The Cost of COVID

[Bereta_Eder]

Taxes on cigarettes is crazy.
The single (visible) most important benefit I witnessed when I quit was money. We're talking lots of money. Near two thousand euros per year. That's a comfortable vacation on any greek island I choose.
And it is vastly immoral. CIgarettes kill people and the state is saying, hey might as well make a couple of bucks from that hahaha

bad

[Bereta_Eder]

Alcohol is not nearly as heavily taxed. And even then the "domestic" brands of alcohol, that's wine and certain hard greek liqours that are awuful ,are somehow (not so sure, if it's 100% legal) like not taxed at all.
So you have a vicious toxical poison that rots your insides with devastating accuracy, tax free

[Egbert]

A packet of legal cigarettes per day would cost about A$10,000 a year here in Australia. (About 6,400 Euros or US$7,700 )

The smuggled cigarettes would cost about $4600 a year.

A packet a day is, or was. about normal for smokers.

[Jon Miller]

I'm not ignoring the cost, I am saying that when you are deciding whether to give someone who smokes or drinks healthcare, then they've already paid for their cost of care through taxes. If you think that they shouldn't get healthcare (as it was self-inflicted), then the obesity problem says 'hello'.

The topic of whether allowing alchohol and tobacco to be consumed in society as a whole is a net good or bad thing, is a completely different discussion. If we were discussing that, then I would include societal costs. We aren't we are discussing tax and spend finances, and unless you are arguing the economy will boom if you got rid of alcohol and tobacco, then it doesn't factor.

Let's take alcohol as an example (because I don't think the societal impact of nicotine is as much as alcohol). I could believe that 2/3 or even more of the alcohol taxes are gong to societal costs and not health care costs. In that case, the taxes haven't yet covered the healthcare costs.

I agree that if you are going to have taxes cover healthcare, which seems best, you should have taxes cover healthcare and not some taxes cover healthcare and some taxes not, resulting in healthcare not being covered for all people.

I agree there should probably be an obesity tax. I think there are already sugar taxes... or soda pop taxes... in some jurisdictions.

JM

[The Mad Monk]

Quite the opposite, really. For some of it. At least in the United States.