(dooley)
While lawmakers here in the U.S. have developed a habit in recent years of raising taxes on cigarettes as a way to curb smoking while increasing tax revenue from those who continue to inhale, officials in New Zealand are giving some thought to what they would need to charge in order to make people quit smoking once and for all.
One idea reportedly being considered by the country’s Ministry of Health is an annual 10% increase on the price of a pack of cigarettes, meaning that by 2024, it would cost the equivalent of around $32 for a pack.
Another, more extreme, notion would aim to raise that price to a whopping $81 (U.S.) by as soon as 2020.
Sky News quotes the following from the Ministry’s paper:
If we are to continue to lower smoking prevalence we need to both increase the numbers who successfully quit smoking, and reduce smoking initiation among young people.
Tobacco taxation is the single most effective intervention available to drive down smoking prevalence figures.
Now, we here at Consumerist HQ don’t buy illegal drugs, but from what we’ve seen on TV, high prices for items like heroin, cocaine and glint haven’t exactly stopped folks from getting their hands on the things they crave. Nor has it prevented others from making a lot of money off these people.
If anyone is thinking of getting into the tobacco smuggling business, it seems like New Zealand might soon be fertile ground in which to grow such a criminal enterprise (not that we encourage any sort of behavior).
Pack Of Cigarettes ‘May Rise To $100′ In NZ
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They should look up “Unintended Consequences” in the dictionary first.
Smoking trends are curving downward through social pressures and health risk awareness, by raising the price to such astronomical levels, indeed, the criminal element will step in, along with associated violence and ancillary criminal activities because why waste a smuggling operation on only 1 product.
At least smokers end up dying early. I think we should give them 5 packs a day just to get rid of them sooner.
Nothing grosser than to see a bunch of slugs outside a store, restaurant, etc puffing away and throwing their debris on the ground.
I can’t even stand to drive behind these idiots with my windows open because the smoke comes in my car and chokes me.
Raise the federal tax to $1 per butt! Tax the shit out of the growers at the source. Let people grow their own if they like but don’t help them out with their disgusting habbit!
Perhaps we should give them a lifetime membership at a tanning salon to help speed up the end of their addiction to tobacco
Just make them prescription.
It wouldn’t end smoking but at least the mob would have an exciting new line of business.
Really hard to say where the tipping point is between convenience and fueling a black market? It would have to be a moving number over time. I think that because New Zealand is an island–a fairly sparsely populated one outside of the main cities, the goal of reducing tobacco use would be attainable.
Yes because prohibition has proven to be so successful. Every time.
While we’re at it let’s enact the following laws:
Death penalty for posession of any controlled substance.
Death penalty for DWI.
Death penalty for prostitution.
Death penalty for all violent crimes.
That’ll fix everything.
Well, there’s something to be said about harsher sentences.
Take some middle-eastern countries, for example. If a person is caught stealing – their hand is cut off. Cruel, but I bet the person caught wouldn’t steal again.
Cruel, but I bet it’s amazingly effective.
Would it stop smoking by most people? Maybe… but it’ll sure make many people mad.
I am not opposed to ending tobacco use necessarily, but if an entire industry is being taken down through legislative action in the interest of public health… why aren’t we capping prices for medicine and dismantling the health insurance industry?
…yes, I know this is New Zealand not the us
Actually, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin will cost LESS than tobacco.
Considering the rousing success that Prohibition was on the sale and consumption of alcohol and what a rousing success the current War on Drugs is having on the sale and consumption of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, surely doing the same thing for tobacco will have the result they expect with absolutely no negative results.
Good on ya, Kiwis!
MAYBE A LITTLE LESS HYPERBOLE and a few more, “Well, I don’t talk through a hole in my throat, but I get winded going up one flight of stairs, and I really regret it.”
It wont stop smoking instead it will have the same effect as the drug war, and create additional violence as people resort to violence in order to buy their cancer sticks
In countries that have decriminalized most drugs, violent crime goes down between 50-80% (eg look at countries like Portugal and many others that have decriminalized)
The mean reason for the reduction in crime is cartels can no longer profit from the drugs, and even some of the lowest income people can afford lethal doses of the various drugs without resorting to violence.
So with the understanding that people will take harmful drugs regardless of what the government does, you let people do their drugs and all of the damage is restricted to them self.
in those countries, drug use also went down as people are more willing to see treatment for addiction since they know that they wont be put in jail for using the drugs