Smoking Bans

According to the article, instead of the headline, the data is inconclusive.

They had an increase in calls to the hotlines and visitors to the website, but the numbers on how many were smokers, or how many actually tried to quit, is still forthcoming...

edited 20th Aug '12 6:14:02 AM by Swish

I hope they at least make it so you can rip the labels off once you buy them.

And if not, I'm reiterating that if this happens in the US, I'm starting a small business making cig cozies that snugly fit around your box of smokes.

Why? Frankly, they are quite easy to ignore. Few of the smokers I know are remotely put off by them*

. You will probably get used to them. If you do not, you can just place a piece of paper in front of it*

U.S. cigars box also have the plastic cover, right?

. Don't need to make an already expensive habit even more expensive.

I don't think these warns are meant to convince people who are already smoking to stop, but rather to discourage new users. At vary last, such obvious labels help to keep disinformation down. With them, it is completely impossible to buy cigars without knowing they are not good for your health.

edited 20th Aug '12 9:45:01 AM by Heatth

It's the principle, it isn't that I find pictures, warnings, or anything like that to bother me. It's that the entire concept of forcing the issue like that is extremely obnoxious to me.

And I'm tired of just "getting over it". If I keep just "getting over it" I'll eventually be smoking in some little 50x50 foot square of land in the middle of nowhere as the only designated smoking area in the county.

Sick and fucking tired of putting up with getting reamed on a regular basis.

Or you could, you know, stop smoking. Just sayin'. Then again, you will inevitably stop smoking at some point, and probably sooner than if you didn't smoke.

The only way to get it to stop for good is to built up a huge public stigma against it.

edited 20th Aug '12 1:01:07 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I almost died a couple of months ago from second hand smoke. I was walking around inside a building and I passed by someone that just had it clinging to them. They weren't even smoking at the time. I stopped breathing and I had to be given oxygen and stabbed with an epipen. I'm not a fan of smoking. I don't think it's that hard to ask people to try to confine it. But I'm also one of the few people who is at a daily risk of people just walking past me almost killing me. So my views are skewed.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

...and then a Government will completely ban smoking? Or Will They, since it brings in a lot of guarenteed Tax Revenue?

Not that I'm for smoking myself. I've got asthma.

Keep Rolling On

I actually like the Singaporean way of doing it: banning it outright like you would ban drugs.

edited 20th Aug '12 2:52:45 PM by IraTheSquire

Drug bans in general are a bad thing. Banning drugs is the largest way to fun terrorism, slavery and oppression in other countries as well as raise the crime rate. Legal but regulated just makes the world more peaceful. It's what prohibition taught us and what the War on some Drugs is still teaching us. It just doesn't tend to sink in very well.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

You have to eliminate the habit before a ban is useful but I think a full ban is problematic.

If they banned them here I'd just go to the nearby Indian reservations for them instead. They wouldn't ban them since they would see how much money there was to be made in a prohibition.

Sometimes I think this issue would be helped (especially for people regularly exposed to secondhand smoke) if someone invented a pill that you take regularly that reduces the tar buildup, purges most of the nicotine from your system, etc... But then again, if that happened then a bunch of idiots would suddenly pick up smoking and it'd be Eli Whitney and the cotton gin all over again.

edited 20th Aug '12 4:15:07 PM by Vellup

They never travel alone.

At least an outright ban is far less hypocritical than this "oh I am going to keep the cigarette tax revenue but take the moral high ground of discouraging smoking".

I don't see how that's hypocritical. In fact, high taxes on cigarettes are part of the wider anti-smoking strategy.

You could argue that it provides a perverse incentive to politicians, I suppose; but if your politicians are that corrupt and morally bankrupt, you have wider issues that need addressing.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

That's not hypocritical. The high taxes are used to pay for the government services smokers receive later in life. Estimated cost in Ontario alone runs upwards to a billion+ per year.

It's hypocritical to use that as the justification for the taxes while also claiming the taxes are to "help" in forcing people to quit. Because when people quit, you get less taxes collected via sales to fund those "government services", which means either raising the taxes again(and more people quitting, etc. ad nauseum), or taxing something new to provide for those original government services...

Either set up the tax for one purpose, and one purpose only, or ban the item outright...

edited 20th Aug '12 6:04:45 PM by Swish

Huh? Taxes and the need for it goes down with people quitting.

Well, technically, the less people smoke, the less people there are to be "helped to stop" smoking. So even if there is less revenue, there should be less expenses as well*

.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Better to be hypocritical than to implement something that won't work and will make more harm than good in the long run.

edited 20th Aug '12 6:22:36 PM by Heatth

Just to be clear. You're saying that someone who smokes for (insert number) years, and quits because the price of cigarettes goes up, will not need the "government services", that those taxes provide for, even though they would have received those services if they had just continued smoking?

Because those "government services" tend to include healthcare for the deterioration of health of smokers due to smoking related illnesses... Somehow I doubt that the dollar amount needed for those services will go down because people quit. In fact, the dollar amount needed will stay the same, while the income for those services will diminish due to the taxes forcing/convincing people(who still will need those services in the future) to quit...

According to those lawmakers who support the implementation of the taxes, increased taxes on cigarettes aren't done to prevent people from starting smoking. It's to stop people who are currently smoking from continuing...

edited 20th Aug '12 6:36:29 PM by Swish

I think it is an stupid idea then. Addiction is a powerful thing. Many, if not most, aren't smoking by choice. Making it more expensive for them is only punishment, as they won't be able to get rid and will keep paying anyway.

I do think higher prices, as well as less appealing box*

, is a good way to keep people from getting started.

I am also firm on my stance that hypocrisy is preferable than stupidity. I would prefer your govern wasn't hypocritical, but it is still better than prohibition.

edited 20th Aug '12 6:41:39 PM by Heatth

Smoking cessation programs are available, and to hear a lot of smokers tell it, it's entirely a choice and they aren't addicted at all. Really.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Most smoker I know are full aware they are addicted. True, many of them just don't care. They don't even try to stop because they like it. They would still know that, if they want, it wouldn't be easy to just stop.

So if it is a choice, then why not tax them and use the money to help pay for the medical care they will inevitably need?

The only viable counterargument that I can see is that smoking taxes are regressive, like all sales taxes. Vice taxes, however, are one case where I'll go ahead and allow that moral hazard is a valid consideration.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Because it is not a choice? That was my point. I mean, starting is a choice. Stopping after that, however, is a much more complicated matter.

Anyway, I only said I believe tax as a way to get people to stop is a bad idea, because I don't think it works*

. If the intent would be to get less people trying out, however I wouldn't have too much against*

I doubt it would work either, though, as I doubt a single box would be prohibitive expensive enough

.

That's a very interesting statement; defend it. disclaimer

Utter horseshit, and I'm honestly surprised at you. Vice taxes are the government basically saying "I don't like what you are doing, but I'm okay with profiting from it"...which is nonsensical, hypocritical and utterly stupid from an economic perspective *

If the State doesn't like something, they ought to make it against the law. And if they can't make it against the law *

...hey, maybe we aren't ready for it yet.

I'd have more respect for anti-smoking crusades if the crusaders would take a good long look at themselves in the mirror and faced up to the fact that their whole war is based off the fact that smoking "is icky and I don't like it because it smells bad".

That's it. Don't like being unhealthy? There's plenty of things in the modern world that fuck with your health far worse, but you can't touch them because you use them. automobiles and fast food, take a bow. And those are just two.

But, you can pick on tobacco and it's indulgers because you won't lose one goddamn thing if you win...Unlike going on crusades that might actually help more people and fix graver problems in society, of course.

I want every anti-smoking advocate to look at themselves in the mirror and admit that before they get all hot and bothered. I really do.

edited 20th Aug '12 10:49:20 PM by drunkscriblerian

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~