Yeah I mean if you increase prices 1000x it would have that effect but if you increase them closer to what a place like NZ or Aus does (I think like ~75%, it's been a while since I studied this stuff then the cost is offputting for many but it means that the societal costs aren't externalized onto nonsmokers in the form of additional healthcare burden and the like. There's lots of arguments about pigouvian taxes and whether they hurt the poor, but generally they are effective at stopping usage up to a point (as in there is strong correlation between an increase in tax and decrease in usage) and the benefits usually outweigh the costs even for the poor. Patricio Marquez from the World Bank has a bunch of great reports that break this down, often on a country by country basis. CTFK also has info but is a little paternalistic but I really like tobacconomics reports https://tobacconomics.org/

Agreed with your premise in full.

Increasing the price isn't necessarily about making it inaccessible to people so they stop smoking (though it is a minor part of it that is a nice side-effect), it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products.

If people don't stop smoking, then might as well make sure they cover the extra cost they add to the healthcare system. Seems pretty fair.

To be clear, this statement I made has nothing to with my views on the specific menthol ban in question, as I am still not sure how I feel about it. I was just discussing the hypothetical non-existent strategy of just more taxing on tobacco products instead of outright banning them.

>it is to make sure that the additional burden placed on the healthcare system by those people is balanced out by taxes paid in form of increased prices on tobacco products.

That only makes sense in places where the taxes go to healthcare organizations. In the American system, that doesn't happen - there's no way that a city will hand the proceeds of its tobacco taxes to insurance companies.

Yeah, the point isn't to compensate insurers - they for sure get theirs and charge smokers more. It's to compensate healthcare systems and governments who foot the bill for 1) productivity decreases from smoking in the form of more sick days, more breaks, etc. and 2) people who don't have insurance and get cancer and are treated at the taxpayers expense

It's a cash grab, make no mistake about it. They can justify it all they want, but they're fooling you.

Tobacco companies already pay states a bunch of money from their 1998 settlement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

It's over $200 billion and growing. They're more than compensated.

Cigarettes and tobacco products are already heavily taxed for the user. Both the federal government and the state government makes a lot of money off people's addiction, and it's an addiction they can't break (obviously).

https://igentax.com/cigarette-tax-state/

Time to leave smokers alone. Many if not most of them got hooked as kids and as a society we just keep punishing them for their "moral failure."

> Consequently, vice taxes are always either ineffectual, or a ban that only applies to the poor.

A 10% increase in tobacco price results in a 4% decrease in tobacco demand: https://www.who.int/tobacco/economics/taxation/en/

I don't know if that counts as "ineffectual" in your book, but its not nothing.

Hence the second half of the branch: "or a ban that applies only to the poor."

Couldn't you say the same of all luxury products?

If they're expensive because policy set the prices then yes, that would be a ban.