Well NZ and several other places beat you to that but legalising prostitution has some benefits for the workers so paying tax is a trade off. Smokers get screwed by the govt, the tobacco industry and THEMSELVES. Lucky us 
Well, if they wanted to make it prohibitive to smoke they could prohibit it, which of course would work as well as legally prohibiting other drugs does. Rasing taxes to astronomical levels would have pretty much the same effect, I suspect: it wouldn’t force anyone to quit smoking any more than Prohibition forced people to quit drinking.
It would just cause a black market in home-grown or smuggled baccy instead of the legal but more expensive alternative - there’d be a massive hike in prices, crime would increase once illegal cigarette revenue became worth stealing and killing over, but smokers would still keep on smoking.
As far as gambling goes, I figure that’s just a tax on stupidity anyway.
I am in favour of national health care and live in a country with national health care. My govt tells me that the frigging ginourmous taxes on cigs are to help me stop smoking. I not sure they ever told me what they do with the money other then suck it into the consolditated fund BUT they regularly tell me that I should stop…as if they would give up the cash cow that smokers are.(One carton of duty free cigs is about NZ$20. One packet is about NZ$10, in anyones language that is a shit load of tax)
Exactly. If it is so bad for the health of EVERYONE (and it obviously is) then just fucking ban it. For now it is a perfectly legal addiction and a way for the govt to make shitloads in tax.
In fairness to my govt they now subsidise patches and other quit-smoking stuff. I wish I had the will power. As much as they want me to give up I can’t seem to do it. I only hope they are doing good things with the money I send up in smoke.
Congrats on quitting Case! I am now ‘considering’ doing the same (considering means thinking about thinking about giving up) 
.Of course I have done that before, many times but your thread was inspiring.
Thank’ee. I’m not out of danger by a long way yet, but I’m grimly determined to stick this one out to the end.
You could always move to Canada. $9.50 a pack last time I looked.
They already post health warnings on cigarettes. Obviously, smokers don’t give a damn about their health or the health of those around them, yet they bitch and moan at sin taxes. They can’t help it, they say, they’re addicts. Maybe we could nip this in the bud by posting warnings on cigarette packaging that says, “If you take up smoking now and smoke a pack a day for forty years, at today’s rate of taxation you will have paid $(insane sum of money) to the government.”
People generally care more about their money than about their well-being.
It’s nuts. I was back in Penn to visit my Wifes family over Thanksgiving.
I wanted to grab a 12 pack of beer.
Couldn’t do it. At a beer distributer, the least amout you can buy is a case. Can’t buy a 12.
You can go to a bar and buy a 6 pack I think. A ‘to go’. Yeah, that’s a real good idea.
That’s what? $1.50 American?
runs
A nice simplistic answer.
But the reality is that bans Do. Not. Work.
We saw this with Prohibition, and an outright ban on smoking would just lead to mass defiance and an increase in organized crime.
As long as people are what they are, smoking will exist. You can warn indulgers about the risk until you’re blue in face, but they’ll keep right on. If society is paying the costs for these activities, it’s hard to argue they don’t have a right to tax smokers to make back some of their losses, even if the taxes and the expenses aren’t directly linked (or, as in the case of the tobacco companies lawsuit settlement, many states saw an income extravaganza rather than a chance to plow most of the dough back into health initiatives).
Ohioans will soon vote on whether to ban smoking in restaurants, bars etc. statewide. I will support that measure and it sure isn’t about the money, honey (as I think duffer knows, a sizable chunk of my income as a pathologist comes from diagnosing lung, bladder and other cancers resulting from smoking).
Y’know, that’s an excellent idea: the trouble with smoking is that you start when you’re in your teens, and think that you’re 12 feet tall and bullet-proof - by the time you figure you’re not, it’s too late, you’re addicted. No amount of health warnings will do anything for a cocky 17 year old.
But the money side - I’m trying to quit at the moment, and worked out in my my “giving up” thread in MPSIMS that I’ve wasted over $35,000 trying to kill myself. Maybe if you did print that on the side of a pack it might register more with kids: “If you do this for 10 years, you’ll have wasted the price of a new car.”
I smoke (right now) and I’m not all that upset about “sin taxes”.
What bugs me is the general anger people have toward smokers.
I can think of plenty of things people who don’t smoke cigarettes do that might drive up costs for me. There are all your anti-depressants and pain killers that you might be on which manifests in my insurance rates. Nobody knows what the long term effects of those are yet. Obviously there are those who don’t eat healthy, drive in PA on motorcycles without helmets, speed, cross the street without looking both ways, drive SUVs, don’t recycle, litter, don’t put your shopping carts away, don’t dress warm enough in winter and spread germs because you don’t wash your hands properly or at all.
I get baffled when people spend thousands of dollars on beanie babies or X-boxes because it shows the government just how much extra money you’re willing to squander.
It’s the price of living in a “free” society. This anger stuff is just us scrambling for hind tit in a rich country and I’m just not going to be involved in that.
On a side note AirmanDoors, This thread made me think of a Jim Morrison quote you might appreciate: “Those who race toward death, those who worry, those who wait.”
I guess they’re all taxable.
Light entertainment: I recall a piece… I think about the northern states… with very high sin taxes. Apparently, the states are upset because the money they’re making from the cigarette taxes are going down. Because people are smoking less. Yep.
A tax on sin is a subsidy for virtue.
That sounds like something Ambrose Bierce would say. 
The question I have is, what taxes are ‘better’ taxes than ‘sin taxes’?
Even if you believe that all taxes are evil, and your state government should spend 30% less than it does, the remaining 70% still has to come from somewhere. So, where do you think it should come from?
Should it come all from one big tax, or should the load be spread out over a number of smaller taxes? And what should that/those taxes be?
ISTM that taxing cigarette and alcohol sales is a reasonable source for part of a state government’s revenues. What would you rather have taxed (either at all, or at a higher rate) instead?
I think Sin taxes are wonderful as they are one of the few taxes where it’s purely and 100% voluntary. Don’t want to pay them? Don’t smoke, drinke or gamble. I’d rather they be higher and other taxes lower. I’d alos like to see the “Gas-guzzler” taxes higher, too- another 99% voluntary tax.
This is something that cuts across party lines. I’m not from PA, but as best as I can research, the tobacco tax was raised in 2002 by a Republican:
Governor Mark Schweiker and the Pennsylvania Legislature have taken an important step toward protecting the state’s kids and taxpayers from the devastating toll of tobacco by agreeing to increase the state’s cigarette tax. Their budget agreement would increase the cigarette tax by 69 cents to $1.00 per pack and tax smokeless tobacco products for the first time in state history.
“By 69 cents to $1.00”, which works out to eleventyseven percent, if I do the math correctly.
And was raised again in 2003 by a Democrat (warning, pdf):
On December 23, 2003, Governor Edward Rendell signed into law Act 46 of 2003 (HB 200 PN3160) raising the excise tax on a pack of 20 cigarettes from $1.00 to 1.35 effective January 7, 2004, an increase of .35 cents per pack.
Which is less of a percentage than before, but still one hell of a lot.
So… nice try making this a partisan issue, and thanks for playing. :rolleyes:
I don’t smoke, and I rarely drink or gamble, so my initial impression is that this has little effect upon me. However, as one who favors a graduated income tax, I must confess that I find hypocrisy in my inattention to this. I believe that the ones who bear the greatest brunt of so called “sin” taxes are the ones who can least afford them.
Certainly this is the case with tobacco and with alcohol. In reality, there is only so much that a person can smoke or drink, and the tax on those activities will take a greater toll on the earnings of those who earn less.
Gambling is a bit different; those with a severe problem will gamble beyond their means, irrespective of their income level. But for those who do so recreationally, the same arguments would seem to apply. I believe that I have read that state run lotteries are primarily financed from poorer communities; I know that that is the case in Massachusetts. I would assume that much of the normal money spent in casinos is from those of moderate income, television ads and programs notwithstanding. I am of the opinion that those of low or moderate income subsidize much of this taxation, and that runs contrary to my beliefs.
I believe that the “sin” taxes as proposed by the politicians are the result of a sense of moral superiority (there’s irony for you), and they constitute a way of punishing those who don’t fit with our ideas of healthy and moral behavior. It is true that these activities (drinking, smoking, gambling) are destructive when taken to excess, but our society accepts them in moderation (or at least tolerates them).
One might propose the argument (as those above have) that this behavior is the result of free will, and may therefore be considered a voluntary tax. Yes, true. But so is going to the movie theater or buying a lawn mower. Imagine the uproar if the taxes on these activities or purchases were any more than the typical sales tax applied to all similar activities. In fact, beyond food, clothing and shelter, most activities may be considered to be voluntary. But we seem to feel that it is acceptable to levy more tax on behaviors that we find to be less than respectable.
Taken to its logical extension, and using the arguments given above, there is no sense in banning prostitution or drug use if Prohibition was pointless. I’m not arguing for or against, but I am saying that if they are legalized there will be substantial and disproportionate taxes applied to these for the same reason that they are applied to other “sins”. And I would rather have the legality of these activities debated by disinterested parties on their relative merits rather than on the money that may be reaped in taxation.
Not much to add to what doors said, just phrased a little differently and with my own thoughts. My guess is he and I are about as opposite as we can be in our political views. But if something smells bad on both sides of the aisle, then it smells bad. Throw it back. The tax issue is a complicated one, but this is just larding taxes where they are less likely to be challenged rather than where it is equitable.
So is smoking, for that matter. Some folks take enjoyment indulging in either one, but I think that most people recognize that there are real problems over the long term for the average person that overshadow any momentary pleasures.
There was a thread a while back about “Would you wear your seatbelt if it wasn’t required”, and almost everybody responded what a good idea wearing a seatbelt was. It’ll save your life, reduce health care costs due to all the vegetables who end up on the public’s bill, blah blah blah. Well, I hate the fucking seatbelt, but I wear it because I get a heavy “tax” imposed on me if I don’t wear it.
Now the same thing could be argued about quitting cigarette smoking. It’ll save your life, reduce health care costs, blah blah blah. Gotta pay a tax to smoke? Tough shit. I don’t like wearing a seatbelt. Tough shit. You want the man to take his foot off your neck, you play along or pay his fee.
Before I get a dogpile of “you don’t understand what it’s like, being addicted, blah blah blah”, spare me. “It’s not the same, wearing a seatbelt, you’re not addicted to not wearing it”, no but I’m addicted to eating and paying my bills, and I have to wear it to get to work. “But wearing a seatbelt just makes sense! Nobody could argue about the benefit!”. Yeah, true, pretty much the same thing could be said about quitting smoking.
I realize my analogy isn’t perfect, but I don’t think not wearing a seatbelt is any more of a sin than smoking. Both are detrimental to your health, you can do either as long as you pay the “tax”.
What bullshit. by this logic income tax is 100% voluntary you don’t want to pay it just don’t make any money. What taxes are not voluntary?