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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

The reality is that tobacco taxes fund a lot of the government, and there is no replacement for that income source if people stop smoking cigarettes. Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes to protect their revenue stream and the government is happy to support them because it's their revenue stream too.

It's unfortunate, because it's largely a tax on the poor. The rich can afford prescription nicotine replacement and the higher healthcare costs for smokers. The poor can't, so they just die.

(I don't smoke, so I have no skin in this game. But I feel like if the government needs money, they should tax people proportionally to their income, rather than according to their bad habits. People are self-interested and will always want more income, so there's a steady revenue stream. But if we want to tank public infrastructure because people decide they want to break an unhealthy habit, that's ultimately self-destructive to society.)

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Tobacco taxes tend to represent a very small part of government revenue, and fairly large parts of government costs and revenue are affected by the adverse effects of tobacco use (healthcare costs, sickness benefit, reduced taxable income from people becoming seriously ill). Even if the two don't balance, the government has plenty of scope to adjust the tax base over time. Many if not most other sources of tax income are far less predictable. The prospect that public infrastructure will "tank" as a result of people choosing to smoke less is simply not a real world problem.

Tobacco levies being disproportionately a "tax on the poor" is true, but health problems also are suffered more by the poor and one of the side effects of high tobacco levies in an era where e-cigarettes are a widely-available commercial product is nicotine replacement becoming much more affordable than tobacco

> Thus the tobacco companies are happy to lobby against e-cigarettes

I saw this on Reddit a while back, someone pointed out that "we get it, you vape" was probably introduced by tobacco companies to create a stigma around the practice.

I'm a quitting smoker, on vape (RBA) and it bloody works. If only there were such great tools for quitting other addictions.

I remember that thread. I think someone mentioned big tobacco realizes the future is vape but wants to kill thier current ecig market competitors via the law. It's a race to the bottom with Chinese ecig vendors unless the law bans them or greatly reduces their ability to sell in the USA.... Assuming It's truly harmless, they don't have to worry about being taxed/sued like crazy or severe advertising restrictions anymore... Ecigs are a no Brainer for any tobacco exec.

In my experience the stereotype exists for a reason.

Let's take Grover Norquist as an example. The man is a dedicated crusader who hasn't stopped pounding the tax-reform drum for 20 years. Know what he thinks will decide the next election? Know what he was tweeting about during the debates?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-2016-vap...

https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/780604428751630336

https://twitter.com/grovernorquist/status/785299905464111104

No, seriously: we get it, you vape.

I have no bearing on the "hardcore" vaping community. It's a tool, I am using it to quit. If vaping was outlawed due to legislation I'm worried I'd have to rely on will alone (which has so far failed me). Irrespective of practice or belief, there are people who take things too far. The words of one nut are not representative of the entire community.

"We get it, you vape" is a logical fallacy. Why? It is so trivial to draw a corollary from that incredibly naive statement: you are implicitly voicing support for people acquiring cancer - althought I certainly don't believe that is what you meant to say. This falls under the logical fallacy of "black and white." Things are not so simple, especially so far as the behavior of one vocal minority is concerned.

By pure autonomous volition, I vape away from other people (generally in the company of other smokers in the allocated areas) because I know that the vapor generally clings to skin. It makes you clammy in warm weather. It's not sociable. So you're going to throw someone who is trying their level best to use this quitting aid in a respectable manner into the same bag as Norquist?

150 mutations per year in my lungs[1] x 7 years of smoking = 1050 mutations. I hope to God that I stopped soon enough. I'm so fortunate to have such an easy route out - it's not 1200 or 1350 mutations.

The inability to downvote responses on HN forces me to contemplate a correct response. This is the extremely rare occasion, maybe the first, that I wish it was possible.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870712

I agree that vaping should be at least as legal as cigarettes if not more so. It's unquestionably safer and nicotine consumed in this fashion is very low-risk overall, probably no moreso than commonly prescribed stimulants, khat, or even caffeine.

However, it's stupid to claim that the stereotype came out of nowhere, or was a conspiracy from the tobacco industry. People who vape are typically at least as vocal and outspoken about it as stoners (note: marijuana should also be legal). It's pretty natural for it to be the butt of jokes.

The same thing really applies to the vape community. They are outspoken if not militant (and I don't disagree that's a good thing given the recent steps against it). I agree that it should be legal, go ahead and start a petition and I'll sign it. But holy shit it doesn't make you special, it's a personal decision/affectation/vice and nobody actually cares. I don't go around telling people about my stimulant consumption, and I certainly don't go around pretending it will decide the this election. With apologies to vegans:

Q: "How do you know if someone vapes?"

A: "Don't worry. They'll tell you."

> In my experience the stereotype exists for a reason.

Oh noes - someone who cares more about something than I do. Time to belittle them to justify my apathy. /s

> No, seriously: we get it, you vape.

These are people who've essentially beat cancer.

But we get it, you'd rather mock sick people.

I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior: that way if some people are costing the government money, they pay the price rather than all of society, making everyone's incentives align. If those people stop doing the thing, then the cost is gone and the government should not care that they aren't collecting the money to pay for it anymore. As an example: taxing people who use roads to pay for roads encourages people to use roads less, which puts less wear on the road surface and means you need fewer lanes and thereby less road. If this mechanism is used correctly, and I realize it often isn't, the real problem is only when there is no good way to directly tax the damage and so a proxy is used: we don't tax people for miles driven, we tax them by the gallon of gas purchased, and while that works for pollution control (and people thereby think it makes sense that people who use less gas have to pay less gas tax, under an assumption that the goal is to encourage less burning of gas), the taxes are used to fund roads, and electric cars still put as much wear on the road as gasoline cars; this screws up the incentives and makes the government kind of want people to keep burning gas so they keep getting taxes to fund the roads they continue to need. But this is a slightly different problem than what you are describing. In the case of cigarettes, I was under the impression the goal of the tax was to fund public health infrastructure due to the cost to the public of caring for victims of smoking, and so while I realize the government always mixes their accounts and crosses purposes and generally screws this up, if e-cigarettes are generally safe then that should have been a case of working incentives.

>>I realize this often isn't the case, but the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior:

That is only for the press release.. It is never actually that way. Almost all taxation applied to a general fund, meaning all taxes are simply put in a large pool, then various programs are funded from that pool.

There are almost never any actual legal rules that requires say a Gasoline tax to only be used for roads, or a cigarette tax to only be used for Health Programs

For this reason, and many others, I never support using Taxation for social control

Government should not be using tax policy to incentive or decentivize any activity. Taxation should be used to fund X program period.

Taxation should be generalized, AKA a income tax, a sales tax, etc. There should not be special taxes applied to individual products or product types

I have no problem with taxes on harmful products like tobacco and alcohol since they are a harm to society and a burden on society.

How about sugar?

Sugar does cause some harm (obesity and associated health costs). Its tax should be commensurate with this harm. However, it is used in both healthy and unhealthy foods, so perhaps the tax should be on unhealthy foods rather than on the sugar itself.

I don't believe wine is considered unhealthy in small amounts either.

I have no problem with taxes on them for a different reason: They are a luxury good. Nobody needs them.

You could say that about almost anything though. I don't need to post on HN, but that fact alone wouldn't justify a tax on HN posting.

That's a heavy apples-to-oranges comparison. Finite goods != publicly accessible web-pages.

That is a slippery slope, if you want to talk about products or activities that "harm society"

Further then you have to define what "harm" it is doing.

I also suspect part of that "harm" you talk about is Costs associated with healthcare that is paid for by the taxpayer, meaning you likely support government run socialized health services. I do not.

Are you seriously requesting an explanation of what harm cigarettes are doing to society?

I suggest you have a trip to to a respiratory ward sometime.

I do not question the harm cigarettes do to individuals, but individuals make choices every day that cause harm to themselves. That is not a reason for government involvement

I do not believe it is my place to tell individuals what chemicals they can or can not consume

I am 100% against the War on Drugs as well, and believe that all drugs, including crack, cocaine, and all prescription drugs should be legal to buy if the person desires it.

I am an individualist, not a collectivist

> all taxes are simply put in a large pool

> I never support using taxation for social control

Yes, money is fungible, and so gas tax, alcohol tax, and cigarette taxes collected may not be applied to covering the costs of that activity. Even putting it in a specific fund doesn't completely fix the problem, it only establishes a minimum support for that fund's target. Make gas tax specifically fund road surface repairs, and then the DOT can use part of the general fund that is freed up for other purposes.

However, it seems very reasonable to use taxation as a sort of softer hammer to create an incentive or disincentive for various activities. In a way, the government's only power is in its monopoly on legal violence. It can do nothing but kill or imprison you by force. Sure, it can issue fines, or garnish your wages (effectively the same thing), or remove your drivers license, - but the fine has teeth only because they'll imprison you if you fail to pay. And if you try to fight your way out of captivity you'll either be pathetically overpowered or shot. Furthermore, criminal punishments require prosecution in a court, which is expensive and slow.

It would be unreasonable to try to reduce alcoholism by arresting people, charging them with drinking, and sentencing them with a $0.25 fine. It would also be unreasonable to pass a law requiring everyone to buy a house, get married and have 2.54 children, or be arrested and jailed.

Instead, taxation offers a much gentler stick, and sometimes even a carrot. Increase taxation on behavior that society finds to be objectionable or harmful - smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. Offer tax rebates for behaviors that society finds to be valuable: donating to charity, helping the environment, raising a family, owning a home. Taxation is definitely an effective tool for social control. Do you have an alternative? Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?

> Taxation is definitely an effective tool for social control. Do you have an alternative? Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?

I hope you can appreciate why some people would say the answer to that second question is "as little as possible."

When the government is offering carrots and sticks, there will inevitably be some group of people systemically discriminated against (either by not receiving the carrots proportionally or disproportionately receiving the stick). Tyranny of the majority and what not. The gears of government grind very slowly, and changing government policies often results in multiple generations of people experiencing discrimination before things are changed.

For a recent example, one argument (among others, of course) for same-sex marriage equality is that it's discriminatory for same-sex partners not to receive the carrots of legal and tax benefits that come with being married.

Is there an alternative? Maybe. Maybe not. I could spitball one, but it would likely be an inadequate solution. Still, I think it's prudent to be careful. Social control is a double-edged sword.

>> Or do you suggest that government should not be involved in social control?

Bingo... I do not believe the government has any ethical role in tell me how I should live my life, or punishing me if I choose to have a life style the government disapproves of.

That varies per country, I don't know how it's in the US but there are countries (for example: Brazil) where some taxes can only be spent on specific areas and those are determined by the law that created them.

> the pursuit of taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior

At least in Germany that's not the case. State income from taxes is not earmarked. Other fees like the mandatory television licence might be.

"taxing specific behaviors is supposed to only be used to fund things caused by that behavior"

That might be what people say but that's a horrible idea from a governmental perspective. There's nothing that says that the amount of money that can possibly extracted by taxing a thing is the right amount for combating it. If something is taxed enough to double or triple it's official price then smuggling will start to develop. And even if you were to raise taxes enough to instantly stop all new smoking you'd still have to care for people whose lungs have been damaged by cancer somehow.

And in general introducing coupling between taxes and expenditures needlessly complicates the budgetary process. It's a recipe for government sclerosis if you take it too far with people thinking that, e.g., they can't invest in public transit because then road taxes would go down, but the roads are needed for emergency vehicles regardless of commuting and road maintenance isn't anything like linear with use.

Tax things because you want people to do them less and because that lets you lower taxes on things you don't want to discourage.

Road damage is proportional to axle weight raised to the 4th power.

In the US, you cannot drive on the highways with more than 10 short tons (9.1 Mg) per axle. If I cram my daily driver to the gills with heavy junk, I might have 0.75 short tons per axle. That heavily loaded cargo trailer is doing 30000 times more damage to the roads per mile than I am, specifically, and as much as 9600 average passenger cars. [0]

Axle weight is not taken into consideration when I am taxed for the roads. Thus tax-avoidance behaviors optimize for the wrong variables.

Drug dosages and adverse health effects are less easily modeled numerically. My concern is that if you tax something without understanding the potential consequences, you may end up doing more harm than good.

[0] http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

The tobacco companies are adept at adapting to the market. I would suspect they all either have e-cig products out or are in the process of doing so. As far as taxes, the US has one of the most progressive tax schemes in the world and income is not a major wealth point for many Americans (though it does beget a ton of jealousy)

Not to go too far off track. The real tax on the poor isn't cigarettes, for the poor and stupid its lottery tickets. The real tax on the poor are the vast amount of licensing and related fees that they cannot escape. It is distressing how many lower income jobs have ridiculous fees attached let alone the costs of doing business with every day government interaction. Then throw in all the fees of everyday life and boom, your hurting.

Of course they have e-cig brands; they're the disgusting gas station brands that will be the only viable business in the market in two years. It now costs $1 Million to approve a new flavor at every nicotine concentration: the tobacco companies couldn't have asked for anything better: it's like they're functionally illegal, but they also make more money.

There are other measures like the $2 "tobacco" tax on ballot in California now that means you'll pay $3 for a coil worth $1. This was also likely lobbied by the tobacco companies.

Finally, realize that theres nothing expensive about making these eliquids. Somehow they pulled an arbitrary way of making it more expensive than any other way of leaving tobacco out of their ass.

Every period has its black sheep.

The government can replace its tobacco tax with a carbon tax.

I agree that regressive taxes (actual govt. issued taxes or implied taxes like smoking in your argument) are a tough case - especially when the people they most affect are sometimes strong supporters of the tax not being stopped.

Lottery games are an example of this - the people who play are overwhelmingly poor. This article argues that lottery spending may even be the single largest tax poor families pay [1].

With regard to what you say about there being no replacement income for governments if people stopped smoking cigarettes - I'd say this is only the case if consumption was banned. If it was slowly phased out the pain wouldn't be noticeable. It's like autonomous vehicles - what really matters is the speed of creative destruction.

[1] http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/

do you have access to some detailed data about state/federal income sources? cursory search says excises are around 3% of total taxation income, while on state level goes up to 14% (but still includes all sources, not just tobacco)

Indeed, the parent poster appears to be weaving a "just so" story with the moral being that government (somehow a monolith and not a composition of a representative legislature) seeks to get more revenue. This ignores the fact that federal tax receipts have been hovering around 20% of GDP for the last 40 years [1].

However, each state is different; some states' legislatures intentionally tax tobacco products as a deterrent to smoking, with demonstrable public health benefits [2]. Cigarette taxes are negatively correlated with smoking rates. I concede that the federal tobacco tax rate is too low to do anything substantial, for raising revenue or as a deterrent. It should either be raised, or scrapped and left to the states.

1. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...

2. http://www.cbpp.org/research/higher-tobacco-taxes-can-improv...

I heard alot of lobbying by tobacco has an end goal of putting the third party ecig industry out to pasture(high regulatory standards) so they can seize it themselves sans any price competition with every taobao vendor in China.

They see the future is ecigs but realize it's a race to the bottom in profits.

Could that be a reason states are slowly legalising Marijuana?

Why can't people who can't afford cigarettes stop? Is nicotine gum that much more expensive than cigarettes?

Because it's an addiction and by design, very difficult to quit. As for the gum, I can tell you that it's a rather poor replacement for cigarettes. It doesn't really eliminate (and barely curbs) the need for a cigarette.

I was actually quite successful with the gum, but the only thing that really made it difficult for me to quit was the withdrawal symptoms. So I suppose it's effectiveness depends on how someone is addicted to smoking.

But it's addicting regardless of your income. Is there some expensive magic that makes quitting easy?

Fly to a place without nicotine.

preliminary research suggest 50% of people is dumber than average.

I tried to quit with gum and it's just not a good replacement. It tastes foul, made my mouth and throat feel unpleasant, and does nothing for the "habit" part of the addiction. Vaping worked much better for me.

Before switching to ecigs, I tried to quit with gums, nicotine patches, and herbal cigarettes. They did nothing for me (to be fair, the first time I tried ecigs, the crappy 2009 models, they didn't help either).

As far as I know the cost to the health system succeeds the tax income by far. At least in Germany.

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