I still won't be happy until the tobacco CEOs are digging for trash can scraps. No one should be able to afford even a single cig without a 20+ year payment plan. There are no redeeming qualities and I will probably die on this hill.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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Might get shit on for this, but this is one of those things that I would be okay with just outright banning.
The addictive nature of nicotine is widely known, and smoking cigarettes is way worse for health than weed. Chronic smokers are basically trapped into paying tobacco companies to essentially commit suicide in slow motion.
Unfortunately the massive “sin” tax on tobacco means governments are just as addicted as users. On the bright side, it’s still not quite as bad as it is in countries where the government has an ownership stake in the biggest tobacco company, like India and Japan (at least they used to).
I have always advocated for a 5 year phase out of nicotine or any other addictive substances in all products. Each year you reduce it by 20% till you hit zero.
How much is a pack of Marlboros now?
I remember when they were 4.25 but last time I noticed they were like 12 bucks (not even in California)
Great to see this. Smoking is a plague.
It’s not clear from the article whether this is a one time decrease from the noticeable tax increase, whether people adjusted to the higher price or it continues reducing smoking, or how much is credit to increased spending on smoking cessation
Most important, it’s not clear whether that info helps anyone else. As a resident of a small state, I imagine we’d just have people jump the border and buy elsewhere. Most parts of California are a much longer drive to a different state with lower vice taxes.
Maybe it’s just an argument for a significant increase in federal taxes, but I can’t imagine that actually happening in the era of corporate ownership of politicians and blatant class warfare. Actually it’s a dream come true for Republican outrage politics, where they can play on emotions, populist bombast and “muh freedumb” without actually doing anything useful
I know people who’ll just pop over to the nearest reservation to pick up their packs. That tends to be a lot closer than crossing state lines.
Same here but on occasion, not for their regular dose of lung cancer. The article claims it worked, regardless the level of “cheating”
People could also be getting thier cigarettes by other means.
Well it was based on survey responders, which has well known accuracy limitations. So, possibly there could be a factor of smoking becoming less socially acceptable so people less likely to admit to it — doesn’t seem likely to happen in just one state.
The legal ways of avoiding a vice tax are other states, native reservations, and military posts. Even if increased vice tax created large scale grey market, the evidence is the taxes or intervention did work.