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[penguinofhonor]

Helgoland is saying that the government shouldn't be price signaling.

[Helgoland]

Yeah, I know. But why is it appropriate for the government to send such a signal? What's their mandate?

Damn ninjas.

[Sheb]

Yeah, my sentence was poorly phrased. I meant that in order for price signal to work in the case of stuff like cigarette, the price increase must be sudden rather than gradual, or at least that's what was observed in Belgium and France. I didn't intend to say states had a moral duty to stop people from smoking.

Although I actually think it's pretty cool to try to protect people from themselves.

[scriver]

I don't see why a government shouldn't work to increase the health of the people.

[Loud Whispers]

When the people want to die it's wasted effort

[scriver]

I must've missed the memo where it was revealed people smoke to kill themselves rather than get a short high.

[Reelya]

We have universal health care in Australia. People who smoke and then get cancer cost the nation billions of dollars. It's fair to tax hike cigarettes up to the point where you either quit, or you're actually paying for your healthcare costs. Either that, or we start leaving sick people to die in the gutter, and do we really want to go there? Dying poor people turned away from hospitals?

Some people get lung cancer even though they never smoked. If we went towards a self-responsibility thing, we'd have to refuse to treat those people too, on the off-chance they were a smoker. Exorbitant cigarette taxes are therefore fair. Everyone pay into the tax funds proportional to how much they put themselves at risk of needing expensive healthcare, and everyone gets treated regardless of cause.

[martinuzz]

We have universal health care in Australia. People who smoke and then get cancer cost the nation billions of dollars. It's fair to tax hike cigarettes up to the point where you either quit, or you're actually paying for your healthcare costs. Either that, or we start leaving sick people to die in the gutter, and do we really want to go there? Dying poor people turned away from hospitals?

Smokers live about 10 years less than non-smokers.
Cost of 10 years elderly care (with all afflictions high age brings) >>>> costs of treating lung cancer + coffee and cake at the funeral.

Smokers should be paid by the state for keeping down healthcare costs.

[Reelya]

They've already factored that in.

http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking

Smoking cost the Australian economy $31 billion a year in 2005. The net costs to the healthcare system were $300 million. Raw costs were $1.8 billion. So the savings from dying early do not match the cost of treatment, and are insignificant considering the overall economic impacts (which impact the government's ability to raise revenue in many more ways that just the direct health care costs).

[Loud Whispers]

I must've missed the memo where it was revealed people smoke to kill themselves rather than get a short high.

ayyyy u missed a lot

[Jimmy]

Take a look at the top PBS medication list.

http://www.pbs.gov.au/statistics/2013-2014-files/expenditure-and-prescriptions-12-months-to-30-june-2014.pdf

The Australian government spent $475,770,046 in 2014 on drugs for obstructive airway diseases. Of these drugs, the majority of the cost was in Tiotropium ($129,001,764) and Fluticasone + Salmeterol (182,364,895).

Now, whilst obstructive airway disease is a catch-all category for asthma, emphysema and COPD, Tiotropium as a compound is only approved for use in COPD, and we know that statistically 80% of all persons with COPD are or were smokers. We can likely assume that a similar percentage of persons using Fluticasone +Salmeterol will also have a history of smoking.

This doesn't even take into consideration the increase in risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, all of which are the drugs at the top of the list for cost to the PBS. We spend billions on funding medications to delay death in smokers every year, dollars that wouldn't have been needed to be spent if they never started smoking.

[Helgoland]

At least in Germany the current taxes on tobacco are sufficient to offset the net costs incurred by smokers on society. In fact we're 36.4 billion euros in the green.

Now, that study may very well be biased - and others come to a different result -, but I don't think you can argue for a price tag of €29 per pack of cigarettes by claiming it's necessary to offset healthcare costs.
The real kicker is: The costs placed on the healthcare system by a single pack of cigarettes are independent of the total amount of cigarettes smoked, which means that (in theory) we don't have to look at the total numbers of smokers to find a 'just' tax rate. Using tobacco taxes in addition to reduce the number of smokers smells like a nanny-state policy to me.

[Loud Whispers]

At least in Germany the current taxes on tobacco are sufficient to offset the net costs incurred by smokers on society. In fact we're 36.4 billion euros in the green.

Now, that study may very well be biased - and others come to a different result -, but I don't think you can argue for a price tag of €29 per pack of cigarettes by claiming it's necessary to offset healthcare costs.
The real kicker is: The costs placed on the healthcare system by a single pack of cigarettes are independent of the total amount of cigarettes smoked, which means that (in theory) we don't have to look at the total numbers of smokers to find a 'just' tax rate. Using tobacco taxes in addition to reduce the number of smokers smells like a nanny-state policy to me.

nah m8 it's not nanny-state policy, it's just harmony

The unspoken objective is improving health. Since the EU has no legal competence over health policy, it tends to dress its nanny state legislation in the cloak of market harmonisation, but even as a health policy there is no trace of proportionality, subsidiarity or effectiveness.

lmao

[Reelya]

The Australian study looks at more variables than whether it just saves the government money. It takes into account costs to the entire economy. There's a lot of lost productivity due to smoking, costs to employers, cost to insurers etc. The German study only takes into account government costs/revenue. But they also didn't take into account lost tax revenues due to the people who died not paying taxes anymore, and the effect that reduction in consumption has on the economy. So, it's not very reliable to list government savings but not also factor in related losses in revenue.

~~~

There's also an issue in these types of studies, which look at net costs. e.g. say I get on the train, and they charge me $2 for a ticket. I could argue that this is completely unfair, since the net cost to the train service of me getting on that train is really only a few cents of extra fuel/electricity. So they should only charge me 2 cents, and not $2. Because that's only fair, as it's the cost of the additional load I'm placing on the system. But of course if they do that, then they won't be able to raise the revenue to pay for the train system: there are large fixed costs, and small net costs per passenger. So, in other words only looking at net costs is misleading because it ignores the very large fixed costs incurred by services used by a large number of people.

[Reudh]

Take a look at the top PBS medication list.

http://www.pbs.gov.au/statistics/2013-2014-files/expenditure-and-prescriptions-12-months-to-30-june-2014.pdf

The Australian government spent $475,770,046 in 2014 on drugs for obstructive airway diseases. Of these drugs, the majority of the cost was in Tiotropium ($129,001,764) and Fluticasone + Salmeterol (182,364,895).

Now, whilst obstructive airway disease is a catch-all category for asthma, emphysema and COPD, Tiotropium as a compound is only approved for use in COPD, and we know that statistically 80% of all persons with COPD are or were smokers. We can likely assume that a similar percentage of persons using Fluticasone +Salmeterol will also have a history of smoking.

This doesn't even take into consideration the increase in risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, all of which are the drugs at the top of the list for cost to the PBS. We spend billions on funding medications to delay death in smokers every year, dollars that wouldn't have been needed to be spent if they never started smoking.

Considering how many people I knew growing up had asthma, $182m for fluticasone/salmeterol doesn't sound like all that much of a cost.