NoRegretsCoyote
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Do people on long-term methadone programmes have to pay for their treatment? I suspect not.
20 cigs by 50 cents ;
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Do people on long-term methadone programmes have to pay for their treatment? I suspect not.
This is absolute nonsense. The reason for high taxation is to be perceived to be trying to turn people off smoking
while increasing the state coffers.
Steven Barrett
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Do you think the government want people smoking so they can collect loads of money?
What I think is neither 'here nor there'.
However I suspect that some people may be able to form their own opinion on governments who continue increasing taxes on tobacco products rather than banning them. The same could be said about alcohol. Both drugs, as you know, are extremely highly taxed.
Is there a corresponding reduction in drinking due to increase in cost, I don't think so. In fact the pubs, every weekend are full of mainly 20 -30 year olds as they tend to have the highest 'disposable' income nowadays. Any reduction ( if it exists ) in young smokers is IMHO is due to a better understanding/education of the perils of smoking plus the banning of it in public buildings/transport etc..
As the late great Sir Humphrey Appleby said as far back as 1986 "A commercial drug kills half a dozen people and we get it withdrawn from sale."
Could it possibly be because the hypothetical drug doesn't generate as much revenue as tobacco products ?
Anyway have a read of what Sir Humphrey said in 1986 (allow for inflation with the figures) about the banning of tobacco products in the UK, besides its comic value, maybe it also holds some other underlying merit.
Smoking-related diseases cost the NHS £165 million a year.
" Yes, but we've been into that.
It has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, they would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than they did in medical treatment.
So financially speaking, it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at about the present rate.
"When cholera killed 30,000 people in 1833, we got the Public Health Act.
"When smog killed 2,500 people in 1952, we got the Clean Air Act.
" A commercial drug kills half a dozen people and we get it withdrawn from sale.
Cigarettes kill 100,000 people a year and what do we get? £4 billion a year.
25,000 jobs in the tobacco industry, a flourishing cigarette export business, helping our balance of trade, 250,000 jobs related to tobacco - newsagents, packaging, transport ..............
Just a thought.
NoRegretsCoyote
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It can and will achieve both objectives
The issue is really down to balance and proportion.
Well we know it is definitely achieving one !It can and will achieve both objectives
Duke of Marmalade
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Rather typical of the righteousness dripping from this thread. Smokers endanger their own health and maybe to a small degree those close to them. But carbon guzzlers who drive cars and use airplane travel are endangering whole generations. Smokers should take no lectures except of course from those who ride bicycles to work and go for a walk in the park for leisure rather than take cheap flights to the Canaries.
My good man, I smoked for years. I lost my father and three brothers to cancer. I had good reason to stop and did it without artificial help. Death has a way of prioritising things in my opinion.
Sophrosyne
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There is something in what you say.
According to [broken link removed] report in The Lancet Planetary Health, four million children develop asthma every year as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day.
Higher tax has little to no impact on smoking levels. What impacted on smoking levels was the smoking ban (still one of the greatest pieces of legislation), advertising changes and changing society views. Increasing tax is purely a revenue raising measure. And it's not even that because as mentioned above, people will get their cigarettes elsewhere. Its the same with alcohol. Increased tax will have very little impact. Gambling causes huge damage to society and yet every year it gets off scott free from Government because of lobbying from vested interests. So the Government claiming that budget measures are to do with public health is complete tosh.
Actually being a fattie kills more people than smoking in the developed world. They call it "having a bad diet" but they mean being fat. If we are really interested in public health we'd be taxing high sugar and high salt foods.
Smokers don't take as long to die either so are less expensive to look after.
I'm in favour of high taxes on tobacco and the whole"it's a regressive tax on poor people" is nonsense. If you can't afford to do something which is discretionary then don't do it. If you can afford to smoke and drink (and go to the bookies) then you are not poor.
I'm also in favour of higher taxes on other things that are bad for you. That or people who engage in really unhealthy lifestyles should have to pay for their own healthcare.
Air pollution is also linked to autism, dementia, mental illness, cancer and many other illnesses.
NoRegretsCoyote
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This is simply not true. From a big survey article of the science of smoking prevelance:
Assuming linearity, the 50% increase seen in cigarette prices in the last decade has seen smoking fall by 20%.
I wouldn't call that "little to no impact" by any means.
OK let's increase the price of 20 fags to €30.00 or even €50.00 or even €100.00. It doesn't matter. The vast majority of people who smoke are smoking cigarettes bought abroad and lining the coffers in tax of the country in which they were purchased. Ireland gets nothing other than cancer victims and the medical bills.
Reduce the price of cigarettes here and let's gather some tax rather than none. A little earned is always better than nothing.
Reduce the price of cigarettes here and let's gather some tax rather than none. A little earned is always better than nothing.
We can't stop people from travelling and we can't tax products bought in the EU but we can seek to reduce the amount of tobacco bought in Ireland.
I know you are part of the affluent Retiree Class but us poor working plebs don't take all those foreign holidays.
Yet they still collect ~€1B in excise, that's a lot more than none!
The latest estimates indicate 9% of tobacco products consumed in Ireland were legally purchased abroad. Illegal products account for a further 13%, so the numbers suggest the vast majority of tobacco consumed here is purchased here.
It's wild and unfounded comments like the above that really get my goat, you must have just picked that totally out of your head.
What are the figures in Ireland for the past few years? Show me the impact that increasing the cost of fags from 12.70 to 13.30 or whatever has on smoking numbers. The higher the price of cigarettes, the less impact a price increase of that size has. Someone who is willing to spend 12.70 will still be willing to spend 13.20. Or they will use cheaper substitute products such as imported or fake cigarettes. It's simple economics. And it will be the same as alcohol. They can dress it up as public health issue but if it was a public health issue, they would either ban cigarettes or double the price. They won't do that though because they know they will lose revenue. So all they are trying to do is make more money. To think otherwise is just a fallacy.
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NoRegretsCoyote
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I googled "Ireland smoking prevalance" and got here.
Cigarette smoking fallen from about 27% to 18% over the last 10 years.
There are lots of factors at play, but only a fool would say that increased excise rates have not had in impact.
That research is done by the drug addiction centre who are calling for at least €20 increase in price of cigarettes and it is based on price increases over a number of years. We are talking about 50c on a packet already costing 12.70. What is the elasticity of that increase? It is not 1.8 as in that piece of research. So if the increase has little or no impact on demand of cigarettes, why do it if it is not simply trying to get more revenue. The Government will argue, it is a gradual step but why? If it is a public health issue, what are we waiting for before adding €10-20 onto a box of 20??? It's because they are worried about the loss of revenue that a large increase would bring. They don't care about public health cost. The smoking ban was a public health policy. This increase was just a taxation policy.
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