Say a large majority of smokers say suck it to the government and their anti-smoking laws (there is no right to smoke, but these laws are a giant fuck you to private business owners which can only be fought by having smokers choose an alternative means of nicotine) and start using those electronic cigarettes.
What happens to state/federal budgets that no longer have tax revenues collected from tobacco purchases? Show me a matrix that the amount spent by government on tobacco related illnesses is actually more than paid in by tax paying tobacco users.
Are you asking if governments will be worse off if they lose tax revenue because nicotine consumers find untaxed sources of nicotine?
Yes, they will. That’s what always happens if people switch expenditure from heavily-taxed items to lightly-taxed items, or if they simply reduce their spending (as during a recession, for instance).
The loss of revenue could be partly offset by reduced expenditures, but this is unlikely to be a complete offset. Apart from anything else, the loss of revenue is immediate, but expenditure on smoking-related diseases would continue for many years.
If the problem is acute enough - that is to say, if governments are excessively dependent on revenues from that one source - there will have to be some signficant rebalancing of revenue sources/development of new revenue sources/expenditure cuts. But it’s not rocket science; that’s what the budgetary process is for. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented problem. As others have pointed out, taxing all sources of nicotine is an obvious recourse.
If the implicit question is “do governments raise more from taxes on tobacco products than they spend on (additional) services to the users of tobacco products?” then the answer must vary from place to place. But I think the general answer in most western countries is yes, they do, by a large measure.
But this is true of most taxes. The income tax is raised by taxing income earners, but funds services for the entire community, including those who earn little or no income, such as children. Property taxes are levied exclusively on property owners, but go to fund services to all residents, whether or not they own property. And so forth.
The jury seems to be out on the health effects of e-cigarettes, but if they are healthier then regular smoking, I doubt the gov’t will tax them heavily as they do cigarettes. So far as I know, there isn’t any tax on nicotine patches (and indeed, nicotine patch purchases are heavily subsidized through various gov’t programs).
But smoking rates are dropping, one presumes that if the trend continues cigarette taxes will be replaced with other sources of revenue.
When the cigarette tax was increased in Wisconsin (twice in the last 2 budget cycles) one of the major arguments for it was that the money was needed to pay for expenditures of smoking related illnesses, and the increased cost will help smokers quit.
The former being a crock as the Governor raided that fund to pay for other programs. If the latter were true and smokers quit or switched, what would be the argument for raising the taxes in the future? If alternatives were safer the expenditures wouldn’t be needed, and why would someone need help to quit something that isn’t that unhealthy?
Telling a business owner they can’t allow their customers to use a legal product in their establishment is not conductive to living in a free country. The market was taking care of this anyway, with many businesses already going smoke free. I read an article (that I can’t find but I’m still looking so I can post it) that said by the end of the next decade it is estimated that a majority of bars, hotels, and restaurants were going to be smoke free anyway, without government interference.
Wisconsins ban went into effect July 5th, the day after Independence Day. You cannot convince me that’s not a finger in the eye of businesses owners freedom.
And of course the lives and health of the people who work there are expendable, right? After all, if you’re not wealthy enough to actually own a business and have to work for someone else then you’re worthless scum anyway.
And you presume that there ARE available businesses that don’t allow smoking.
Meh, there are thousands of regulations that ban private businesses from exposing their patrons and employees to hazerdous situations or chemicals. They have to put in fire-exits, manage their sewege, can’t have people working with asbestos without respirators, etc. I guess you can argue that in some libertarian paradise these would be unnecessary, but as a practical matter, having the gov’t mandate safety regulations for private businesses is both popular with the public and has made the US a considerably safer place to work over the last century.
I don’t buy that the smoking bans are about that. They’re about a bunch of cry babies who want their own way and didn’t have the patience to allow market forces to work, so they enlisted Big Brother.
So, it is a “giant fuck you” to business owners in much the same sense as laws against murder are a “giant fuck you” to people who might want to kill someone.
All laws restrict someone’s freedom in some way. That it restricts freedom is not a reasonable argument against any particular law.
What’s with the helpless fetishisation of market forces? The best argument in favour of market forces is that they work effectively. If, in any particular circumstance, I get tired of waiting for them to work, then in those circumstances they aren’t working effectively, and I’m going to turn to some more effective alternative such as, you know, collective action through legislation. The “cry babies” are the ones who can’t deal with people actually organising and co-operating to get what they want, rather than waiting around for “market forces” to drop out of heaven and do the job for them.
Comparing using a legal product in a private establishment with the consent of the owner to murder is absurd. You walk in a bar, they allow smoking, you walk out and go to one that doesn’t. What’s so hard about that?
Absolute rubbish. The market was working the way it’s supposed to. Businesses that allowed smoking were thriving, and if they didn’t they either changed or closed. The fact that a majority of bars/restaurants at this point of history were allowing smoking is what makes the legislative cry babies, well…cry babies. The demand at this point was for smoking to be allowed. As that demand dwindles (and it is) businesses will (and were) change to meet the changing demand of it’s customer base. If the cry babies were the majority of the customer base, most of the businesses would have changed already.