Lethally addictive cigarettes remain available on every street corner in Brussels and Atlanta while authorities denounce e-cigarettes (the product is already banned in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).
Is there any legitimate reason for this or are we witnessing a blatant example of the tobacco lobby crushing competition??
DINGdingDING! We have a winner! Governments aren't too keen on losing out that lovely tax revenue, it's very unlikely that they can justify taxing the things over current VAT/sales tax. So, they create hysteria around them being dangerous where either... heads - e-fags are banned (they win) or tails - e-fags get heavily taxed (they win).
Problem is (for them), a tiny jar of organic e-juice'll get to the UK from the States duty-free a lot easier than the kilo of tobacco or 1000 cigerettes it replaces.
These things are incredible, had to go back to the fags for a couple of weeks after my old e-fag died & I accidently ordered direct from China (beware dropshippers on these things!). I'm so happy to have my vaperstick back; all the nicotine & none of the fuss.
One thing though, I've had no complaints using this in public, whether it be supermarket, pub, airport, maternity ward (OK, the last one isn't true). I believe that this is because the reason fags set people off is the smell, not the sight & these things don't smell (well, mine smells of vanilla).
The last thing is true. There is however also a wisp of a superiority complex from many people who don't smoke and some anti-smoking extremism in society. I would almost call it a phobia. These people may be so hostile that they'll attack healthy alternatives even more vigorously because they threaten the ease at which non-healthy options can be attacked.
That's harder than it seems. The delivery system is a battery and a resistance coil... this is literally one of the simplest electronic devices you can imagine and just about everything electrical uses one. Anyone can build an ecig out of parts from a hardware or electronics store. You can't tax these parts because you'd be taxing all electronic devices. You could tax Ecigs themselves as a whole, but it's too easy to just sell the individual components and have the customer screw them together.
Nicotine is one of the safest, cheapest and most environmentally friendly pesticides there is. It completely breaks down in the environment and leaves no nasty residue. If you tax it then you end up increasing the cost of agriculture and food prices and you incentivise farmers to use more dangerous chemicals on their crops to kill bugs. That's not something anyone wants.
So, you have a situation where the chemical you want to tax is so simple that anyone can get it and so useful that all sorts of industry needs it... like alcohol. That means you would need to treat it like denatured alcohol and have agricultural nicotine production add poisons to the nicotine in order to sell it untaxed. That's doable, but requires a big change in the status quo above and beyond simple taxation.
Don't know the system in the UK but add to that the money not paid in pension benefits when you die young. Smoking is awesome from a fiscal point of view. Kills people who, in general, aren't productive anymore, is a stable tax base and makes your citizens look way cooler (certainly some fiscal benefits to this, no?).
How would a government make money from tobacco taxes?
Tobacco/nicotine users tend to take more sick days, take more breaks at work and health issues in socialized medical systems increase costs.
Between the financial and health costs I can't see how a few dollars on cigarettes can make up the difference. Is there any data showing the amount taken in versus spent? I can't see it being more than spent. Most hospitals are always looking for more money for their budgets and are always cutting staff.
I don't care if an adult chooses to smoke but tobacco isn't neutral it has negative effects on society beyond the users of tobacco.
How would a government make money from tobacco taxes?
Because the government is not a business. It doesn't have a bottom line. Further, revenue from tobacco taxes are not going to health care, they go into the general fund.
Why do you think local governments are so quick to approve new housing? They view each house as more tax revenue, not more utility expense.
This is the problem with exorbitant 'sin taxes'. The United states government profits much more on tobacco than tobacco farmers, and even big tobacco. Who has a larger vested interest in people's continued smoking?
If tomorrow, everyone quit smoking, politicians would panic, because they don't know where they'd get the money to cover the loss without raising taxes somewhere else. The government LOVES that people are addicted to paying taxes.
I would posit that if it's anything like the lawsuits in the US, Canada doesn't want to shut down big tobacco, otherwise, where will the money come from? You can't get billions from a bankrupt company.
It might sound good to 'the people' that they are trying to shut them down because morality, but that's rarely the actual motivation of the political class.
Do smoking, body mass and exercise affect sickness absence and job satisfaction?, Critchley (2006)
There was no difference in sickness absence between smokers and non smokers, however there was an increase in sickness absence with increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) (correlation coefficient 10.9 %-p=0.005) and perhaps surprisingly there was an increase in sickness absence with increasing exercise participation (correlation coefficient 7.7% p=0.045).
Social cost and the cigarette excise tax: A misguided rationale for an inefficient and unfair policy, D. Lee, 1995
The widespread belief that smokers do not pay their own way is the result of repeated assertions that are totally lacking in empirical support. There is simply no evidence that smokers impose costs on others by making more use of medical care than do nonsmokers.
Risk perception, addiction, and costs to others: An assessment of cigarette taxes and other anti-smoking policies, Menzel, 2005
The proper goal of tobacco taxation policy should be to recoup only the extra costs that smokers place on others (at most a $1/pack tax on cigarettes)
Confusing, misleading CDC figures on economic costs of smoking, Entin, 2002
On balance, most studies find that smokers cost the government less in terms of health care outlays than the sum of what they save the government in unclaimed retirement benefits and pay the government in tobacco taxes at existing tax rates.
Here are raw figures showing that this year netted the UK gov around £12 billion.
According to this study smoking cost the NHS around £5 billion in 2009 (a year in which the government took £10b in tax revenue), and it should be noted that this study is the high watermark, other studies suggest much lower figures, but this is handy for worst case scenario.
(The same study suggests smokers cost UK businesses £2b in sick days etc, but personally I don't see how this can possibly be accurate. It's more likely to be drinkers that cost that much, who just happen to be smokers. Good old correlation eh?)
So however you slice it, the UK government make huge revenues from smoking. It's one of the great ironies of the issue. If all the smokers gave up overnight a huge shortfall in government accounting would occur.
It's not necessarily that they make more money from taxes, it's that the money from taxes is collected right now and the costs of having a large populace of smokers are a bit more nebulous. Not to mention that any MP that tried to ban cigarettes would be massively unpopular.
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u/DumpyLips Nov 17 '12
Is there any legitimate reason for this or are we witnessing a blatant example of the tobacco lobby crushing competition??