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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

Same with sugar in alcoholic beverages. Or salt on red meat.

Same with sugar in cigarettes, even. Sugar is a major ingredient, and makes them easier to inhale compared to cigars, which partly accounts for their global popularity.

Both just work so well together. :)

Also, salt in meat and vege stews ~ if you have nothing else in terms of flavour, salt makes it infinitely more appetizing.

Sugar provides calories and salt is a preservative. Your analogy doesn’t make sense. Menthol has no value other than taste.

The taste is the value. Mechanically it makes cigarettes easier to inhale.

Obviously sugar provides some calories, but no one is getting fat from the sugar in cigarettes. The caloric value is negligible.

What?

You absolutely wouldn't make the case that sugar is being added to foods in order to add additional calories, or that salt is being added to foods in order to preserve them. The fact that you can come up with a spurious purpose for an additive doesn't make pointing out the additive's primary purpose nonsensical.

The purpose of adding to an alcoholic beverage isn’t to increase caloric content, it is solely to make it more palatable. Restaurants don’t salt their steaks to preserve them, they do it to improve the flavor.

You jest, but here in the UK, where menthols were banned several years ago, we tax sugar in beverages (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43659124), and food producers are under pressure to cut salt and sugar from their products (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/salt-reduction-ta...).

I understand the rationale behind this prohibitionist, paternalistic approach (maintain a healthy work/consumption force, reduce burden on socialised healthcare, improve GDP), but the additional cost to the economy is already built in to these goods - smoke tax (it’s not just tobacco, it’s anything you could burn and inhale) in the uk more than covers the cost of smoking related illness.

The sugar tax has already resulted in many different beverage companies to reduce the amount of sugar in their drinks in the UK. Personally I think stopping government corn subsidies (that are used to make a dirt cheap sugar substitute in the form of high fructose corn syrup) would be a much better way of doing it, but obesity is such a severe issue that we need to do something about it.

It’s actually really annoying. I hardly ever drink sugary drinks, but sometimes on a long drive I’d get one specifically for the sugar content (sans caffeine and taurine). Now diet versions of everything seem to be default.

Also, whilst I understand many/most people can't taste the difference, the swap to using sweeteners has had the same level of disgust to my taste as stirring in a teaspoon of salt into almost every soft drink.

I'd actually prefer salt in my soft drink, making it a little isotonic!

I literally only have Coca-Cola for an occasional treat these days - My Beloved Irn-Bru, 7up & San Pellegrino have all been adulterated with awful-tasting artificial sweeteners and are simply unenjoyable for me now.

It's a weird future I find myself in, where I will never drink any of these things again, punished because of some third party entity's paternalism where other third parties are concerned (I'm not personally fat nor enjoy a diet that would ever make me so).

Menthols are still available in the UK today, I believe they are slated for removal from the market in 2020. What has been removed from the UK market is "10 decks", we can only buy 20s now.

If all you want out of life is to work and consume, I guess that’s fine. I want more than that.

> smoke tax (it’s not just tobacco, it’s anything you could burn and inhale) in the uk more than covers the cost of smoking related illness.

...according to the people who sell cigarettes.

...according to the people who sell cigarettes

Smoking related illnesses in the UK cost the NHS (taxpayers) around £5Bn year, and taxes on tobacco raise around £9Bn. So it's pretty close, but that £4Bn gap will need to be made up from somewhere. Personally I'd legalise the wacky tobaccy and tax that, but there really ought to be equivalent taxes on vaping too.

Also if life expectancy goes up, there will be an even greater shortfall in pensions too.

So, the numbers you're talking about are conservative esitmates.

They only include smokers. They don't include, for example, the children of smokers, who have many much more respiratory illness than other children.

The hospital admission costs only include this list, and only include them when these are the primary diagnosis of the admission episode.

Importantly, the cost used is the payment by results cost, not the actual cost to the treating trusts or GP surgeries.

> Smoking attributable admissions are defined as spells where the primary diagnosis of the admission episode is attributable to the following ICD-10 codes:

> malignant neoplasms: lip, oral cavity, pharynx (C00 to C14), oesophagus (C15), stomach (C16), pancreas (C25), larynx (C32), trachea, lung, bronchus (C33-C34), cervix uteri (C53), kidney and renal pelvis (C64 to C66, C68), urinary bladder (C67), acute myeloid leukaemia (C92), unspecified site (C80)

> cardiovascular diseases: ischaemic heart disease (I20 to I25), other heart disease (I00 to I09, I26 to I51), cerebrovascular disease (I60 to I69), atherosclerosis (I70), aortic aneurysm (I71), other arterial disease (I72 to I78)

> respiratory diseases: pneumonia, influenza (J10 to J18), bronchitis, emphysema (J40 to J43), chronic airway obstruction (J44)

> diseases of the digestive system: stomach ulcer, duodenal ulcer (K25 to K27), Crohn’s disease (K50), periodontal disease (K05)

> other diseases: age related cataract (H25), hip fracture (S72.0 to S72.2), spontaneous abortion (O03)

The direct cost to the NHS is £2.7Bn, £5Bn is an estimate of the total cost from The Nursing Times.

> but there really ought to be equivalent taxes on vaping too.

No need to demonstrate health risks first?

Some taxes are on “sins” and some are on “luxuries”. But the money’s still got to come from somewhere. Who wins if we ban smoking and cut that money from the NHS? No one.

Pretty sure that 4bn gap is more than compensated by the fact that smokers die earlier.

I have also had a health professional who was scathing about the lo-salt campaign "very well marketed".

The only problem is what they replace sale, sugar fat with can be worse.

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