Forums → WEPR → [necro]What's the big deal about smoking?

I enjoy the trend of prices on cigarettes right now. Nicho, I think that you overestimate a buyer's will to purchase goods they think are essential. Just wait until it hits $10 a pack...

Last time I checked cigarettes were more then $10 (including tax). I'm sure that was what an advertisement said.

Question, why do people start smoking?

I enjoy the trend of prices on cigarettes right now. Nicho, I think that you overestimate a buyer's will to purchase goods they think are essential. Just wait until it hits $10 a pack...

I know this is a tad off topic, but I'm not sure sin taxes exist in reality. I'm pretty sure some smart business people who are privy to the price inelasticities of such actions just found a way to harness this enelasticity for more money.

Now, as I've said on previous smoking threads... I don't care that people smoke; I just care when they don't care about other people. Prior to my college going smoke free campus wide every entrance to every building required that any and every person who wanted to enter risk walking through a haze of smoke. I couldn't leave my dorm room window open because the smokers were always outside polluting the what would be incoming air. AND instead of using ash trays or trash cans that are by every door on campus the cigarette butts ended up covering the ground. You'd think the flower beds had been mulched with cigarettes and someone had haphazardly strewn wood chips all over the place.

There's that and then there's the little problem with the smoker's self inflicted maladies. I don't really care about the smoker's health in the way some people might assume. Unless you're too young to understand tv commercials or to read than you are well aware of the cautions and risks. You getting sick and hospitalized drains money, materials, and man hours that could've been spent on people that had no control over their contraction of a malady. "but that's their job," you'll say. Well, let's insert your job into this picture and have you called into work away from your family or whatever activity you'd be doing when you're off duty ... And make you spend large amounts of time and energy trying to fix someone else's catastrophic mistakes/decisions that were more than easily avoidable.

Sure, a person who has never smoked can contract cancer, emphysema, and other such smoke induced health problems, but the stats and experiments show that such actions have a much higher chance of causing health problems. I use trypsin (the causative agent of emphysema) in the lab all the time. I know first hand how it breaks down adhesion proteins. Just because you trip and roll down a hundred flights of stairs each day and have yet to get injured doesn't mean that doing so doesn't ever cause injury directly to you or second hand injury to those people who just happen to be using the same stairs as you at the time.

If you're going to so freely inconvenience everyone else with your habit with a "why should I care about their problems that are a direct result of my actions" attitude... Then why should we care about you when you find out that years of polluting everyone else's breathing air has resulted in you needing medical attention and/or constant help (people with emphysema can have a terrible time going even short distances. Normally, breathing takes up like 3-5% of of your total body energy spent... A lung pathology like emphysema can turn that into upwards of >30% of the energy spent in the body focused towards just gasping for air. I could scrounge through my Guyton med Phys text for a proper citation.... But if you'll ignore google stats and info then you'll ignore what Doctors learn from too.

Not everyone gets these problems or at that severe a degree... But it does hurt you... And it does hurt the people around you. If you want to live your life to the fullest and that involves sucking ash, then fine. I'm all for enjoying life Just do it where unconsenting people don't have to breathe your nasty crap.

I know this is a tad off topic, but I'm not sure sin taxes exist in reality. I'm pretty sure some smart business people who are privy to the price inelasticities of such actions just found a way to harness this enelasticity for more money.

It might just be conspiracy on my part, but the gov't puts the facade of "sin tax" on something they know will be successful b/c people will continue to pay larger and larger amounts of money for something they're addicted to. By calling it a "sin tax" you make sure that it survives. The majority already has a large distaste for the action and probably thinks the minority should pay extra to continue to spew out carcinogens and allergens... (If you can't stop it, then make them pay more)... The minority is then left w/o help. It's too small to make a difference. I guess you could still call it a "sin tax," but it's main focus is increasing money intake and not actually stopping the "sin." If you stop the sin, then you lose an appreciable amount of revenue. I mean I'm probably wrong, but it's something to think about.

It's not a conspiracy. By calling it a ''sin tax'' doesn't mean they want to ensure its survival, since people know the downsides of smoking, blah blah. A proper economics name would be a demerit goods tax, since most governments consider it a demerit good, i.e a good they deem as negative to society.

Call it one thing or another, they still will pay, in spite of the name.

I honestly don't think that it has ever been intended to stop or even discourage people from purchasing damaging products. Now, as a smoker, I loathe having to pay an extra tax for my tobacco, especially in a state that is notorious for mismanagement of funds.However I can recognize, and even support, the main goal: to gain extra funds from items which tend to cause health problems in order to offset the increased medical costs associated with such habits.

to gain extra funds from items which tend to cause health problems in order to offset the increased medical costs associated with such habits.

Do they really earmark those ''sin tax'' money for medical purposes?

funny fact about smoking in the netherlands smoking people bring so much tax that we can mantaine oure roads

I think people just don't want you to do it because it's harmful to you. If your mother tells you not to, it's just that she'd like to know she raised you in a manner that might have had you live another 10 years. Just my guess.
As for second hand smoke, it's real. Just google it and you'll find endless support for the idea that it is quite lethal to people who are exposed to it for long periods of time.
If you're outside smoking, don't do it next to other people -- It's irritating. Having that 'F off' attitude isn't nice and only makes you a jerk in real life.

Also, it is quite hard to quit smoking -- Just because you've seen some people do it with success doesn't mean that there are many others that haven't!

My father smoked at about 14, is an MD, and doesn't smoke anymore except a few times, I would estimate half a pack a year. I hardly care since him and the few old friends he meets every now and then smoke outside. The only time it's a bother is when it's in the car. People say rolling down the window works, but for anyone in the backseat, I assure you, it doesn't and the smell is quite irritating to people who don't smoke (I would guess).

LOL in every petrol station it has a sign "QUITLINE" and has a picture of um something like the heart or lungs, yet they sell cigarettes right underneath the sign LMAO

Forgot to mention that I have seen a lot of the 'second hand smoke' stuff. Seriously folks, it's truly BS. Sure, it's bad for you. Unfortunately so is going outside (unless you're from a rural area in Wyoming) It is really easy to gather up facts about some minor facet and present them without comparisons, and it is a major tactic of the anti-tobacco lobbyists. However it is disingenuous and shouldn't be bought.

I'm too tired to retrieve the URLs at the moment, but I was reading about this yesterday and saw something on the CDC website, or something similar, which showed the number of air pollution related deaths in California and it was at roughly 3000.

Interestingly enough, only about 3500 deaths nationwide were attributed directly to second hand smoke.

Now I do realize that smoking does cause an increase in overall air pollution so these comparisons can't be relied on as a 'set in stone' type correlation, however consider that the smoke produced by one cigarette is comparable to driving your 4 cylinder gasoline powered car about 3 miles in terms of CO2 emissions.

Then think about how many cars are operated in the US, and realize that most of them produce far more CO2 than a late model 4 cylinder gas sipper and figure out for yourself which is worse for the environment and for your health.

Just because it is a minor source of pollution doesn't mean we can't find fault with it. Sure, cars cause a heck of a lot more respiratory damage, but that doesn't mean we can ignore second-hand smoke damage caused by inconsiderate smokers, and sweep it under the carpet.

Also, I think there might be a problem with your stats Walker, just retrieved these from the CDC website:

Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25â"30%.

Secondhand smoke exposure causes an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths annually among adult nonsmokers in the United States.

But the point I would like to make is that we cannot simply lump two issues, that are similar, but are different in many aspects, leading one to diminish the effects of one relative to the other and then claim that it isn't that big a problem in itself. That's just masking the problem and avoiding it. Car pollution is one thing, and smoking is yet another.