Follow TDB Blogger Curwen Rollinson beat me to my post on Tobacco.
He does an excellent job at looking at the current situation and assessing it as far from perfect.
It seems to me that our current social policy on Tobacco is horribly deformed and producing counter productive outcomes that are causing more harm than good.
The surge in the tobacco black market, the increasing violence and stand over tactics within smoke-free Prisons and the surge in Dairy violence for tobacco robberies aren’t symptoms of a harm minimisation policy working.
On the other hand, we have a loathsomely addictive product that is highly lethal to users.
If we raise the cost to the consumer to such a degree that crime is preferable to affording the product, that is a failure of social policy.
Smoking, like gambling and like alcoholism is a vice. A vice is something that isn’t healthy nor good for you, but as part of our damaged conditioning and starker parts of the human experience we play out regardless of its damage.
But, we live in a free society and if you want to smoke, gamble or be drunk, then as long as you do so within the confines of the rules and laws that govern each of those vices, you are free to.
We don’t want a State that is so intrusive that it’s just banning these things as all that does is drive these industries under ground into the arms of organised crime.
So what do we do with tobacco? Personally I don’t smoke filthy tobacco, and believe it should be regulated harshly, but not so harshly that it creates a price backlash where addicts are driven to crime to feed their legal addiction.
Yes we must crack down on advertising, which we have done. Yes we must crack down on unregulated tobacco sales and venders who sell underage. But must we continue to hit the user with taxes so high they commit crime instead?
I think – especially when that taxation has simply become another revenue stream for Governments rather than ring-fenced funding that goes to the medical costs smokers cause us – that we need a new way of regulating and hurting those vice industries.
Attacking the end user of tobacco, the smoker, an addict, seems a brutal way to minimise harm.
The smoker, the gambler, the alcoholic – we can heap as much blame for their addictions on them as we like, but ultimately it is the free market none regulation of these industries that needs to be challenged and attacked, not the end users.
I think we should investigate a Vice Tax on the profits of the corporations selling these products. Instead of putting the cost of the product individually upon the end user, the Government should tax a super tax onto the Tobacco Industry.
20% of their after tax profit is what they should be hit with. Them, the gambling industry and the booze barons. It’s time that those Industries start starts paying for the social cost of their products, not the end users.
Blaming the addicts and the not the pushers for the social harms of gambling, booze and tobacco is pointless and counter productive.
If the corporate tobacco, gambling and booze barons can’t afford a new gold jet bonus this year because they’ve been hit with a super tax on their profits, I won’t shed any tears.
Since having come to this otherwise nice place on earth many, many years ago, as a young migrant, I have never ceased to be astonished at the bizarre handling of matters in various areas.
We have a low top tax rate at 33 percent, for all earning incomes, we have rather liberal rules for landlords, to increase rents up to “market rates”, we have a very laissez faire business environment, allowing some to get filthily rich, we have comparatively low environmental standards (apart the ones taken over from Europe – for only some standards), yet we have an OBSESSION with hitting smokers and also to some degree alcohol drinkers, so as if they are people no better than the devil.
Tobacco tax is so high here now, I cannot believe that some still buy cigarettes and other tobacco products, given it is un-affordable. Of course it is unhealthy, but the government is going too far, planning to increase these taxes yet again by ten percent per annum for the next three to four years.
And when I go and buy just ordinary beer at the supermarket, no matter how old I am, they always have to call the supervisor to “authorise” the purchase. Also, I know many here think that booze is “cheap” here, maybe that is in comparison to some places, like in Scandinavia, the UK and so, but it is damned more expensive than in many places are in Central or Continental Europe.
They are here even selling German and Austrian low standard beers at three times the standard price there, making a huge profit on this. And that is while many here have comparatively lower incomes.
I know no other country that has such a strict and punitive regime in place, which will mostly affect the poor and low income earners. Again, I know tobacco and alcohol are harmful, but is the tax on it not high enough, are the restrictions not harsh enough, and why is ordinary marihuana treated as something “illegal”, when so many consume it anyway?
New Zealand is a strange place when it comes to these matters, a truly strange place. No wonder we have a black market for tobacco and some other things.
“Smoking, like gambling and like alcoholism is a vice. A vice is something that isn’t healthy nor good for you, but as part of our damaged conditioning and starker parts of the human experience we play out regardless of its damage.”
I would rather argue, for many affected, using and having issues with these substances or behaviours, it is a health issue, whether mental health or whatever.
Alcoholism is a form of addiction, others get addicted to other substances, so calling it a “vice” is not quite appropriate, I find, although the consequences and symptoms may be seen as such.
This just shows us how LITTLE we pay in social welfare benefits, when compared to superannuation, nothing else.
We have super rich pay no or very little tax, we have a huge shift of wealth from the bottom and middle class to the top, and here we discuss the pros and cons of superannuation paid to “boomers”.
Let us look at the state revenue side of things, and who should pay what and how much, perhaps.
Honestly Iv worked with disadvantaged kids. In my opinion, far to many of them are unemployable, you get the odd one that is properly movitated to learn, but to them pair them with some one properly motivated to teach is an impossibility in a free market.
One last thing. I can tell from the way you write that money has intellectually grabbed you by the balls. When you focus on money, you lose sight of what’s important. But you are right, we must do more to help our fellow humans.
They are like babies, New Zealand can’t even build houses properly, or feed children properly, that is the behaviour of a baby. It must be helped up by saner minds. By minds that are not fractured by money or the pursuit of self gratification.
Now that the political elite has abandoned the people, leaving them to the head winds of the most disturbing kind ie tobacco/fraud/climate. The mighty ship that was once the left is leaderless and the mighty ship that was the right has been taken over by something else. Trump isn’t quite right or quite left, if he can limit growth in his power he just might come out of this a nice guy and pay costs for things that aren’t being payed at this minute.
As Karl Marx once said, for revolution to be successful, it must first come from a bigwig country. Like it or not, Trump has kicked of the revolution. I’m just pointing out the quite obvious financial Train wreck (highlighted by the tobacco industry and others) that is as we speak is in slow motion, smashing this planet into smithereens, and I’m saying, you don’t wreaks want to boost all that, Mike, you want to jail bankers. Find a candidate that will put a few away.
What a bizarre potpourri of “comments” all over the place, hardly addressing anything I commented on:
“They are like babies, New Zealand can’t even build houses properly, or feed children properly, that is the behaviour of a baby. It must be helped up by saner minds. By minds that are not fractured by money or the pursuit of self gratification.”
Do you actually have any connectivity to reality out there? As for “money”, it has NOT grabbed me by the “balls”, as you suggest, it just so happens that money is a means to pay things with, and how else do you want to “help” the poor, when you deny them money in a society, where it is totally essential, especially when you have no land of your own to grow food on and to build on???
In think New Zealand is a good example of how to ruin an economy, deregulate, financializ and leverage up, that generates fake prices and then fake news. That leads me to believe you are correct. It is bizarre, all over the place, that is for real.
Hong Kong was once ravaged by a terrible drug war put on them by UK transnationals wanting to buy tea. So the People of Hong Kong lost there primary jobs as tea making was shipped to India, and tea replaced with opium. Hong Kong still suffers from addictive behaviours hundreds of years latter and addicts are a plague everywhere. In Hong Kong it is legal to smoke opium because they know no other existence. If we could give these poor people peace, it would be to acknowledge the crimes against humanity transnational corporations have put on humanity so they can have there day in court.
What a load of rubbish and smoking opium in Hong Kong hasn’t bee legal since the 1940s.
I haven’t looked into it for 7 years so I’ll agree with you that opium has been illegal since 1940, a little less than hundreds of years of a brutal drugs regime
As Jesus said “there will be poor always” so also there will be vice always. You can’t ban it out of existence. The attempt to extinguish all cigarette smoking is a utopian conceit founded on progress in health care since World War II (over 90 percent of our medical care didn’t exist before then) which has lead us to believe that death and suffering can be banished until old age.
The truth is that there is little real help for seriously addicted smokers to quit. The quit line is a joke. I finally quit 2 years ago as was able to switch to vaping. I was a heavy smoker for many years and have emphysema. I tried a number of times to quit but after a few months became so depressed I started again. For some of us the withdrawals get worse over time.
Smoking has become so unaffordable that low income people must sacrifice food and healthcare to continue. Consequently health and wellbeing suffers.
I would be growing my own tobacco or buying on black market if I was still smoking. I have to import nicotine as still not approved here. Not everyone has a credit card to enable them to do that. I am so grateful for the development of e cigarettes which has probably saved my life.
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