The angel on one of my shoulders is nodding and agreeing with you, while the devil on my other shoulder is saying, “But they could just choose not to smoke. See, this just goes to show that poor people are poor because of their own bad choices.”
I think about 1/3 of the cigs I go through are given away. Since the prices went up you can’t go anywhere without someone bumming smokes. It is hard to sit and have a cigarette and enjoy a cup of coffee and conversation with someone who can’t take their eye off your cigarette pack and you know they can’t afford to buy any. I usually just throw the pack on the table.
If cigarettes are $80 a carton in San Diego, that is only about 7 cartons a month before you get to about $600/month. That is about a pack a day each.
I don’t know. If that were me I’d either quit, roll my own, switch to a vape pen or buy them online from overseas.
The point, though, is that tax policy shouldn’t have as one of its goals ensuring that bad choices made by the poor are punished with even deeper poverty. 
That’s the crazy thing about addiction: it messes with one’s ability to choose rationally. It is very, very tough to escape.
It would be an interesting study as to why the poor are more likely to smoke; I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any actual analysis of that (I merely know that surveys have shown that they are).
There are issues with governments jacking up tobacco taxes (i.e. using them as a money generator and not using revenues to help people quit smoking). But it’s not “prohibition”.
As noted, cost (along with the mountain of evidence of smoking’s detrimental health effects) has had a significant impact in decreasing the number of people who smoke, notably among younger smokers.
Both factors will eventually have a similar impact on vaping. It’s just going to take awhile for people to realize that nicotine addiction in any form is not worth it.
The town where I used to live discontinued this program, because most of the food, and the backpacks too, were being traded for drugs, usually meth. :mad:
I agree with post #3 - that this couple probably has other issues on top of this.
Chefguy - My church puts the meals in gallon-sized ziplock bags.
StG
The idea is not to stigmatize the kids, or set them up to be threatened and have the food stolen from them. As for the smell, I’ve always made sure the backpacks I bought for Celtling were washable, and they all went through the washer and dryer several times per year. At most, you might need to hang it up to dry, which will take a while, but not several days.
The study posted above claims that increasing taxation on tobacco isn’t a particularly good motivator for decreasing tobacco use.
There is no question that tobacco use is decreasing, but the cause is apparently social factors, not price. Tobacco has moved from ‘cool’ to ‘a sad addiction’ in enough people’s minds to make the difference.
Without that, increasing price alone would not work, because those hooked on tobacco are significantly addicted, and addictions are notoriously price inelastic (for example: people choosing to pay for smokes rather than live in an apartment - an extreme example, but still). Increase price enough and of course people can’t afford it - but if you increase price that much, you will create a black market.
Increasing price is not “prohibition”, but it has a similar impact in once sense: both policies radically increase price (prohibition, because the goods were now illegal). Prohibition failed because increasing price did not do enough to decrease demand - because, by itself, it did not transform the social cachet of drinking alcohol.
No one decides whether or not to get hooked on tobacco thinking “well, this is a vice I can afford, once it gets its hooks into me - a pack a day I can swing easily … oh wait, with taxes I can’t actually afford that - so I’ll pass, thank you”. It simply isn’t a rational decision at all. Increasing price of course has some impact - it isn’t totally useless - but it isn’t an effective anti-smoking strategy; it is questionable whether its costs (in being highly regressive) are socially ‘worth it’.
Sorry, I disagree. People CAN quit smoking. Lots of people do it. If these people are so poor that they’re living in their car, they’re probably also on Medicaid, so their smoking is likely costing taxpayers further money. Plus smoking makes you less employable–if you’re going into job interviews smelling like smoke, a significant portion of employers are going to pass in favor of someone who doesn’t stink. Is it hard to quit smoking? I’m sure it is. But acting like it’s an insurmountable challenge is bullshit. People need to have some responsibility for their choices.
Of course people can, and do, quit.
The issue is whether the specific policy of raising taxation on cigarettes is a good way of incentivizing people to quit (or better yet, not start) or a bad way.
The actual evidence, posted in the paper cited upthread, suggests it isn’t a particularly effective way, and one with significant downsides (that is, it amounts to a regressive form of taxation).
No-one is suggesting, and I quote, “it’s an insurmountable challenge” to get people to quit. The suggestion is that increasing the price isn’t an effective motivator to get people to quit. Changing social attitudes works far better (and the actual impact of increasing price has undesireable side-effects, such as making the poor, poorer).
No-one doubts smoking is bad in a whole bunch of different ways.
He didn’t say, and I lost touch with him some years ago. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it has a lot to do with society accommodating cigarette addictions to a much greater degree than other addictions. You can’t smoke in the workplace anymore, but there are almost always defined areas (with ash trays) outside of businesses where you are allowed to step out for a smoke break. You can smoke in your car and while walking down city streets, and cops won’t hassle you.
It’s getting harder over time. Years ago airlines and airports banned smoking, and more and more cities are banning smoking in restaurants and bars. If businesses stop allowing smoking anywhere on their premises (and offer cessation assistance to their employees), that might convince even more folks quit.
I quit almost 10 months ago. It will be ten months on March 6th. I was the hardest thing I have ever done and I feel I will always have struggles. I would not go back for all the money in the World. I have never been a heroin addict but can see it being harder. One of the main reasons I quit was the expense and the health affects. I have damaged my health. I know this and feel foolish.
I had a friend who quit all his many addictions including crystal meth when he contracted AIDS. This was in the eighties so of course it didn’t save him, but the only thing he could not give up was cigarettes. He was smoking to his final day.
The CDC says nicotine is just as addictive than heroin.
I’d like to note for anyone having this particular problem with cigarettes taking a huge chunk out of their budget:
If you can’t quit, in addition to vaping being better for your health, smelling better, and tasting better, it’s also way less expensive.
I just spent $70 for 4 months worth of nicotine to vape; after taxes and shipping. And I wasn’t even going out of my way to find a good deal. If I were still smoking the brand I used to like, those 4 months would have cost me about $450. And I live in an area (CO) where the taxes aren’t as extreme; a pack here is $4-5, not $7-$10 as in CA or NY. The savings would be even more pronounced for them.
Drug addiction’s a bitch.
That link is very out of date. The tax on cigs went up by $2 a pack last July.
That was one of the best things to happen ever. One of the first places that it started in California was the City of Los Angeles. Oh how people whined and moaned. The actual City of L.A. is just a small part of the sprawl. No matter where you all in the city limits, you can be in a different municipality in several minutes if traffic isn’t too bad. The Los Angeles restaurant owners were certain that their places would be empty and people would flock to where they could smoke. In fact, the opposite happened. Now, 25 years later, even most smokers think that smoking inside is disgusting.
Motivations toward smoking cessation, reasons for relapse, and modes of quitting: results from a qualitative study among former and current smokers - PMC This study suggests that one of the main motivators for people to stop smoking was the high cost of cigarettes. It seems to motivate at least some people, and provides tax income.
From what I could see they stopped including cigarettes in 1975.
After a little while I would have fleeting thoughts of how it would be nice to have a cigarette right now but never an actual thought about going back. When I was in Iraq I had half a cigarette and hated it. If I didn’t start back up then I never will. You are past the worst of it.
The fact that heroin is dirt cheap has fueled the heroin epidemic. I’m sure there are people doing coke but I can’t remember the late time I found someone with it. Heroin is everywhere.
The study is based on a survey of exactly 12 current and 12 former smokers, all in the country of Poland, where relationships between the cost of cigarettes and income may vary somewhat from those in the US.
Not sure whether the experiences of 12 former smokers in Poland are really very definitive results for smokers generally.
From the source:
In contrast, this survey, which is (a) larger and (b) based in the US, strongly emphasizes the importance of environment for successful quitting:
Of course some people probably are motivated by cost to quit - but as the economics cite made clear, the relationship between price and motivation doesn’t appear to be all that great.
And indeed, such measures provide taxation income - but it is very regressive taxation.