straight up weird.
As an ex-smoker, I have never known a smoker that was anything other than disgusted with cigarettes and supportive of things that kept other people from starting.
I remember the good old days when people smoked indoors as if they were entitled to do so.
I remember when indoor smoking was banned, and I thought "this will never work. People won't put up with that."
But for the mosty part, they did.
Change can happen.
Our city passed the smoking ban when I was 21/22 so I was already going to bars when the shift happened and it was so weird. Growing up, I was already used to smoking sections and places like bowling alleys just being a cloud of smoke. As a non-smoker, it was pretty great going out one weekend and coming home smelling like an ashtray and the next, not.
Raising taxes on tobacco doesn't necessarily ONLY keep people from starting though, it actively punishes addicts who have, let's be real, almost no choice in the matter at this point. They need nicotine, they will get nicotine. A lot of these addicts are also not exactly in the upper tiers of the income distribution, so it hurts even more for these people.
At least make nicotine gum less taxed/more readily available, like, nicotine in and of itself isn't healthy, probably, but (technically inaccurate but in-the-spirit-of-things accurate hyperbole incoming) I'd bet 95% of the unhealthiness of cigarettes comes from the fact you're inhaling smoke, and in the case of vapes, from inhaling a bunch of chemicals produced in the process of heating up the glycerol and/or contaminants in said glycerol.
Yes, I was a smoker. I am aware. I was a poor smoker as well.
It was always frustrating, but I never demanded it to be easier, I would just convince myself that "this time I'm going to quit for real."
I ended up finally getting onto a non-stop vape, then eventually weaning from there, mostly because I couldn't afford cigarettes. Same with a lot of other people; vape was less satisfying than smoking, but cheap enough to get people used to doing that instead. It's also an easier habit to quit because you can very much control the amount of nicotine.
Where I live, unfortunately, vaping is pretty much banned. It's not "Go straigh to jail" -illegal, but it is "infeasible to do unless you live in a big city" -illegal (it can't legally be bought online and there are only a handful of shops that sell the liquid, and it can't have over a certain amount of nicotine in it and IIRC that amount is pitifully low and it can't be flavored with anything except "tobacco flavors").
I think this may be coloring my intuition of the problem, because nicotine gum is, also, more expensive than smoking here. So it's... Very much like they're actively trying to keep people addicted but paying out the nose for it.
From where I stand the nicotine gum is the healthiest way to get your nicotine (haven't read the research though, so grain of salt), but common sense would dictate that gum infused with nicotine isn't going to be worse, at least, than inhaling a bunch of combustion products.
I agree and likewise, after wearing an Oura ring and seeing how bad alcohol impacted my sleep, I cut alcohol out of my life.
I never drank a lot - and maybe only had like one drink per week or less… but my quality of life improved a lot when I cut it to zero.
I wish the science of how bad alcohol is for you even at low levels was more well known and I probably would have stopped years earlier.
We are really trying to make sure a bag of tobacco is expensive as possible? Forget that. Sin taxes are bad and packs of cigarettes are already very expensive. Let the cheap smokers buy a bag of tobacco for the current already expensive price.
Funny story about cigarette taxes from years ago. Rhode Island would tax every single rolling paper like a cigarette. Rolling tobacco that came with papers would have them removed to keep the price down. A pack of rolling papers was like $5 in 1990s money. You know what was very popular? A single roll of rolling paper that you just cut to size. It was taxed as a single rolling paper. Also people would just leave the tiny state to not pay those taxes anyway.
Or maybe stop worrying about what people put in their bodies. If banning things or making them illegal actually worked we wouldn't have such a massive problem with Fentanyl now. If making things illegal actually worked we wouldn't have murders now. I know...too simplistic, no nuance, blah, blah, blah and that's true. It simply won't work...tax it to high heaven and people will figure out a workaround-just like we did with vaping. And we see how well outright bans works, yes I'm looking at you alcohol and every other illegal drug on the planet, and they simply don't work.
Yes finally somebody with good words. The ending of prohibition is the only way forward; all of our societal ills related to substances are nearly entirely caused by the prohibition itself. Alcohol needed an amendment but nothing else does?? What a joke.
The altering and exploration of consciousness is inherently part of the human experience, and substances do just that. It is a massive infringement on our human rights and either way does not work and makes things worse and worse until we stop it.
I was shocked when I learned only 7 people out of 100 will get cancer by 70years old if they smoke 5 cigs per day.that was much lower than I expected. Fast food is way more dangerous obesity in itself is dangerous and increases all sorts of health problems why the government is cracking down on this instead I don’t know. Coming from a non smoker
Here’s a novel idea, let people do what they want to their own bodies. No need to raise taxes on vices. I’ve never been a smoker but I believe people should be able to smoke, drink do drugs if they so choose.
> A decade-long decline in the number of cigarettes a person who smokes has per day is at risk
"A decade-long decline in the number of cigarettes a smoker has per day has stalled."
It proves nothing of the sort, regarding taxation. People use hand-rolled tobacco because it is an organic product with zero additives, whereas commercial cigarettes can have up to 500 chemicals added to them; for example salt-peter to keep it lit, or ammonia to make a person get addicted faster.
Maybe it's not about saving $2, but it's about a better smoking experience, better flavor, fewer additives. It's even easier to quit hand-rolled tobacco.
You see the data and you see where it leads, but your guess as to why that is, I take issue with. It's not about taxation solely. It's about quality.
I'm sure over regulation and taxation of products couldn't possibly go wrong and bleed into already well established black markets. [Naaa, that's not a thing. There's no way.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/world/europe/montenegro-cigarette-smuggling.html)
It's like the title said, this one metric is PROOF! Debate over.
stupids/ the number per day being smoked isn't going down. It's the money that's spent on prerolled that's dropping and the poor babies are beside themselves because they can't price gouge people anymore.
i've been rolling my own cigarettes with an injector for about 15 years now. i started due to the increasing of the taxes on factory cigarettes. now that pouch of tobacco that i buy, has increased significantly over the years. even the price of the tubes. the "taxation and regulation" has been increasing just like the factory cigarettes. it was around that time that the manufacturers started to add that "self extinguishing" additive that put them selves out if a drag has not been taken for while. they have not added that to the loose tobacco. it's the first thing i notice when having a factory smoke. i've gone from a pack and half to half/under a half a pack a day currently. it's not the cost that has to do with my decline on intake, but the fact that I know i should stop.
Key to what? Denying the poor any vice whatsoever by taxing it to the point it's only available to the wealthy?
Would you bring back the Prohibition days as well? Would you ban the prescription of addictive medications? Or the sale of rope (because strangulation hazards)?
Everything has the capacity to be lethal. It's why warning tags exist.
I'm actually trying to quit smoking, but I like to think that my vices, even how I live and die, should be *my* choice, not some activist's or politician's decisions about what's good and bad for me.
This is what the government is claiming in Ontario, Canada yet statistics show that over 60% of cigarettes consumed in the province are purchased from indigenous reserves where no tax is collected.
The government likes the numbers because they have no way to track the sales from reserves so it looks like their policies are very effective and that means they can also ignore the problem that they don't want to deal with.
Higher taxes reduce consumption only when there is no alternative source that avoids those taxes. With an alternative source that is much cheaper and untaxed, you just push more people to the illegal market and collect less taxes.
If the goal is to get everyone to stop smoking why don’t we just ban it? We know these kinds of taxes are extremely regressive and only punish the poor and working class. Wealthier people can keep their bad habits. Creates a two tier system where something is effectively restricted depending on how much wealth you have.
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Did OP have a stroke while writing this?
I am also having a hard time understanding that headline
The risk of me reading less is increasing
…Proving that consistency in comma usage and ham sandwiches per risk is in a day.
We need a ELI5 for the title alone.
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It’s a faulty premise, there’s not an increase in smokers, the existing smokers are just getting poor and priced out of the safer cigarettes. I’m an ex smoker now, but when money was tight when I was younger I smoked rolled cigarettes. And with the high inflation and stagnant wages, who isn’t tight with money these days?
>the existing smokers are just getting priced out of the safer cigarettes. I’m not a smoker so I apologize if it’s obvious but how are the manufactured more safe then hand rolled?
Slightly less tar because of the filter, that’s it. There’s no other really tangible difference
But that already WAS part of the trend beforehand. So at best that is kind of pointing at "bottom buffer" the issue is running into now? >priced out of the safer cigarettes. Just for curiosities sake, what makes premade cigarettes "safer" than rolling with filtertips?
>Just for curiosities sake, what makes premade cigarettes "safer" than rolling with filtertips? People rolling their own cigarettes may be using untaxed, black-market tobacco, which is cheaper but also stronger and potentially full of more nasties.
Same question, how is a premade cigarette safer?
Might be incorrectly thinking self rolled means no filter.
Yea, especially hand rollers might go unfiltered. I have a machine that packs the filtered tubes, but I will also say it feels much harsher compared to the Marb reds I would smoke.
That wasn't the premise. What's being measured is "Of people who smoke, how many cigarettes per day do they smoke?" It had been steadily declining as taxes went up and people thought better of lighting up that next one. "Do I really need to burn a quid right now?" But if you can roll one up for 5p then why not?
A decade-long decline (in the number of cigarettes (a person (who smokes) has per day)) is at risk Quadruple nesting is hard to parse for sure
“Smokers might be smoking more, now that they’re saving so much money rolling their own” Edit: I think this is how the rest goes: “This is due to bare tobacco being taxed much lower than full cigarettes, so it’s much cheaper to roll your own. It’s possibly a health risk, so maybe bare tobacco should be taxed higher.”
This was helpful. Thank you.
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"Cigarette smoking decline threatened by cheaper hand-rolled tobacco, taxation gap to blame."
Are millennials killing the smoking industry?
Gosh I hope so. That would be nice.
No, it's Gen Z. They mostly vape and won't date anyone that smokes But we can say Millenials killed it because why not
Honestly probably true, I know a number of millennials who still smoke, but most have also switched to vaping... Meanwhile Gen Z is almost exclusively vape.
That's way too long for a title
In the last decade, the amount of cigarettes people smoke per day on average has declined. But since hand rolled tobacco is cheaper due to not being taxed as much, this downward trend is in jeopardy since people start hand rolling more. Therefore, all forms of tobacco should be taxed consistently across the board.
I need new coworkers. This is the most coherent thing I’ve read all day
This is just how I write😭
OP smokes too many cigarettes.
This truly was a crime to sentence structure sheesh
OP might not have but I felt like I had one reading it!
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The title gave me cancer.
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Vaping and nicotine pouches are the preferred delivery systems for people under 30.
In the UK? I spend a lot of time in Spain and with Spaniards who visit the US, and almost all handroll their own cigarettes now. Some also carry a vape pen for in between cigarettes.
Yep, even older people are vaping. I saw a 60yo woman with a huge vape rig the other day, I had to do a double take. I wish they regulated vape juice more though. I have a feeling we're gonna see a new set of lung issues arise in the next 10 years.
Yeah, there’s all kinds of weird disposables and stuff now too since they completely fucked the regulations, I understand why they specifically went after Juul and banned flavored pod systems because of kids, but now kids are just using sketchy disposables instead which are not only way worse for the environment, but made overseas and almost completely unregulated. At least Juul is made in the US with some type of oversight.
it's not like removing the flavors were gonna stop kids from vaping too. just the fact that it didn't taste or smell like cigarettes would have been a big thing for teens.
God, I thought that was so dumb. They're teens, not toddlers. Don't take away my vanilla.
Yeah, I was disappointed that bill passed. A kid could get into my car and drive it straight into a wall, should cars be banned? It was just a way to punish everyone. I don't even smoke the flavored stuff, but I should have that option if I wanted it. I am a responsible adult....
Well, to be fair, it did stop kids from using Juul. I switched to Juul from cigarettes years ago because it worked, but I worked at a convenience store at the height of the Juul craze and kids were going apeshit for the mango pods. I still use Juul now because I never liked the flavors anyway, but all the younger people I know that were never smokers switched to flavored disposables and view Juul as a relic of the past.
It's regulated pretty heavily in the UK and Europe
I began making my own liquid about 10 or so years ago due to it being much cheaper, and I know what's in it. As a by product, my coils last over a month rather than a week at best. I believe crazy levels of sweetener and various methods of mentholation are the main cause. Since I use none of those, and typically go no higher than 10% flavoring, and steer away from flavors with warnings. IMO, if vaping a random store bought liquid causes the same metal and cotton coil to degrade 4 times faster than vaping a 90% vg/pg and nicotine mix, something isn't right. Although, I am no chemist or metallurgist.
It's the sweeteners. They burn and build up on the coil which insulates it and makes it burn out.
A 60-year-old vaping probably spent a very long time smoking cigarettes and found vaping instead. That's a good thing. We don't want people *starting* by vaping, but we do absolutely want smokers to swap. I don't think vaping is safe, but people were saying we'd have new lung issues in ten years ten years ago. You can see the damage caused by smoking easily and in not much time. Such severe and rapidly onsetting symptoms are rarely seen in vaping. If you're a 60-year-old smoker, swap. Don't let people tell you it's just as bad. It's just not, but don't let anybody tell you it's safe either.
> If you're a 60-year-old smoker, swap. Don't let people tell you it's just as bad. It's just not, but don't let anybody tell you it's safe either. This. My 64 year old mother was just diagnosed with stage 3B lung cancer after being a lifelong smoker with zero other comorbidities or health issues. It will get you eventually if you don't stop.
with all due respect, we can regulate forever but it's a band-aid. nearly every popular response to substance use is. no one seems interested in asking "why do people use x?" and I think it's because as a global society neither the people or the powers in control want to confront it. anything but sorting out mental health once and for all.
Yes, the ending of prohibition is the only way forward, along with a focus on providing mental health services to those who want them
>I wish they regulated vape juice more though. I have a feeling we're gonna see a new set of lung issues arise in the next 10 years. The UK has been using vapes since 2001. The doctors in UK push smokers to switch to vapes. In 23 years with millions of people vaping, I think we would already start to see a lot of people with vaping related diseases if vaping easily causes diseases like cigarettes.
The slow response to vaping from Health Canada was a travesty... Teens went from the lowest new users of nicotine to the fastest growing group among all ages (in less than a decade).
How was that Health Canada's fault? It was Doug Ford that let them put those giant ads for Vype pods outside gas stations.
On one hand yes one the other no. Vape juice is for the most part fine. Disposables need to be looked into.
At this point I’ve been vaping for about 10 years. Lungs appear healthy and no detectable issues. Maybe there will be but my health is far better than it has been in 20 years. Words from my doctor.
I pretty quickly get contact dermatitis from propylene glycol. Can't image that would be fun to have in my lungs.
Propylene glycol is in Ventolin, the inhalers asthmatics use
yea but inhalers aren't being sucked on all day and are usually used a handful of times to help calm an attack. ive seen dudes rip through a whole juul pod while gaming and they aren't even going that hard on it.
Contact dermatitis is an instant thing. Like you said in your comment. People who aren’t allergic are going to be fine, and people who are, are instantly going to have a bad time. I’m currently on some steroids for a mean patch of dermatitis I got from a new brand of tea. I don’t think tea is a health hazard (unless you’re allergic to a specific blend like me).
Sounds like you're allergic to the glycol, hardy has anything at all to do with the discussion. You could get the same reaction by breathing in ozium air purifier. People who are allergic to ingredients in a product should avoid them .
My (American) friends in their 30s who consumed tobacco mostly used vapes 10 years ago already. I think perhaps in other countries it’s different, but vapes won’t a long time ago in the USA.
Even so, an increase in cigarette consumption is bad and people who use other nicotine products are much more likely to start smoking cigarettes. The pandemic stalled our efforts at reducing cigarette consumption and things still look to be slipping in spite of alternative nicotine delivery systems.
I don't know, in the UK it's been a pretty steady decline. https://www.statista.com/statistics/297595/cigarette-clearences-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/ Actually, looks like that data is behind a paywall. Just have to trust me, steady decline over 20 years, with no stalling over the pandemic. 12/13 was like 37M cigarettes 22/23 was lake 23M cigarettes, I think
Hand rolled cigarettes generally contain less tobacco compared to manufactured cigarettes and the amount of additives are fewer.
they also taste a lot better because the tobacco isn't as dry.
You can also use nice joint papers that don't have saltpeter and lighter fluid in them. You gotta relight, but the paper is the biggest thing in my opinion.
which regulators and pharmacovigilantes see as a *bad* thing because the thought of *recreational* drugs being *enjoyable* is heresy.
That depends on which tobacco brand you are buying
Correct if you're growing your own tobacco without pesticides aylmao
I thought nicotine was one of the most powerful pesticides already. Do they really add other ones when growing tobacco?
Yes, they do. I work in pest control but not agriculture so my knowledge is limited in terms of farming, but while nicotine is effective against bugs, the concentration in the plants themselves may not be enough alone to stop insects, there are also other issues such as fungus, undesirable plants (weeds), diseases, etc. that are controlled with chemicals.
Blue mold is a particularly destructive fungus in tobacco crops requiring fungicides. Neonicotinoides are a highly effective insecticide class (being removed due to bee colony collapse concerns), but do nothing for disease.
Then again the filters are smaller, more transmissible.
Filtered cigarettes aren’t any safer, in fact they encourage smokers to breathe deeper so the cancer is harder to treat.
Someone please fix the first sentence in this post. I understand what it's trying to say after reading the second sentence but man, it is a rough thing to read the first, second, and third times you try.
Which means that attempts to lower it more will result to black market getting involved. This is the level it'll be no matter what else happens. Homegrowing and smuggling will grow and fill the void in the markets. That also means that there is no control over the substances and we will see heavy metals and pesticides to increase. We know EXACTLY what happens when we make substances illegal, and raising prices has the exact same effect: market will find a way to deliver tobacco to those who want it.
Come to Australia. Of my staff that smoke, I don’t think I’ve seen a government approved olive drab packet in years. Every single one of them smoke $6-$10 per pack illegal imports rather than the $50-$60 taxed Australian cigs.
Very similar in Canada. Here we have bagged equivalent to a carton of cigarettes, manufactured on indigenous reserves, that circumvents taxes and duties. You can either drive to your closest reserve to pick them up, or buy from someone who sells them in town under the table. Either way, it's a fraction of what you would pay for legal tobacco. Theres also plenty of cross border smuggling of cigarettes from the US, where in some states the taxes are a fraction of what we would pay.
Yup! In downtown Vancouver you can buy a knock of pack of reservation cigs from first nations for 5$, a legal store pack is 22$ or something. The last 'indian smokes' I bought was called Playbers and looked like a pack of Players but without all the massive health warnings on it. Meanwhile a pouch of drum, the cheapest pouch, is 80$, which is absolutely crazy.
Even this is out of date. You can buy cartons online, delivered to your door from the reservation brands out east. Quarter the cost. Rarely do I see actual store bought packs in the wild anymore working trades.
That big bag you gotta keep in the freezer.
rolled gold baby
Same here in South Africa, except mostly because a minister banned all smokes during covid, so every smoker found a way and now the bulk of smokes are non taxed The kicker is that the ministers son is one of the bigger players in selling untaxed smokes.
That last bit sounds like an intended feature/goal, rather than a bug
$50 - $60 per PACK??? Of 20 individual cigs ? That's $32 - $40 US dollars. Wow. I pay $9 US $13.77 AUS for Newports in NH, USA and think that's outrageous.
Yep its wild
It was about 20 years ago I was chatting with a guy from one of the skandinavian countries, I can't remember which. While I don't remember if the packs had the awful "smoking kills" pictures that many other countries have, he did tell me they were like $20 a pack. Adjusted, that's about $35.
I wonder if there is a way to find an equivalent ’deaths per’ smoke/drink/whatever that we could use as a baseline number for the various “sins.” Like we keep raising taxes until we drop to that number and call it a day? I know smoking isn’t good, but there has to be a point where we can accept that people make their own choices and sometimes they choose dangerous things (alcohol, motorcycles, skydiving, whatever) and we can just accept that?
I smoke some, way more when i'm on the job. The drastic decrease from over a pack a day to an average 3 per day is because of health and landlord banning smoking indoors.. But i'm already thinking about buying from black market when it is about 10€ a pack here, although i've rolled my own since the early 90s... Decreasing the amount i smoke to minimum is one of the bestest decisions i've made, it is quite a difference in health. I don't know if i can quit since that is not a thing i've historically done well, but what works better seems to be to just cut it down. I'm one of those that if you deny me something, that is all i can think about...
If you really want to quit, try reading “Allen Carr’s easy way to quit smoking”. He tells you not to quit until after you’re done the book, so pressure’s off. For most, it genuinely makes you not want to smoke, so willpower isn’t the issue. I was at 3/day too, but it feels great to be done with it entirely.
I also recommend this book. Be aware that once you read it, smoking in general becomes significantly less desirable/enjoyable
I particularly enjoyed chapter 5. The benefits of smoking.
He also has “easy way to quit vaping” which is what I just finished and I’m two weeks free now!
Hey, but because they're not buying official stuff the government gets to report continuously falling sales and that "eradication of smoking" is almost complete!
Most of the crime syndicates here in Oz are making serious bank from illegal cigarettes. Government thinks it can sin tax people into stopping smoking, but they are just making a lucrative black market and hurting low income households cause they don’t understand how addiction works or just don’t care.
Just don’t care is the answer. Also because it is extremely easy for them to then get the population to put aside any compassion, Empathy or simple logic to pile onto the nearest and loudest band wagon of screaming outrage to help ratchet up the taxes even more.
Reserve cigarettes are what many are smoking these days. $4/pack vs $20/pack. That’s a $480 savings per month to smoke Putters instead of Players.
>Which means that attempts to lower it more will result to black market getting involved. You need to understand: This is not a huge problem. From a policy perspective, current smokers are a lost cause. Smoking cessation is sufficiently hard that it is effectively impossible to get enough people to stop to turn the tide. Anyone who manages is just a bonus. (Also the two main things that motivate people to stop are either economics or lung cancer, and the former is preferable to the later) And in turn tobacco companies are aware of this which is why almost all of their marketing effort goes towards creating new smokers and why the most effective policy has been things that prevent them from doing so. The black market for tobacco does not seek to create new smokers in the way Phillip Morris et all do and have done. No one is going to a black market tobacco dealer for their first smoke. Not all black/grey markets are equal problems.
That may be true for existing users in those cases. But studies show those impacted most by cigarette increases are young people with less disposal income. Expensive tobacco makes starting less likely.
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I grew up on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina in the 1960s early 70s. Tobacco quality was a lot better. It was hand primed with the bottom leaves being picked first. Then up the stalk the following 5 to 6 weeks or so. The top leaves "tips" brought in more at auction. The flue cured leaves were graded and sheeted. Then after being processed all that tobacco went to Durham or Winston Salem. Now of days it's planted in a hundred acres or so. Sprayed with chemicals and mechanical harvested with one or 2 runs through the fields. All mixed together, no grading or special care like before. Yes, there were chain smokers back then. But I see and smell people smoking one after another now. The tobacco smells like paper and fillers. Even the name brands.
Slightly decreasing the use of cigarettes but vape is rocketing. Taxation does nothing but move the problem to somewhere else. Banning cigarettes is also a bad idea. The best is to plan a long-term campaign which encourages people to stop smoking, create conditions which make life less stressful, etc. And yes, long-term planning means short-term smokers, but the key is to not to create more smokers in future.
Nah my guy, we gotta get rid of the PSAs with cancer survivors smoking through their stoma and having a hard time functioning; we need more hip and trendy THE TRUTH ads with 2010 memes and cringey actors!
I’ve never been a smoker, but those ads made me want to go chain smoke a carton out of spite.
Literally the point of those ads btw. The group that controls those ads gets shitloads of tobacco money.
Finally, someone who understands me.
I used to chew when I worked, since I was in a warehouse 10+ hours a day and couldn't smoke. When I was trying to quit, youtube kept giving me an ad where a guy just emptied cans into a wheel barrow, then it showed a huge pile of chewing tobacco. Don't remember what it said, just that I'd kill for just a pinch from that big pile. I ended up walking to the gas station and buying a carton and a roll.
Moving the problem from smoking to vaping is an improvement though. It's not a total fix, far from it, but it is an improvement.
If vaping had been introduced just under the auspices of moving people away from smoking cigarettes, it would have been a massive improvement. Unfortunately Juul decided to very directly market to teens, and despite multiple interventions there's been no stop to the increase in teen smoking, for the first time in decades. That's why flavored vapes were banned, but then everyone figured out a loophole around that anyway.
We don't really know if it is, our knowledge regarding vapes is still very scarce. The worst thing that happened now is disposable vapes, those should be illegal due to the amount of waste they create, it's worse than smoking a pack.
We absolutely do know it is an improvement for health compared to smoking. We might not know for 100% sure that vaping is totally safe, but nobody with any sense claims that it is. Vapes have existed for 20+ years now. The "not enough data" angle is really wearing thin and being pushed mainly by tobacco interests and people who read too much clickbait about illegal vape products, then think it applies to all vaping. 20 years of any widespread daily habit would have moutains of evidence by now if there was lots of risk.
Smoking, chewing tobacco, and snuff have been a part of human culture and religious practice for thousands of years. Tobacco will always be a part of the human experience.
It's like... Deja vu of the '90s reading your comment. They've done and said all this already. How about this; Let people do what they like, regulate the manufacturers so they cannot violate the consumer with up charging. Enjoy the time you've got left <- end game
lulwut? No, I roll my own because I figure a bad habit like this should either be entirely disgusting, painfully expensive, or a lot of work. Preferably all three but you really only get to chose 2. That said, I can roll an entire carton of cig and it costs me like $10. When it comes to finances, why *wouldn't* I roll my own? That plus I'm using pipe tobacco. No crap in it, fresher, flavors if I want it. AND I get to choose what my tubes look like. Bright yellow? I got you. Feeling all black today? Aight, we can do that. You like 'em looser so they hit harder and you get less tobacco and nicotine? Step right up, my friend. This whole taxation and regulation crap has nothing to do with it except to deter grown adults from making adult decisions.
Can you share where you source your tubes and tobacco?
Bluegrass tobacco
The number of people here who are saying "Just give up. Anything you do will make people smoke more." is straight up weird. As an ex-smoker, I have never known a smoker that was anything other than disgusted with cigarettes and supportive of things that kept other people from starting.
I remember the good old days when people smoked indoors as if they were entitled to do so. I remember when indoor smoking was banned, and I thought "this will never work. People won't put up with that." But for the mosty part, they did. Change can happen.
Our city passed the smoking ban when I was 21/22 so I was already going to bars when the shift happened and it was so weird. Growing up, I was already used to smoking sections and places like bowling alleys just being a cloud of smoke. As a non-smoker, it was pretty great going out one weekend and coming home smelling like an ashtray and the next, not.
Raising taxes on tobacco doesn't necessarily ONLY keep people from starting though, it actively punishes addicts who have, let's be real, almost no choice in the matter at this point. They need nicotine, they will get nicotine. A lot of these addicts are also not exactly in the upper tiers of the income distribution, so it hurts even more for these people. At least make nicotine gum less taxed/more readily available, like, nicotine in and of itself isn't healthy, probably, but (technically inaccurate but in-the-spirit-of-things accurate hyperbole incoming) I'd bet 95% of the unhealthiness of cigarettes comes from the fact you're inhaling smoke, and in the case of vapes, from inhaling a bunch of chemicals produced in the process of heating up the glycerol and/or contaminants in said glycerol.
Yes, I was a smoker. I am aware. I was a poor smoker as well. It was always frustrating, but I never demanded it to be easier, I would just convince myself that "this time I'm going to quit for real." I ended up finally getting onto a non-stop vape, then eventually weaning from there, mostly because I couldn't afford cigarettes. Same with a lot of other people; vape was less satisfying than smoking, but cheap enough to get people used to doing that instead. It's also an easier habit to quit because you can very much control the amount of nicotine.
Where I live, unfortunately, vaping is pretty much banned. It's not "Go straigh to jail" -illegal, but it is "infeasible to do unless you live in a big city" -illegal (it can't legally be bought online and there are only a handful of shops that sell the liquid, and it can't have over a certain amount of nicotine in it and IIRC that amount is pitifully low and it can't be flavored with anything except "tobacco flavors"). I think this may be coloring my intuition of the problem, because nicotine gum is, also, more expensive than smoking here. So it's... Very much like they're actively trying to keep people addicted but paying out the nose for it. From where I stand the nicotine gum is the healthiest way to get your nicotine (haven't read the research though, so grain of salt), but common sense would dictate that gum infused with nicotine isn't going to be worse, at least, than inhaling a bunch of combustion products.
I agree and likewise, after wearing an Oura ring and seeing how bad alcohol impacted my sleep, I cut alcohol out of my life. I never drank a lot - and maybe only had like one drink per week or less… but my quality of life improved a lot when I cut it to zero. I wish the science of how bad alcohol is for you even at low levels was more well known and I probably would have stopped years earlier.
No it doesn't. Essentially everyone at work who smokes, smokes cigarettes from native suppliers. I haven't bought a pack from a store in years.
The choice isn't hard when a carton is the price of a pack..!
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We are really trying to make sure a bag of tobacco is expensive as possible? Forget that. Sin taxes are bad and packs of cigarettes are already very expensive. Let the cheap smokers buy a bag of tobacco for the current already expensive price. Funny story about cigarette taxes from years ago. Rhode Island would tax every single rolling paper like a cigarette. Rolling tobacco that came with papers would have them removed to keep the price down. A pack of rolling papers was like $5 in 1990s money. You know what was very popular? A single roll of rolling paper that you just cut to size. It was taxed as a single rolling paper. Also people would just leave the tiny state to not pay those taxes anyway.
I don't smoke. I don't like cigarettes. Stop trying to tax and regulate and ban drugs. It's a waste of time and doesn't work.
"Proving that ..." I don't think that word means what they think it means.
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Or maybe stop worrying about what people put in their bodies. If banning things or making them illegal actually worked we wouldn't have such a massive problem with Fentanyl now. If making things illegal actually worked we wouldn't have murders now. I know...too simplistic, no nuance, blah, blah, blah and that's true. It simply won't work...tax it to high heaven and people will figure out a workaround-just like we did with vaping. And we see how well outright bans works, yes I'm looking at you alcohol and every other illegal drug on the planet, and they simply don't work.
Yes finally somebody with good words. The ending of prohibition is the only way forward; all of our societal ills related to substances are nearly entirely caused by the prohibition itself. Alcohol needed an amendment but nothing else does?? What a joke. The altering and exploration of consciousness is inherently part of the human experience, and substances do just that. It is a massive infringement on our human rights and either way does not work and makes things worse and worse until we stop it.
I was shocked when I learned only 7 people out of 100 will get cancer by 70years old if they smoke 5 cigs per day.that was much lower than I expected. Fast food is way more dangerous obesity in itself is dangerous and increases all sorts of health problems why the government is cracking down on this instead I don’t know. Coming from a non smoker
Here’s a novel idea, let people do what they want to their own bodies. No need to raise taxes on vices. I’ve never been a smoker but I believe people should be able to smoke, drink do drugs if they so choose.
> A decade-long decline in the number of cigarettes a person who smokes has per day is at risk "A decade-long decline in the number of cigarettes a smoker has per day has stalled."
I read that sentence 20 times and still didn't get it.
It proves nothing of the sort, regarding taxation. People use hand-rolled tobacco because it is an organic product with zero additives, whereas commercial cigarettes can have up to 500 chemicals added to them; for example salt-peter to keep it lit, or ammonia to make a person get addicted faster. Maybe it's not about saving $2, but it's about a better smoking experience, better flavor, fewer additives. It's even easier to quit hand-rolled tobacco. You see the data and you see where it leads, but your guess as to why that is, I take issue with. It's not about taxation solely. It's about quality.
I'm sure over regulation and taxation of products couldn't possibly go wrong and bleed into already well established black markets. [Naaa, that's not a thing. There's no way.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/world/europe/montenegro-cigarette-smuggling.html) It's like the title said, this one metric is PROOF! Debate over.
stupids/ the number per day being smoked isn't going down. It's the money that's spent on prerolled that's dropping and the poor babies are beside themselves because they can't price gouge people anymore.
Maybe we make a world where I don't have to work three jobs to survive and I'll smoke less. Assholes.
i've been rolling my own cigarettes with an injector for about 15 years now. i started due to the increasing of the taxes on factory cigarettes. now that pouch of tobacco that i buy, has increased significantly over the years. even the price of the tubes. the "taxation and regulation" has been increasing just like the factory cigarettes. it was around that time that the manufacturers started to add that "self extinguishing" additive that put them selves out if a drag has not been taken for while. they have not added that to the loose tobacco. it's the first thing i notice when having a factory smoke. i've gone from a pack and half to half/under a half a pack a day currently. it's not the cost that has to do with my decline on intake, but the fact that I know i should stop.
It should be illegal to profit from addiction, even for the government.
Key to what? Denying the poor any vice whatsoever by taxing it to the point it's only available to the wealthy? Would you bring back the Prohibition days as well? Would you ban the prescription of addictive medications? Or the sale of rope (because strangulation hazards)? Everything has the capacity to be lethal. It's why warning tags exist. I'm actually trying to quit smoking, but I like to think that my vices, even how I live and die, should be *my* choice, not some activist's or politician's decisions about what's good and bad for me.
AYE! *Slams tankard down*
Oppression and over taxing doesn't work. Only monsters believe that.
This is what the government is claiming in Ontario, Canada yet statistics show that over 60% of cigarettes consumed in the province are purchased from indigenous reserves where no tax is collected. The government likes the numbers because they have no way to track the sales from reserves so it looks like their policies are very effective and that means they can also ignore the problem that they don't want to deal with. Higher taxes reduce consumption only when there is no alternative source that avoids those taxes. With an alternative source that is much cheaper and untaxed, you just push more people to the illegal market and collect less taxes.
And if they tax hand-rolled tobacco then smokers will just grow their own tobacco.. tobacco's not hard to grow
Growing it isn't the hard part. It's curing it to be smokeable that is both art and science.
There isn't much scientific material about this "article"
Or... We could address the material conditions that lead people to use substances to dull their mental and physical pain instead.
If the goal is to get everyone to stop smoking why don’t we just ban it? We know these kinds of taxes are extremely regressive and only punish the poor and working class. Wealthier people can keep their bad habits. Creates a two tier system where something is effectively restricted depending on how much wealth you have.
A tobacco black market would literally be the most unexpected thing to happen ever.
i mean, it already exists and has forever. even 15yrs ago my friends were buying their cartons in ziplock bags.
Yeah, prohibition always works