# Quit smoking or live in the car **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 23, 2018, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378 "2018-02-23T01:10:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/1 "2018-02-23T01:10:11Z")
This is something that has been happening in So Cal with some regularity since the cigarette prices have gone up. I was talking to a guy last night about 60 years old, he and his wife are living in the car because they spend $600.00 a month on cigarettes. I have talked to several others with similar stories. hard to imagine. ``` In my case I am driving an older car than I would normally drive and have skipped a few trips I would have otherwise taken. Such a waste. I am taking a hard look at myself right now. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/2 "2018-02-23T01:42:10Z")
Yes, I think maybe that’s good idea to rethink. How much do smokes cost in California? I think maybe I could quit almost anything if I had to. Have you looked into vaping? Maybe that would be cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/3 "2018-02-23T02:21:20Z")
I am gonna go out on a limb here and infer that the people in question have one or two other issues going on besides the cigarettes. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/4 "2018-02-23T13:21:56Z")
Prohibition via monetary punishments instead of jail or prison is still prohibition. We tried it with alcohol - that was a nationwide failure - and every parent has tried it with their teenagers, usually with similar results, esp. after said teenager moves out of the house. People continue to imagine that THIS TIME prohibiting THIS THING (instead of the other thing they prohibited that other time) is totally gonna work. It never does, in the end, but always winds up costing a helluva lot of dollars and human misery in the meantime. If heroin was more expensive, would you expect a global extinction of opiate addiction? Cocaine is expensive as hell but coke addicts haven’t disappeared. Why would anyone expect cigarettes to be any different? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/5 "2018-02-23T14:01:37Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > ``` > In my case I am driving an older car than I would normally drive and have skipped a few trips I would have otherwise taken. Such a waste. I am taking a hard look at myself right now. > > ``` Think of it as a reward for quitting: you get all that extra money! ---
**Author:** ![WildBlueYonder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ce7236/32.png) [@WildBlueYonder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildBlueYonder)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/6 "2018-02-23T14:15:04Z")
Wow! That is a lot of money to spend each month California must be still trying to cut down on pollution. How many limitations are people suppose to endure? :dubious::smack: ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/7 "2018-02-23T14:53:12Z")
They are going to find it hard to sell that car with an interior like that 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/8 "2018-02-23T15:24:54Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Prohibition via monetary punishments instead of jail or prison is still prohibition. We tried it with alcohol - that was a nationwide failure - and every parent has tried it with their teenagers, usually with similar results, esp. after said teenager moves out of the house. > > People continue to imagine that THIS TIME prohibiting THIS THING (instead of the other thing they prohibited that other time) is totally gonna work. It never does, in the end, but always winds up costing a helluva lot of dollars and human misery in the meantime. > > If heroin was more expensive, would you expect a global extinction of opiate addiction? Cocaine is expensive as hell but coke addicts haven’t disappeared. Why would anyone expect cigarettes to be any different? I have no clue what you’re talking about. I think the change in policy and attitudes towards tobacco use over the last few decades has been a smashing success. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/9 "2018-02-23T15:30:18Z")
A small rant, if I may. We provide an anonymous backpack lunch program at our local elementary school. At present there are 23 kids who don’t have enough to eat on the weekends, so we provide a stopgap for them by filling a backpack with two lunch meals for the kids to pick up on Fridays. One of those packs always comes back reeking of cigarettes. It’s so bad that the bag has to be left outside for several days and then doused liberally with Lysol before it can be brought into the house. That means that the home it goes to must also smell like an ashtray, which means at least one heavy smoker in the place. I don’t understand a mentality that allows children to go hungry for the sake of buying cigarettes at $7.00/pack. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/10 "2018-02-23T16:53:44Z")
**Chefguy** , start giving that kid a paper bag. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/11 "2018-02-23T17:26:57Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > **Chefguy** , start giving that kid a paper bag. We may have to, as the stench is truly bad. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/12 "2018-02-23T17:27:47Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > I am gonna go out on a limb here and infer that the people in question have one or two other issues going on besides the cigarettes. Quite likely true, but the $600 a month going to cigarettes is certainly not helping with any other problems they may or may not be having. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/13 "2018-02-23T17:50:58Z")
This reminds me of something that’s been bugging me for a long time. I first noticed it in war movies, but when one looks at photographs documenting actual events, it appears to be a real-life phenomenon and not simply a creation of Hollywood: troops who are beseiged or otherwise cut off from resupply, even for long periods, always have plenty of cigarettes. You can see this in pictures from the trenches of WWI, so many sieges or trapped pockets in WWII, units patrolling the jungles of Viet Nam, wherever: no matter how long and difficult the resupply train is, it’s always more important to somebody to have tobacco than the additional food, fuel, ammunition, or spare parts they could transport instead. No matter how long they’ve been surrounded or cut off at Leningrad, Bastogne, Kiev, Corregidor, wherever – even on the three hundredth day of the siege – they may run out of food and ammo, but everyone is still furiously chain smoking – somehow they never seem to run out of tobacco, and you _know_ they’re not saving it for later. Apparently that’s really a thing – you can find photos of grimy, scarecrow men pinned down in the ruins of Stalingrad who have been hunting rats as the Red Army tightens its ring around them and they’ve got cigarettes dangling from their lips. It must be a powerful addiction. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/14 "2018-02-23T18:17:40Z")
> [@WildBlueYonder](#): > > Wow! That is a lot of money to spend each month Judging from [the cost of a pack of cigarettes in California,](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/27/the-surprising-cost-of-a-pack-a-day-in-all-50-stat.aspx) it looks like roughly a 1.5 pack-a-day habit for each of them. It’s a pretty severe addiction if they would rather continue smoking than have a permanent roof over their heads. California has a pretty forgiving climate, and cigarettes aren’t insanely expensive, so I guess they can get away with that there; good luck pulling the same stunt in New York, where they’d be shelling out nearly $16K per year, and then freezing to death in their car during a January cold snap. FWIW, I knew a guy who had been hooked on heroin and on cigarettes; he said the cigarettes were harder to quit. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/15 "2018-02-23T18:21:26Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > This reminds me of something that’s been bugging me for a long time. I first noticed it in war movies, but when one looks at photographs documenting actual events, it appears to be a real-life phenomenon and not simply a creation of Hollywood: troops who are beseiged or otherwise cut off from resupply, even for long periods, always have plenty of cigarettes. > > You can see this in pictures from the trenches of WWI, so many sieges or trapped pockets in WWII, units patrolling the jungles of Viet Nam, wherever: no matter how long and difficult the resupply train is, it’s always more important to somebody to have tobacco than the additional food, fuel, ammunition, or spare parts they could transport instead. No matter how long they’ve been surrounded or cut off at Leningrad, Bastogne, Kiev, Corregidor, wherever – even on the three hundredth day of the siege – they may run out of food and ammo, but everyone is still furiously chain smoking – somehow they never seem to run out of tobacco, and you _know_ they’re not saving it for later. > > Apparently that’s really a thing – you can find photos of grimy, scarecrow men pinned down in the ruins of Stalingrad who have been hunting rats as the Red Army tightens its ring around them and they’ve got cigarettes dangling from their lips. > > It must be a powerful addiction. Back in the day, a packet of cigarettes came with every K-ration, C-ration and MRI meal. It was phased out at some point, I think. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/16 "2018-02-23T18:35:46Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Prohibition via monetary punishments instead of jail or prison is still prohibition. We tried it with alcohol - that was a nationwide failure - and every parent has tried it with their teenagers, usually with similar results, esp. after said teenager moves out of the house. > > People continue to imagine that THIS TIME prohibiting THIS THING (instead of the other thing they prohibited that other time) is totally gonna work. It never does, in the end, but always winds up costing a helluva lot of dollars and human misery in the meantime. > > If heroin was more expensive, would you expect a global extinction of opiate addiction? Cocaine is expensive as hell but coke addicts haven’t disappeared. Why would anyone expect cigarettes to be any different? Raising the price of cigarettes (along with other measures) has been quite effective in lowering tobacco consumption: [http://tobaccoreportarchive.ca/2012/adtu\_sic\_ht.cfm](http://tobaccoreportarchive.ca/2012/adtu_sic_ht.cfm) These measures are about influencing people at the margin, not making it so that 0 people consume tobacco. There will always be at least a small minority of dysfunctional people who engage in self-destructive habits and trying to accommodate them is a fool’s errand. There is also a good argument to be made in favor of “sin taxes”: We need to collect taxes one way or the other and if we’re going to tax something, we might as well focus taxing on things which we think are bad habits. > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > FWIW, I knew a guy who had been hooked on heroin and on cigarettes; he said the cigarettes were harder to quit. Did he mention why, apart from readier availability? ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/17 "2018-02-23T18:41:17Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Back in the day, a packet of cigarettes came with every K-ration, C-ration and MRI meal. It was phased out at some point, I think. I was gonna say this, My Daddy never smoked cigarettes and saved up his rations of smokes. When guys got low they would buy them from him. He also played poker with them as money. He said he always had plenty of cash while deployed. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/18 "2018-02-23T18:45:07Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > This reminds me of something that’s been bugging me for a long time. I first noticed it in war movies, but when one looks at photographs documenting actual events, it appears to be a real-life phenomenon and not simply a creation of Hollywood: troops who are beseiged or otherwise cut off from resupply, even for long periods, always have plenty of cigarettes…[snip]…It must be a powerful addiction. Well, yes, that’s what addiction IS - you put the addiction ahead of just about everything else in life. Including, sometimes, food, water, and shelter. Tobacco addiction may be legal, but it’s just as much addiction as being hooked on heroin. ---
**Author:** ![Scoobysnax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@Scoobysnax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scoobysnax)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/19 "2018-02-23T21:16:52Z")
I though that this was going to be about where you can still smoke in parts of the State. There are Cities where it is illegal to smoke anywhere outdoors or even within some apartment/condo communities. Your car is one of the few places left; unless you have a minor in the car, then it is illegal there too. High prices are a good way to stop kids from picking up the habit. Not many can afford the $8-9 a pack that they now charge. Most teenagers are now vaping. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378/20 "2018-02-23T22:39:25Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > There is also a good argument to be made in favor of “sin taxes”: We need to collect taxes one way or the other and if we’re going to tax something, we might as well focus taxing on things which we think are bad habits. There are a bunch of problems with “sin taxes”. First, all such consumption taxes are, by their nature, regressive - all else being equal, the poor will pay more, proportionally, than the wealthy; that’s because one person, regardless of wealth, is likely to consume only one person’s worth of (say) cigarettes, soda, or fast food. Regressive taxation is often considered a bad thing. Second, “sin taxes” are even more regressive than other forms of consumption taxation, because the “sins” being taxed are very often more practiced by the poor than the rich in the first place (the poor are more likely, on average, to smoke and eat fast food than the rich). Third, the demand for whatever is being taxed may be ineslastic - that is, the consumer may not be particularly motivated by price alone to switch from one good to the other. So the policy may be effective at raising revenue, but not as a motivator. This is particularly true for addictive drugs such as cigarettes, but also apparently true of bad eating habits. Thus, you may end up with a policy that (a) isn’t particularly effective at reducing the disfavored behavior, but that (b) ensures that poor people get poorer. > [@](#): > > The last reason to question policy effects, and the focus of the rest of the paper, is the fact that selective consumption taxes are regressive. As discussed earlier, the demand for many disfavored goods is price-inelastic. Hence, other things being the same, an after-tax price increase of, for example, 10 percent leads to a less (in many cases, substantially less) than 10 percent reduction in purchases of that good. Given that the consumption of snack food and other disfavored items is quite unresponsive to changes in price, many consumers of those goods will continue to buy them (in modestly smaller quantities) rather than switch to substitutes. Such > persistence in consumption means that the chief consequence of a selective tax is to reduce households’ discretionary budgets. Smaller discretionary budgets cause households to cut their expenditures on all other income-normal goods, including items such as organic, low-fat, and low-preservative foods, which tend to be more expensive (Durack, Alonso-Gomez, and Wilkinson 2008). > If lower-income households consume relatively more disfavored goods than higher income households, selective taxes will disproportionately burden the former. Lower-income households then are forced to spend far larger percentages of their budgets on the selectively taxed items. The available empirical evidence supports that conclusion. Farrelly, Nonnemaker, and Watson (2012) calculate that spending on cigarettes increased from 11.6 percent to 23.6 percent of disposable income for consumers who did not quit smoking after New York City raised its excise tax on cigarettes. Sharma et al. (2014), who estimated the effects of a 20 percent sales tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, find that the percentage reduction in the budgets of lower-income households would be three times greater than the budget impact for > higher-income households. > > … > > In this paper, we have argued that selective sales and excise taxes are not the first-best policy interventions for promoting healthier consumption choices. The existing literature has shown that the consumption of tax-disfavored goods (alcohol, cigarettes, carbonated soft drinks, candy, chips, and so on) is unresponsive to tax-ridden changes in relative prices. We supply additional evidence supporting that conclusion by asking whether purchases of those goods vary across the income distribution and, if so, whether such taxes have disproportionate impacts on lower income households. They do. [https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/Hoffer-Selective-Consumption-Taxation.pdf](https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/Hoffer-Selective-Consumption-Taxation.pdf) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quit-smoking-or-live-in-the-car/809378.md?page=2)