Comment on Yeah, yeah, yeah...

• theangryseal@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ah yes. The poorest people are the smokers, let’s just make them more miserable. Sounds about right.

  You should work at a place that sells cigarettes for awhile and scope out the customers. I’ve seen people count pennies and cry because they’re hungry but they’d rather not experience the anxiety of nicotine withdrawal.

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  • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As a former very poor person and now just regular poor person who used to smoke ikr.

    That said, smoking never made me a happier person and at some point we have to do something. Smoking related issues cost the NHS an absolute fortune.

    Do I think that corporations and billionaires should pay their fair share so us peasants don’t need to pay at all. Sure do.

    Do I think that’ll ever happen. Heck no.

    So given that, then we need to do something.

    You shouldn’t make assumptions about people!!

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    • gila@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can have a look at some places that implemented the policy you’re putting forward to check if it works though, right?

      Have a look at Australia & New Zealand. Taxed at around 65-70% respectively with intent to make cigarettes cost prohibitive

      A summary of some outcomes following a decade or so of implementation of these policies:

      • No acceleration in the overall decline of smoking rates at any stage following policy implementation
      • Reversal of trend in Australia where tobacco use is currently increasing
      • The disproportionality in smoking rates between Europeans and the countries’ respective indigenous groups is now higher
      • Politicians (even the health minister himself in Aus) now champion increases to tobacco excise as a means to secure the financial stability of the country

      All this while cost of living increases, rate of poverty increases. I mean not all of these things are solely attributable to periodic tobacco excise increases but it hasn’t fixed a thing. The government got some more money to blow on some antiquated nuclear submarines to defend our massive island, surrounded by allied nations and thousands of miles from the nearest potential adversary. They’ll be ready in about 20 years. Great to see the extra tax dollars at work!

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      • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Unless I’m mistaken but correlation isn’t causation. Meaning that an increase in tax revenue from cigarettes around the time some new subs were ordered doesn’t mean that one is paying for the other.

        Is it unreasonable to make the assumption that the extra tax revenue in fact goes into public health to combat the effects of smoking on an aging population?

        smoking for those abive 15 has dropped from 24% in 1991 to around 11% in 2019

        although i will concede that this tax disproportionately impacts lower income people

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