Wintreath Regional Community
The Frozen Village of Fourneshore - Chats and Discussions => Howling Wind Tavern - General Discussion => Topic started by: Wintermoot on March 24, 2017, 03:25:33 PM
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I ran into an article about Oregon's Senate approving a bill that would raise the minimum age for buying and possessing tobacco products from 18 to 21...if ultimately adopted, Oregon would become the third US state to do this, after Hawaii and California.
Which leads me to wonder...is this an appropriate tactic from governments to combat tobacco use? What are your thoughts?
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I think it's a bad idea. It'll make it harder for kids to get ahold of, sure, but it'll also make it more attractive simply on the basis of 'this is fun stuff adults are keeping away from me'.
A far better way to eliminate tobacco use is to simply jack up the cost. Slap tariffs on anything to do with it as a 'luxury tax' (even if it's much more of a 'sin tax'), and kids simply won't be able to afford it.
If a pack of cigarettes costs $50, you could let them buy it at eight years old and the incidence of youth smoking would still crater.
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Ha! All Liberal wacko states! :P
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I think it's a bad idea. It'll make it harder for kids to get ahold of, sure, but it'll also make it more attractive simply on the basis of 'this is fun stuff adults are keeping away from me'.
A far better way to eliminate tobacco use is to simply jack up the cost. Slap tariffs on anything to do with it as a 'luxury tax' (even if it's much more of a 'sin tax'), and kids simply won't be able to afford it.
If a pack of cigarettes costs $50, you could let them buy it at eight years old and the incidence of youth smoking would still crater.
Although, if the price is high, adults who can afford it and are addicted will go through all of their money even quicker.
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Addiction isn't an on/off switch, it's a spectrum. They can cut back over time - there would probably be a pretty dramatic cutback at least initially, but supplemented with (probably copious amounts of) nicotine gum, it could get them into the spot where they might actually be able to kick the habit themselves.
Nor am I suggesting we take cigarettes from, what, $10 a pack (gross oversimplification since IIRC my brother bitched about New York costing $15 a pack while Tennessee is more like $7 or 8) to $50 overnight, since that would be widely derided as 'something something federal overreach, something something freedoms, something something my body my choice'. But gradually phasing in higher and higher tariffs over a decade is something fully achievable.
Although obviously for maximum effect either the first or second jump needs some real teeth, like a 100, 150% tax. But subsequently jacking it up 20% here, another 25% there...I think that's doable.
Of course, I also think we should do that will alcohol, since that kills a shitload of people every year too, but that would be just too deeply unpopular. Republicans and Democrats alike would probably get together to lynch me if I proposed that, since it would affect white guy beer just as much as white girl wine, and they're the ones who lynch people.
It'd be the unifying moment this country has been praying for.
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Addiction isn't an on/off switch, it's a spectrum. They can cut back over time - there would probably be a pretty dramatic cutback at least initially, but supplemented with (probably copious amounts of) nicotine gum, it could get them into the spot where they might actually be able to kick the habit themselves.
Nor am I suggesting we take cigarettes from, what, $10 a pack (gross oversimplification since IIRC my brother bitched about New York costing $15 a pack while Tennessee is more like $7 or 8) to $50 overnight, since that would be widely derided as 'something something federal overreach, something something freedoms, something something my body my choice'. But gradually phasing in higher and higher tariffs over a decade is something fully achievable.
Although obviously for maximum effect either the first or second jump needs some real teeth, like a 100, 150% tax. But subsequently jacking it up 20% here, another 25% there...I think that's doable.
Of course, I also think we should do that will alcohol, since that kills a shitload of people every year too, but that would be just too deeply unpopular. Republicans and Democrats alike would probably get together to lynch me if I proposed that, since it would affect white guy beer just as much as white girl wine, and they're the ones who lynch people.
It'd be the unifying moment this country has been praying for.
The thing about that, though, is that it'd more strongly affect poor people as people below the poverty line are twice as likely to smoke (https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/resources/data/cigarette-smoking-in-united-states.html), making the poor poorer. I'm not sure how likely they'd just switch to nicotine gum. It might do more harm than good overall.
I think the amount of anti-smoking teaching and advertisements the government and public schools do is more effective. Young people are smoking tobacco less than older generations. And if legislation were able to be passed that removes branding on packages, I think that'd be good, too, but supposedly it infringes on the First Amendment.
But on the whole age limit thing, that's a difficult question. I think I might support it. If you're able to buy it when you're younger, then you'd probably get addicted sooner. If you have to sneak around to get it, then you'd be less likely to have a continuous supply to feed that addiction.
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Personally, I'm of the mind that if you can die for your country at 18, and be considered an adult (for the most part) at 18, then you should also be able to do things like smoke or drink.
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I think they should raise the age for serving in the military to 21 as well. Too many kids recruited out of high school to go die or get fucked up because they didn't know better. By 21, I think many would.
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I was opposed to minimum ages when I posted this topic, but I didn't know if it was effective or not, so I did some looking up. According to the Illinois Department of Health, 90% of smokers start before the age of 18, and the average age of a new smoker is 13. So not only do minimum age laws interfere with an adult's ability to be an adult and make decisions for themselves (even stupid decisions), they're not even very effective and as Doc mentioned may actually be counter-productive.
And don't get me wrong, when someone my age or younger tells me they've started smoking or using tobacco, I think they're stupid as shit...to know all that we know about it now and still start doing it. But on the other hand, I can't blame older generations that smoke, because none of that information was out there when they started...in fact at one time cigarettes were advertised as being healthy and recommended by doctors.
And that's partially why I'm against adding special taxes on it as well...not only are you essentially taxing the poor because they're more likely to smoke, you're punishing older generations for a decision they made based on false information put out by tobacco companies. And even if it's for their own good, I don't know that it's right to tell someone in that situation that either they need to quit or they're going to give shitloads of their money to the government. It's not helping people with an addition...it's abusing people with an addition.
Besides, the recent health care mess in the US should be enough to clue people in that politicians generally do not care about your health. When they talk about how these taxes improve people's health, it's just a convenient cover that sounds nice in order to tax the poor some more.
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I dunno. If we view things through that lens, then sure, anything that could disproportionately affect the poor is implicitly terrible. But then sales tax is pretty much how a lot of states are staying afloat, and that's regressive as all hell. Not to mention payroll tax, or hell, even income tax, since the wealthy are actualizing their gains not from salaries but from capital-gains-taxed, err, capital gains.
And hitting it with a tariff is, in my view, the most effective way to disincentivize this behavior, simply because using basic economics principles, 1) we're already not taxing them for the negative externalities they're causing, and 2), any change in the price will have quite an alarming effect on the demand. Yes, there are some people who are 2-packs-a-day addicted, and they're not going to see that big a change in their consumption simply because they have a physiological need for it. But the people who are social smokers? Who smoke maybe a pack a week? A hit to the wallet might say 'eh, maybe once every fortnight', or price them out entirely.
At some point, we have to accept that it's inherent to public policy that you can never perfectly account for everyone in your policy, and I'm okay with causing some relatively small part of the population some financial hardship if it saves another, larger part of the population from ever picking up smoking in the first place. I'm okay with the 'greater good' argument in cases like this simply because I doubt the efficacy of the alternative (age limits), and doing nothing at all is arguably a far worse evil in the first place. Policies can be tweaked at a later date, but inaction is hard to get moving out of.
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Damn, you guys don't belong on the internet. You're too calm! I need to see some RAGE!!!
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Damn, you guys don't belong on the internet. You're too calm! I need to see some RAGE!!!
Welcome to Wintreath! (*) :P
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I think the minimum age should be scrapped and replaced with a maximum age. Of -1,000,000.
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i think that they should raise the minimum age. Tobacco does crazy things to your brain and it is hardly used for medicine. Soon people only in their early 20s will be going to jail or diagnosed with mental illnesses
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As we all know, raising the minimum age doesn't do a damn thing except make it more appealing to those who are under that age limit. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many kids still in their school years having people buy them cigarettes to dance around the current age law of 18.
Same goes for alcohol, and for all of the high school kids who get access to it for parties despite it being a 21+ thing.
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As we all know, raising the minimum age doesn't do a damn thing except make it more appealing to those who are under that age limit. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many kids still in their school years having people buy them cigarettes to dance around the current age law of 18.
Same goes for alcohol, and for all of the high school kids who get access to it for parties despite it being a 21+ thing.
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I've heard that while underage alcohol in Spain is normal/socially accepted, legal until recently, and still legal under many circumstances, teen Spaniards are generally quite moderate in their drinking.