In France, taxation accounts for 80% of a cigarette pack. [0]

Yet tobacco costs 120 billion euros a year for only 16 billion in revenue (to the government). [1]

It is almost infeasible to tax cigarette to the equivalent of their burden on the health care system.

[0]: https://www.boursorama.com/patrimoine/actualites/les-taxes-s...

[1]: https://www.reseau-hopital-ght.fr/actualites/patients/campag...

Smokers save Governments money on healthcare, because they die earlier.

"According to the research, a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 over their lifetime, a smoker just £165,000 and an obese person £187,000."

https://taxfoundation.org/new-study-shows-smokers-and-obese-....

By this logic, there should be no tax (or indeed a subsidy) on cigarettes.

Fair point, but healthcare costs are only one of the external costs that a smoker might cause. There are other costs to society as well.

Sounds like someone just finished reading a bunch of Ayn Rand novels.

You're getting dangerously close to the whole "social credit" style of cost burden. Slippery slope, bud.

Now what? Your healthcare costs should go up because you like your eggs fried and with salt instead of hard boiled?

I mean things probably will go that way as tracking of individual behaviors gets easier right? For example, I believe some healthcare providers will give free fitbits to users (I think the State of Nevada does) to get them to exercise more, so not a direct fee but they are incentivizing a certain behavior. Then you've got all the car insurers now that are looking at more details of your driving above and beyond the standard 1) how old are you 2) have you been in any accidents

I seriously hope not. It completely defeats the purpose of insurance, which is to spread risk.

No, but it would make sense to put a health tax on salt. Make people bear their external costs. Like a carbon tax.

Just make sure you have a dividend that goes back to the poor to make up for the regressiveness of such taxes.

The idea that my own health is an external cost is crazy. How do you tax a free solo rock climber like Alex Honnold? A 1000% tax on chalk dust?

This actually reminds me of https://www.npr.org/2019/01/03/681877909/sailboat-from-u-s-t...

I think that in situations like that, you ought to cover the cost of a potential rescue up front, either by paying for an insurance policy or putting down a deposit. People search until your deposit/insurance runs out, then they stop. If you don't survive, that's on you. There's just absolutely no reason that anyone's tax dollars should be spent to help someone who performs a totally needless and incredibly dangerous activity of their own volition.

The issue is that, when you get down to it, it’s just going out into the wilderness and climbing a rock. If you regulate that, you’ve made a wrong turn.

Same goes for surfing, or having consensual, unprotected sex. Both dangerous, or at least much more dangerous than the average human activity, but both too basic and natural to consider regulating. In my opinion.

Sin taxes have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. These concepts aren’t slippery slopes, they’re just taxes like any other taxes.