Smoke The Poor!
Greg Beato writes at reason that making cigarettes nearly as illegal and expensive as a Schedule 1 drug has social costs:
According to one recent study, New York City smokers with an annual income of less than $30,000 now spend 23.6 percent of that income on cigarettes! That's more than double the amount they were spending ten years ago, and yet smoking rates of the city's lowest-income residents have only declined a few percentage points in that time.Meanwhile, in an effort to subvert New York City's alleged expansion of liberty, smokers have adopted numerous methods for getting cigarettes more cheaply. Nearby Indian reservations do a brisk trade selling tax-free cigarettes. Roll-your-own shops, which weren't subject to the same taxes as packaged cigarettes until new federal legislation was enacted last year, offered another alternative. And thousands of shops in New York City simply sell smuggled cigarettes. According to the city's Finance Commissioner David Frankel, 46 percent of the 1,900 retailers that were inspected over the last 18 months were "selling unstamped or untaxed product."
Here we see choice architecture at work in insidious fashion: By making a legal but unhealthy product increasingly unaffordable, Mayor Bloomberg and his confederates have effectively nudged thousands of smokers and shopkeepers into criminal behavior. Now, he wants to raise the stakes by increasing the penalties for the behaviors he's induced. A second new piece of legislation he's initiating, the "Sensible Tobacco Enforcement" bill, will, if passed, increase financial penalties for selling untaxed cigarettes and give the Department of Finance the power to shut down repeat violators. Light up and inhale the cool liberating flavor of Prohibition Lite.
"And because of taxes imposed at the state and city level, a single pack of cigarettes costs anywhere from $10 to $13. In comparison, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center, a bag of heroin could be purchased in New York City for between $5 - $12 as recently as 2008."
The core of the issue is why do the poor spend so much of their income on unnecessary things. I've read studies on it but since forgotten why they do it. Obviously they do a lot of things that can't be legislated. They do a lot of self harm (the poor).
The number one thing poor girls should not do is have kids until they stop being poor. I can't legislate it.
I also can't stop a poor mom the other day who i always see feeding her kids donuts WITH soda. An expensive breakfast when eggs and milk are so much cheaper.
Ppen at March 25, 2013 2:00 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/03/25/the_social_cost.html#comment-3657145">comment from PpenSomething called life history theory actually explains this.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/06/18/why_we_need_to_1.html
An only child in Beverly Hills has a slow life history. Six kids born to a single mother from different fathers from the hood have a fast life history. Other behaviors seem to follow (with short-term thinking on purchase probably being one of them, risky moves, etc.)
It's a little wonky -- sorry, deadline day, not a lot of time to explain further. But here's another link.
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/12/02/dont_have_a_lit.html
There are people who are poor and people who think poor. Being poor and wanting to get out of it has you calculate the cheapest, healthiest way to feed your kids -- like eggs being cheap and donuts and soda being expensive.
Amy Alkon at March 25, 2013 2:10 PM
Well I'd like to see how the Fair Tax sales tax crowd would handle vice taxes?
The actual production cost (including wages) of a pack of smokes is about $1.25 a pack, if that much. Then about $2.50 goes to the Medicaid lawsuit direct from the cigarette companies. Then chunk on about another $1 from SCHIP. Then the individual state excise taxes like New York's.
Oh and if you think it is just cigarettes there are states that Trader Joe's 2 Buck Chuck costs $3.98; or a 100% sin tax on wine.
So essentially you are punishing the poor with a sales tax.
Jim P. at March 25, 2013 3:22 PM
How about a "fat" tax? If we're gonna bed over and take it from Bloomberg and the rest of the Nanny State Patrol in the name of "health", let's start making people who have a BMI over 25 pay an extra 10% for all food and beverages purchased.
UW Girl at March 25, 2013 4:34 PM
Hmm. 23.6%. Another example of the responsible use of a legalized drug?
Radwaste at March 25, 2013 4:54 PM
This is why I sneer at people who have the bumper-sticker logic of "Legalize and tax drugs".
That'll work for about a legislative session. Maybe. Then the taxing will start escalating. Especially with the addictive ones.
First it'll be a tax for the heart clinics overrun with crack addicts, then it'll be..
Unix-Jedi at March 25, 2013 8:22 PM
We'll all be criminals soon one way or another. Fortunately Reason has the answer:
Embrace the Libertarian Outlaw Future
http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/20/libertarians-should-embarce-their-inner
JFP at March 25, 2013 8:55 PM
If laws discouraging or prohibiting people from consuming substances like tobacco and recreational drugs that are harmful to them are justified, then laws discouraging or prohibiting the consumption of carbohydrates would be even more justified, and Mayor Bloomer's attempt to restrict sugary drinks was a righteous move.
The negative impact of carbohydrate consumption, especially grains and sugar, on the health of individuals, the health care system and society are enormous compared to the negative impact of scheduled drugs (both legal and illegal) and recreational drugs (except for alcohol) combined.
Usually I don't favor any kind of government action to regulate what substances people may consume, but if we're going to do that - for the other guy's own good, and for the benefit of society and the poor, and for the children - I propose making it illegal to consume more than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day.
If such laws were strictly enforced, within two years type 2 diabetes, obesity, hypertension and hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol, LDL, VLDL and triglyceride; low HDL), and all of their sequelae would virtually disappear.
A reasonable follow-up to severe restrictions on carbohydrate consumption would be total bans on alcohol and tobacco, two of the most lethal and addictive drugs known to man.
What do you all think?
Ken R at March 25, 2013 9:50 PM
If we're gonna bed over and take it from Bloomberg and the rest of the Nanny State Patrol in the name of "health", let's start making people who have a BMI over 25 pay an extra 10% for all food and beverages purchased.
That isn't just wrong, it's inconceivably wrong. And this is precisely why you don't bend over and take it from them. As someone far smarter than I said it is the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs.
Next, grocery stores will be prohibited from selling items to you without your National Nutrition Card. What's that? why, it is the card that is run like a credit card, but it approves/disapproves of your purchases. You will be required to adhere to the government diet. Don't say it can't happen. We have the technology, it can be instituted.
This is the danger of allowing others to determine what you need. What is your point beyond which condicio sine qua non is lost and you storm the barricades?
Freedom, real freedom means the freedom to make poor choices. Any thing less leads to serfdom. We would no longer be free citizens, but wards of the state to be used - or discarded - for the benefit of the state.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 26, 2013 7:27 AM
A reasonable follow-up to severe restrictions on carbohydrate consumption would be total bans on alcohol and tobacco, two of the most lethal and addictive drugs known to man.
What do you all think?
Molon Labe.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 26, 2013 7:31 AM
Molon Labe.
Had to google that one.
Ken R at March 26, 2013 11:19 AM
Keep in mind that an awful lot of people start smoking in high school or earlier. It would be nice to see THAT percentage going down, if only because of the cost.
But, I'll admit that the stats aren't quite what you might expect. That is, the last time I checked, those who started AFTER age 18 made up........
......60% of all smokers.
Unbelievable.
(It also said, IIRC, that 36% started smoking between 18 and 21, and 24% started after 21. Makes you wonder why we allow people to do almost ANYTHING before 21!)
lenona at March 26, 2013 12:50 PM
There will Always be money for cigarettes. I don't need this watch anymore anyway.
smurfy at March 26, 2013 2:34 PM
This is a seriously interesting site, for those who want to delve into the history of tobacco. And without tobacco as a cash crop, I wonder where the USA would be today?
From the site:
Chapter 3
The Seventeenth Century--"The Great Age of the Pipe"
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization. -- Daniel Webster (1782-1852).
Tobacco comes into use as "Country Money" or "Country Pay" in the colonies. Tobacco continues to be used as a monetary standard--literally a "cash crop"-- throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries, lasting twice as long as the gold standard.
Chines Philosopher Fang Yizhi states that years of smoking “scorches one’s lung”
"So prominent is the place that tobacco occupies in the early records of the middle Southern States, that its cultivation and commercial associations may be said to form the basis of their history. It was the direct source of their wealth, and became for a while the representative of gold and silver; the standard value of other merchantable products; and this tradition was further preserved by the stamping of a tobacco-leaf upon the old continental money used in the Revolution." --19th century historian (DB)
Then, of course, there comes:
Chapter 7
The Twentieth Century, 1950 - 1999--The Battle is Joined
The Fifties
The public's health concerns drive companies to compete in rival ad campaigns touting their filters (The "Tar Wars" or "Tar Derby"). When the decade begins, 2% of cigarettes are filter tip; by 1960, 50% of cigarettes are filter tips. 15 filter brands account for 95% of U.S. sales (Source: Chronology Of Major Events In Cigarette Smoking, Marketing, And Health , Bates #2025019398).
Flynne at March 27, 2013 8:46 AM
So I am trying to figure out which is true, according to the story:
A- Smokers are stupid.
B-Smokers are poor.
C-Poor people are stupid.
Then I realized I don't even care.
LauraGr at March 28, 2013 8:04 AM
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