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Comment by gadflyinyoureye | Hacker News Reader

Here’s the problem with tobacco. It becomes a public expense when the community has to pay the health bill. The same arguments that people who refuse COVID vaccines should be cut off from the community (jobs, commerce, etc) applies to tobacco. Tobacco costs lives and can inflict damage on those not personally using.

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"Here’s the problem with tobacco."

Funny how that is the exact same problem as with exercise, diet, driving, and just generally existing in a society.

Smoking is addictive. This makes it more difficult for a person to change their behavior compared to exercising more, eating healthy, and driving better (I'm assuming you meant people who drive poorly?)

Well, everybody is going to die, and therefore have some kind of end-of-life healthcare cost. If it isn't lung cancer from smoking, then it will be heart disease or Alzheimer's or some other form of cancer.

> Here’s the problem with tobacco. It becomes a public expense when the community has to pay the health bill.

Depending on how you measure it, New Zealand may well be taking in more tax than the use of tobacco is costing.

It all gets quite murky quite fast (eg how much tax would the dead person have paid if they had lived longer?).

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m somehow supportive of more restrictions on tobacco and alcohol while keen on more liberal drug policies. It would seem that I need to think this all through.

https://www.health.govt.nz/about-ministry/information-releas...

Slippery slope. Soon it's those who eat hamburgers and french fries are a public expense, therefore ...

Social welfare should be a means to promote personal liberty, not an excuse to take it away.

So does heroin. Decriminalizing its use with treatment works while prohibition never does. You're barking up the wrong tree if you believe outlawing tobacco is a valid solution.

I don't know man, "refusing a vaccine" is not nearly as addictive as tobacco, and isn't advertised anywhere near as much.

It's not a strong argument by the way. I don't own a car yet I still have to "pay" if someone has an accident, I don't do any risky sports but have to "pay" for someone else's skateboarding injuries, I don't eat fast food often but must "pay" for people who went full diabetic on McDonalds or whatever.

>The same arguments that people who refuse COVID vaccines should be cut off from the community (jobs, commerce, etc) applies to tobacco.

When was the last time an ER or ICU was closed to new patients because of lung cancer? The problem with COVID denialism isn't that they impose the usual sort of healthcare costs but that they produce correlated emergencies which strain the hospital beyond its usual operating capacity.

Once the ERs slow down can people who didn’t get the shot have jobs or leave their homes? Many on the Left say no.

I expect that vaccine mandates for employment (a la Biden) will go away eventually, yes. But that won't happen "once the ERs slow down"; rather, it happens when we are confident they won't "speed up" again. One operationalization: I would figure that when we are at 95% vaccinated or so, and when it is no longer a major news item, the mandate will be repealed.

>or leave their homes?

I do support continuing the vaccine mandate for as long as people continue to say ridiculous things like this. Government policy has rarely been so funny.

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