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.

Any taxes are bad, mmmmm-kay...

What about the taxes that pay for the US Army?

Working on it.

I would love for that to happen where I live.

I haven't read the thread, but I'll post my take on it (I will probably be treading on some similar ground):

Since when have taxation been about being fair? If taxation was fair, then wouldn't there be a flat rate on income tax? And no inheritance tax whatsoever?

No, taxation is about raising revenues for the Government which it can then spend on services for the nation. If some things cost the Government more, like the effects of petrol consumption, alcohol and smoking, then, naturally, the Government will want to see more money coming in from them to help pay for the fixings of the problems.

People often complain in the UK, around the time of the budget about the Government raising the taxes on these three goods, but they never realise the following:

- The tax increases are often in line with inflation, so actually, the taxes haven't gone up, they're just being updated to the new price level.

- These taxes are supposed to put you off consumption, that's why they're so high.

- These taxes are not the result of a greedy Government, the amount of revenue that taxation from the big three is £42.5bn (with over half of that coming from fuel - £26.2bn) - that is 8.9% of the Government's total income. Now if we consider the costs that these things bring to the Government, not just the health effects from smoking, but the collection of litter of the cigarette buds, the education and advertisements, the extra police enforcement of an evening when night clubs close, rehab centres, etc. Not to mention that the Government offers huge subsidies to firms developing green technologies that comes from the fuel duty. I'd hardly say that the Gov't profits very much from the duties at all.

Not reading the thread may be a problem Samuel.

As i've posted links that show that smoking SAVES the government money in healthcare costs.

The flaw in that article (again, my laziness may be the death of me, here) is that it just discusses the costs and the costs alone. Removing a tumour and providing radiotherapy or what-have-you is a very expensive cost that will have to be paid off immediately. Someone who's getting older will build up their costs slowly.

What's more (I don't think, I didn't read the entire thing), the article doesn't take into account the fact that if this cancer treatment is then successful, the smoker will continue to lead his/her life, and if they give up smoking, then they'll live just as long as the non-smoker as well, racking up costs on both ends.

And like I said, there's more to the costs of smoking then just the health costs. Cigarette buds are also a huge litter issue, with millions of pounds going into clearing it, you then have to include the costs of education and advertisements, oh, and offsetting the environmental impact.

Also, the costs was just one of my three points. The fact that the good is a demerit one means that it is in the Government's best interest to prevent the consumption of cigarettes, and that is another reason for the high prices.

What's the difference?  Whether it's all upfront or built up slowley?  You make it up in the end.

No it does.  It's a reasearch study... most research studies on this do find this to be the case.  The only ones that do not are ones that just take all health costs as a net loss.

The rest of your points are rather minimal.  The removal of cigarette buts can't be that much more expensive then all other liter removal in general.  It doesn't in the US.

While education, advertisements etc.... the UK pays for that?  In the US it's paid by the Tobbacco companies.

Yeah it's paid for by the NHS.