Single Item Taxes

[Epoch]

Kasz216 said:

Rath said:

Kasz216 said:
Also it should be noted that the "Cigarettes cause ____ amount of healthcare costs" is on poor ground.

Since they take a piracy like stance to it.... because

A) Everyone who smokes and remotley gets something cigarrete related is counted as if it came from smoking.

B) Everyone who gets such a disease is treated as if they would be perfectly healthy for the rest of their lives. Never mind the fact that most of these people would just get sick later on in life and incur similar charges, and also that these people will incur later charges just for getting routine healthcare checkups.

Actually I'm pretty damned sure that the studies done on the costs of smoking to the healthcare system did take those two factors into account.

 

Not true.

The studies that do take that into account actually show that costs would be higher in a nonsmoking population then a population that does smoke.

Like this one for the sweedish

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/337/15/1052

Which only produces favorable overall results if you include discounting.

Which is very important when you consider the fact that the people writing the paper are for smoking taxes to discourage people from doing such.

And another interestingly from sweeden... here.  Though in this case it's obesity and not smoking.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18711498

Being healthy costs the healthcare system more then any negative effect like smoking or eating fast food.  Maybe we should put a giant tax on vitamins!

 

Haha yea, I was gonna point that out.  Basically smoking decreases cost to health care because smokers get cancer and die younger before they can start getting curable illnesses associated with old age, and have a long, drawn out death.  And if they are going to tax cigarettes based on cost to health care they should tax fast food/soda on the same flawed assumption. 

I personally sort of agree with single item taxes, so long as they are not a necessity to life.  I used to smoke and I viewed my smoking as a leisure that I enjoyed, thus was willing to pay for. When I realized that I couldn't get by a day without a cigarette, I quit.

And banning things doesn't do anything except create a black market for them and drive the price higher.