Cigarette tax idea wrong
Published Friday July 3rd, 2009
Governments love to make money off our vices. That's why there are such high so-called 'sin taxes' on items such as cigarettes and alcohol. Our federal and provincial governments make billions each year on our smoking and drinking habits.
Sadly, not all of those billions gleamed from cigarettes and alcohol go toward controlling our consumption of those items and the health problems associated with them. That's why the push by anti-smoking groups to force the New Brunswick government to raise taxes on cigarettes does not make sense.
They may claim that increases in cigarette taxes result in a corresponding decrease in consumption. We have yet to see data that supports that claim. It is our belief those who hunger for a smoke simply make other spending choices so their habit is not affected when prices increase.
Simply adding to the price of cigarettes, as the new NDP government has done in Nova Scotia, is an unproven prevention tool. And there is no guarantee those extra tax dollars will go where they should to stop the spread of smoking-related cancer and other diseases.
If government wants to make a real statement against smoking -- and we believe it should -- apply more of the cigarette tax revenue to prevention. Make it tougher for minors to get cigarettes, explain the health dangers of smoking, go after cigarette manufacturers to reduce the amount of addictive nicotine in their products.
A tax for tax sake isn't the answer.
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (4)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
No one in the government can argue this. If they could, they would.
You actually think if you ban cigarettes, everyone will stop smoking?
If and when I decide to quit smoking, it will be on my own terms, for my own reasons. Not because I was coerced with lies, propaganda, moralist punitive taxes and heavy-handed BANS from politicians and elitist antismoker groups.
As for "polluting others'lungs", that one has been worn out. No way, no how could non-smokers' lungs be "polluted" if smokers had smoking rooms, or smoking allowed venues. Very simple, non-smokers would just have to avoid going to these places if they are really that worried about their lungs being "polluted".
All this anti-smoking HYPE makes me want to smoke even more - deal with it.
Higher moralist, holier-than-thou, punitive taxes will create more problems than they will solve. In case you havn't been keeping up with current events, they already have.