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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make smoking less affordable. Tax cigarettes and people smoke less. Tax them highly and kids sure can't afford them.

It's more politically easy to put money into paying celebrities to beg kids not to smoke, but it's not actually effective. It's just theater so politicians can say they tried.

Here, Greece is seeing the affordability fall just because the affordability of everything is falling for them. The result is the same.

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> The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make smoking less affordable.

[citation needed]

I grew up with plenty of poor high school kids who had no problem finding cigarettes even when the taxes were jacked up on them here in Canada. I know many of them as adults who continued to smoke even as the price has continued to climb over the last 10yrs.

I've never heard anyone say they quit smoking because it was too expensive. It was merely a perk of quitting. Especially considering it's always been an irrational and escapist habit.

I also smoked for years and I can't imagine the price being $5 vs $11 would have had any effect on my decision. High prices via taxes was merely an additional burden, a burden usually placed on people who are in the most need of money.

The only two major change I've seen in recent years pushing people off cigarettes is a) it's no longer cool and b) e-cigarettes

Citation:

"Most studies found that raising cigarette prices through increased taxes is a highly effective measure for reducing smoking among youth, young adults, and persons of low socioeconomic status"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/

Only works for countries that don't have a large "black" economy and HMRC spends a lot of effort tracking down smuggled tobacco - normally sold in the back bar of the less salubrious pubs.

Her Majesty's Revenue Collector ?

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Roughly speaking, revenue being taxes on what you earn, and customs being taxes on what you buy.

There used to be separate departments for each, but they were merged years ago. This was a slightly odd move, as the revenue were people who were good at doing very detailed analysis of paper trails, whereas customs were people who were good at kicking down smugglers' doors.

Isn't that a logical move? Allow a single department to both gather and act on the information, rather than disparate departments that have to try to work together?

"some estimate that for most intents and purposes, tobacco tax increases are also regressive even at the population level" [...] "While there are numerous studies that support the effectiveness of increasing prices, most declare that equity implications need to be paramount."

An important point to be sure. I think we should just execute smokers. Surely a study will show that reduces smoking. /s ...or maybe we can just realize the ends don't justify the means.

Murder is a disproportionate response. Making it legal to throw or smear poop on someone's face would be approximately equal in my mind to public smoking. You want to smoke? Fine, control the entire byproduct so it doesn't enter the personal space of others. Oh you can't control it? Sounds like you're out of control. Well I can get all out of control too, here's a poopstache. Yes this would be assault with a biohazard, and so is 2nd hand smoke.

Of course you can control it. In many locations it is effectively controlled where only those wanting to have poop thrown in their face will and the rest can go on without it since the vast majority of zones are poop-throwing-free (in the places I am referencing).

In the town I live in, smoking is only allowed in adult-only establishments. And those allowing smoking are the minority because many business owners realized their customers don't want it at all. Best of all worlds and the state didn't have to completely outlaw its public indoor use, just restrict it.

"Best of all worlds" in your opinion is a world where people have to deal with unnecessary and unwanted toxic gases in only a minority of establishments?

Strong rhetoric but do you have the same view about driving a vehicle that has noxious emissions (and we're only recently discovering quite how noxious) that inevitably enter the personal space of others? Can we assume you don't have one?

Meh, that's a stawman argument.

We grudgingly accept the emissions from cars because of their other usefulness.

If we could make cars with no emissions and no other negatives, gas-powered vehicles would surely be outlawed very soon.

Smoking has no useful purpose and frankly it's ridiculous that some people feel they are entitled to put other people's health at risk because of their own addiction.

I’d say Hollywood and ads played a big role in Cigrattes being perceived as “cool”.

Many countries ban advertisements of cigarettes and recently there is a culture shift in Movies.

I definitely think it’s a generational change.

Two or three decades back Canada tried high cigarette taxes to reduce smoking. A black market promptly appeared, complete with smuggling across the border and drive by shootings, until the tax was lowered back.

(During WW2 which had extensive gas rationing, a black market for that appeared as well, and (you guessed it) drive by shootings.)

Of course, today we have the failed war on drugs, with drive by shootings.

There are limits to government power attempting to force morality on people.

The high cigarette tax works in Australia. Smuggling across the border is a bit difficult being an island and guns are relatively rare.

It's all a matter of how high the taxes are. The higher they are, the more profit there is in smuggling.

Australia is pretty high, in Sydney they go for more than $25 a pack. Still, smuggling would require long boats rides and stuff, while Australia is a pretty rule of law place.

cigarette snuggling sounds like an RJ Reynolds plan to get more kids smoking

Oops, fixed!

Yeah. If you’re going to take the huge risk of importing something illegal here, it might as well be cocaine or heroin et al. That way you make a decent profit for your risk at least.

Unless you transit through Singapore or most any other SE Asian country, sure.

Cigarette taxation in Canada depends a lot on provincial jurisdiction and with no inter-provincial borders it makes enforcement against smuggling tough

Many countries now have rules where the packets of cigarette show people suffering serious health concerns. This is also said to work well.

I'm also sure no smoking indoors or on public streets laws works to reduce smoking well too.

It doesn't. A packet cover (yes, they make cigarette packets covers) costs 2 Euros, and smokers don't seem to be concerned about the disgusting images they put on the packets. With all the added benefits that everybody at the table with a smoker gets to enjoy the view of a gangrenous foot with a missing finger or a black lung destroyed by tar and nicotine whenever the smoker pulls out the packet and places it on the table.

Those that are sufficiently concerned tend to stop being, or avoid becoming smokers, so the unconcerned are what remain. Same goes for prices.

I think we can both agree that taxation is the better ‘value’ policy [negative costs are hard to beat], but studies such as the described at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396458/ suggest that generic packaging has positive effects too.

For a nonsmoker, the smoker himself is far more disgusting than the picture on the packet. It's a bit backtaking to be reminded that there are still backward places where smoking is legal in public.

It does.

The plain packaging with disgusting imagery as used in Australia has been shown to be effective in reducing youth smoking. The less people try smoking when young, the less continue smoking when older.

The tobacco industry's own studies show that their branding is an important part of getting people to start smoking initially.

I thought it didn't work either but it works extremely well on [some] 13-14 year olds.

The smokes are kept behind a counter here to prevent theft. I buy a pack from a 14ish year old supermarket employee/girl. She turned around to get it, gazed over the packaging looking for the one I ordered, then she looked away, her head sunk between the shoulders and she made a face as if she just saw someone eat a baby. Took her a good 4 seconds to get back her senses and face the wall of death for a second trial.

>>The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make smoking less affordable.

Doesn't this just create an illegal distribution network that sells them cheaper?

Nowhere to get cheaper tobacco from, nothing to distribute cheaper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/nyregion/tobacco-companies...

> The city has argued that the availability of cheaper cigarettes is a public health concern because taxes were in part a way to discourage smoking.

There's also that story about that manfacturer smuggling cigarettes into a country I can't remember to avoid paying taxes.

You can always steal them.

At least in the US, you can still buy cigarettes really cheap on Indian reservations and states like West Virginia.

Same in Washington.

In late USSR and 90s Russia, smuggled cigarettes were absolutely a thing.

It does a bit of both. Cigarettes become both more expensive for everyone, and there exists incentive for a black market which is necessarily cheaper than the legitimate market (otherwise why have it?), but still more expensive than a tax-free market (you can't reach the same efficiency as a legal, tax-free market).

>The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make smoking less affordable.

The only measure that reliably gets people to stop smoking. Lots of other things can reduce the number of people who start smoking, which is at least as important. There's a reasonable evidence base for a large number of tobacco control measures - banning flavoured products, setting minimum pack sizes, banning advertising and sponsorship, mandating plain packaging etc.

Just to put some numbers on this, in Greece this summer a pack of 30 g. of rolling tobacco cost €7.20. For comparison, in the UK, the same costs £13.60 or €15.42 - so more than double the money.

As others have reported in this thread the tax on tobacco is 70% in Greece. I'm not sure what it is in the UK.

The detail to take into account is that Greece produces tobacco locally. So it's going to be cheaper.

Bottom line- I'm not convinced it's the price that's making a difference.

Given that the average wage in Greece is roughly half (or even less) that of the UK I would say they are comparable.

Although I partially agree; it's not only the price that affects the consumption of tobacco. It's could also be that there is nothing cool about smoking nowadays.

Other stuff works too. Australia mostly killed branding by enforcing plain packages, and they added images of what smoking can do to you. It worked.

Varying the images matters, so that people don't tune them out. It is best to focus on sex appeal: wrinkles, erectile dysfunction, nasty teeth, etc. The next best thing is to focus on the harm to children, both unborn and living in the house.

Not that I disagree with you that taxing cigarettes work, but what about Australian examples of additional policies including plain packaging laws, banning on advertising, the graphic health warnings on packs, combined with workplace and hospitality smoking bans?

> Here, Greece is seeing the affordability fall just because the affordability of everything is falling for them.

Greece raised the tax rate on tobacco from 57,5% to 70% in 2010. So this effect was doubled (everything else became more expensive too, wages dropped...).

> The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make smoking less affordable.

Not exactly. A better way to phrase it: "The only measure that has ever been shown to work to reduce smoking is to make laws around how smoking items can be sold." Whether that law is to require tax, or age, or whatever. In your example, they are laws around requiring extra money be charged when selling something. Whether something works should not be the only factor in its implementation, especially at the state/legal level. Otherwise, you fall victim to the prohibitionist fallacy.

Not only that. Cigging is just not cool anymore, it's looked down upon. At least where I live. But high taxes work, too.

I don't think so. In Turkey it first seemed working. High taxation caused decline in consumption . Then, inevitably smuggling and tobacco shops that sell open tobacco bloomed. Besides, smokers with lower income got a hit. They cannot quit and smoke anyway. Now there are even more smokers than before.

If you raise the price too much, the black market takes over though...

Increased taxes don't have effect on people with poor life choices.

I have a few colleagues who are way behind paycheck to paycheck, but will always have smokes. They would rather have a pack or 2 and skip meals not being able to afford them (packs costing ~$13 cad).

Indeed. The only solution is subsidized rehabilitation or elimination of tobacco (the latter I intend to kickstart, to fund the use of CRISPR to gene drive a detrimental gene in tobacco).

If we can do it with mosquitoes, no reason we can’t use it against tobacco.

That sounds like a really bad idea. Also, you can make synthetic nicotine. So eliminating tobacco wouldn't help.

Nicotine, while highly addictive, would still cause far less damage to its users if consumed through a patch, gum or e-cigarette. I’m disrupting a suboptimal consumption method.

Indeed. The last time that I quit tobacco, I kept chewing nicotine gum for several months. To get the attention-focusing effect. But I really don't like chewing gum, and so gave it up. And modafinil is better, anyway.

Congratulations on quitting!

Hey, thanks :) I went 20 years using, 10 years off, one year using, and now over 10 years off. It's a damn hard drug to kick.

When reading this comment, I am glad prohibitionists didn't have these scientific tools a century ago. Creepy.

What’s the difference between malaria and tobacco use, considering nicotine is highly addictive? If substance abuse is a disease, why is it “wrong” to attack it or it’s vectors in the same way as a biological disease?

Because the carriers are not mosquitoes? "If X is a disease, why is it 'wrong' to attack it or it's vectors in the same way as a biological disease?" Surely you can see what a nonsensical statement that is for many values of X be it substance abuse, gambling, etc.

I don’t. If we’re not going to outlaw substances that have extremely limited therapeutical uses in their current form while allowing corporations to profit by causing great harm to millions of people, you explore other avenues to fix the problem.

I’d offer a vaccine for addiction if one existed, but until that time, you hack around the lack of political will.

My brother in law drifts in and out of homelessness and maintains about a pack a day habit. He collects SSI, and has some meager savings from when he was working last summer, and most of that money goes to cigarettes, fast food, and whatever else he self-medicates with. I've never asked him but I wouldn't be surprised if he got them off of the black market, considering that he frequents places like Skid Row and the sprawling tent city in north Orange County.

Another anecdote, I recall that when I was in the military I actually met a guy who would buy cartons on base and sell the packs off base (they were tax free on base). He was in to all sorts of fringe black market style activities like this. He was also a bootlegger. He hawked his shit at swap meets. This guy was active duty, an E5 with what looked to be a healthy start to a career focused on his service. I learned after I had separated that he had been caught up in an investigation and was court martialed.

I also heard from my brother, who was also in the service, that a handful of active duty guys in his own unit in upstate NY would cross in to Canada to buy cartons to smuggle back across the border to sell in the US. This would've been in the late 80s or early 90s.

I guess my point is, if there's a market for this sort of activity then there is safe money in betting that it's happening some how. And it attributes itself well to the notion that people without a whole lot of money are able to engage in what looks like a very expensive habit to many of us.

I am not from Greece, so can't comment, but I agree with you and bet it's happening.

Definitely has been happening here as long as I can remember.

People pickup cartons coming back from US trips and resell them,, you can get it at less than half price locally. Cartons can be had for 30-40$ usd at duty free. I have coworkers who travel 90%, they always bring back cartons and charge $20 markup.

Bringing cartons across from another province as they have less taxes.

Buying from the "native reserves" as it's tax free.

Buy from Asian convenience store, cause they are importing illegally at a lower cost.

Heck, not sure how easy u can pass customs nowadays, but you could buy cartons online from europe 5-10 years ago with ease illegally.

There's many options.

Smoking is a convenient crutch for people addicted, it's crazy that something that can make you feel like shit, but can also temporarily make you feel better. (Mindset of a smoker... I could chain smoke, feel like crap. My next thought is, maybe I should have another one).

If anyone wants to quit, I suggest the following as mandatory Reading: Alan Carr: easy way quit smoking (many iterations on title).

This is a magnificent book that has helped many people I know, including myself.

Helps you understand the addiction, the hold it has over you (which is mostlt mental), and helps put you in the right mind frame to quit.

Believe me, I know. I had a pack a day habit for nearly a decade. It's horrible and I'm very glad that I got free from it. When I first started smoking, I didn't care how shitty it made me feel. Over time, I wanted to quit but was in the thick of it. In the end, I quit because I met my then-girlfriend now-wife and she wasn't having it. I appreciate the book recommendation, I'll be sure to keep it in the back of my mind if it ever comes up with friends/family/coworkers/whatever.

Still cant understand why we cant simply ban them.

Fundamental civil rights? It's wrong to punish someone for anything beyond harming other people's

> We now know that 53,800 people die every year from secondhand smoke exposure.

http://www.no-smoke.org/getthefacts.php?id=13 - the first link I found from a google search for "secondhand smoke kills how many"

Because that has worked for every other addictive (or not) drug.

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