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Comment by joslin01 | Hacker News Reader

They smoke/drink more because they're stressed more since they have menial jobs coupled with poor financials. It's not crazy for the 47y/o waitress to feel like he's "stuck", and as a result, indulge in smaller forms of pleasure for temporary escape from the bleak reality of his life. It's for this reason that I believe unfair taxation upon cigarettes is morally corrupt. It's literally pushing them into a deeper hole.

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It also reduces use (shown in peer-reviewed studies), particularly amongst children, of an addictive cancer-causing product.

You pull the child-card to justify discriminated taxation against the poor, but I pull the 47y/o free-willed bummed out waiter card. Shall we start unfairly taxing sugar as well, which is probably a bigger epidemic than tobacco amongst children[1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

This is actually being discussed by some politicians, and some are past the discussing step AFAIR.

You forget that a sugar tax is increasingly popular in progressive circles.

It reduces use, but the people stubbornly still using tobacco are likelier to be poorer. No peer-reviewed studies are required to demonstrate that it's a regressive tax, any amount of "Think of the children!" posturing notwithstanding.

Where think of the children == reducing incidence of lifetime addiction and horrible disease. Though I guess you have to pick your priorities.

I'm fine with that. Cost was a factor in helping me quit. Considering the lifetime cost of being a smoker (both in past expenditure and probable future medical expenses) I wish cigarettes had been much less affordable when my parents were puffing away during my childhood. I loathed cigarettes and yet I was in a hurry to try them and sure enough became seriously addicted to tobacco.

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