So the latest rise in the tax on a pack of fags has lead to an increase in the government coffers, but NO reduction in smoking. And yet the anti-tobacco facists sitting in their “cafés” are applauding this latest ‘sin tax’ like it’s the opening of the great gates of Kiev…!
When in actual fact, we are looooong overdue for a ‘sin’ tax on caffeine, aren’t we, including the discarded cups that decorate our beloved city. I propose to start with 50 cents per 100 mg of caffeine (the widest used addictive drug in the world)…of course this will rise with every budget. A further 10 cent bounty on the cups will suffice. Furthermore, why not use the 5 bucks-a-pack tax already ON smokes and put a penny-a-butt bounty? Watch and learn folks, as the cigarette cash cow actually does something useful…
And “when”, not “if”, the caffeine tax is introduced, I will personally stand (5 meters) outside your coffee shop doors, smoking my Indian smokes and laugh my arse off at you smug, caffeine-riddled, nuerotic, shaking, car-swerving, one-hand driving-killers-of pedestrians, coffee-swilling hypocrites…
—baD mR fRosTy
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
What the hell does caffeine have to do with taxing cigarettes? I’m sorry, but there is caffeine in so many foods it would be impossible to tax, and i can’t really see the benefit. Your assumption that all coffee drinkers are “neurotic, shaking, car-swerving, one-hand driving-killers-of-pedestrians” who leave coffee cups everywhere is ridiculous. Some us walk to work, reusable coffee mug in hand, and avoid stumbling into traffic because our caffeine fix is enough to keep us awake during that walk.
The OP’s got a personal stake in this one or something, methinks.
Maybe his girlfriend who works at a coffee shop broke up with him because he wouldn’t quit smoking? And now he’s taking it out on all coffee drinkers?
When caffeine use becomes a health care crisis, I will get behind slapping a sin tax on it. Until then, smokers need to suck it up.
Also, isn’t it a bit early to tell if the latest tax increase was ineffective as a deterrent? And, why is an increase in government revenue always seen as a bad thing?
Hey OP…try quitting and join the revolution.
Psst Miles caffeine is a health hazard. It increases blood pressure rates dramatically. Don’t believe me? Test your blood pressure at a drug store in the morning – once before your coffee fix and once after. In addition, the sodium content in Tim’s coffee is outrageous and we all know (or should know) how excess sodium affects our health. So like get off your fucking high horse Einstein and suck that one up.
So we should put a sin tax on anything that’s bad for us? Pop? Potato chips? Hot dogs? Candy bars? Where does it stop?
Anomie, there’s also a slew of health benefits from caffeine consumption, like lowering your risk of diabetes, Parkinson’s and colon cancer(plus killing off mild headaches. Name the health benefits of smoking and weigh them against slightly higher blood pressure and tell me if they compare.
Plus I think Tim’s is possibly not the only source of coffee in Canada.
Anomie, I said health crisis, not health hazard.
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/health36…
Take a look at the leading causes of death among Canadians. Smoking is strongly associated with the top 4. Many many many more people are hospitalized and die from smoking related illnesses each year than caffeine. To me that’s a crisis.
I think the point of this bitch is that smokers in this province are treated like shit and taxed out the asshole while the government makes an unnecessary killing off the taxes. The cheapest pack of smokes you can buy here is $10.50 if you want the garbage kinds and up to $15 for premium in most places now, while in quebec you can buy a pack for like $6.00. Before any of you assholes bust out the classic “Suck it up hun you should just quit”. Most smokers have tried countless times but many will never be able to quit, not to mention those who have smoked for 20,30,40 years, what the fuck is the point of quitting smoking when you’re 70 years old.
The health costs of smoking were already easily covered by the already outrageous amount of tax placed on them before the NDP decided to steal more money from hard working men and women the second they were elected. Too many people in this province are too concerned with how other people live their lives as if it has any effect on themselves, it is fucking PATHETIC.
Miles, why bother arguing with him. If somebody seriously thinks caffine cause harm on par with tobacco they are floating up a river in Egypt.
OP, I think the healthy people in the ‘cafe’ will get the last laugh. As you stand out there in the rain, hacking and coughing, wrinkled, leathery skin, fine stringy hair, yellow teeth and yellow fingers, smelling like a bingo hall. You don’t look that now? You will.
I agree, caffeine isn’t good for you when taken in excess (key word there) but its not nearly as bad as cigarettes. Coffee doesn’t give you lung cancer or emphysema. What’s your drink of choice OP? Pepsi or Coke? Do you like chocolate? Tea, Energy Drinks?
Caffeine has been proven to increase metabolism, increase pain medication effects, increase mental faculty, and reduce asthma symptoms. As for cigarettes, they’ve been proven to do… well, nothing good
Maybe you should do some research beforehand…
You know coffee and cigs go real well together! What’s next – a tax on birth control?!?
Cigarettes should be heavily taxed. Smokers should think of it as a long-term payment plan for the healthcare they’ll eventually need when they have heart attacks and strokes or develop cancer or COPD.
The coffee shop I go to has a policy if you use your own refillable cup, a coffee is about 25 cents cheaper in the size I buy.
So does that mean cups are priced in for about a quarter ?
Earth to Jai, they were already taxed $5.00 per pack, the population of smokers in NS is about 21%, we have 909,000 people here, which means we have around 181,800 smokers here. Lets just say on average they buy 5 packs a week (which is a gross underestimate most likely), each of those people are paying $1300 extra in tax a year, and this is before they jacked it up again. 236 million dollars a year wasn’t enough, i guess they really needed another 70 million to deal with smoking related illness? No wonder they are putting out those commercials about illegal tobacco, they are making a raping off keeping people smoking but only if you pay their mafia tax.
The tax IS NOT to cover the cost of smoking related illness. It is a revenue generator and a disincentive for smoking. Only part of the money collected in cigarette taxes goes to health care (like other taxes) and a small part of it is specifically earmarked for anti-smoking campaigns.
Also, the revenue generated from cigarette taxes does NOT cover the costs associated with smoking related illness. I can’t find the exact numbers that I posted before, but here’s an older link that says the same thing. The numbers today are similar.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/smoking/…
“And “when”, not “if”, the caffeine tax is introduced…”
Yep, any time now.
How is the sodium content of Tim Hortons’ coffee outrageous? Per 10 oz coffee with 1 sugar and 1 cream there is 15 mg of sodium (http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/menu/menu_…). The recommended average daily intake for sodium is 1500 mg for people aged 9 to 50 (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-003-x/2006…).
Put into context, a person would have to drink one hundred 10 oz cups of coffee to meet the recommended daily sodium intake. After 100 cups of coffee I’m pretty sure that sodium will be the least of your worries.
Learn to check your facts before making bullshit claims.
I’m not sure exactly what your point is fu.ckthecoast. Smoking is not a necessity of life it is a luxury, you don’t have a right to cheap smokes. As Miles pointed out the the revenue the government takes in through taxes on smokes each year falls short of covering the cost of health problems attributed to smoking. So not only is your addiction emptying your wallet and ruining your health it is costing everyone else who pays taxes as well. I think a reasonable solution would be to tax cigarettes at a rate of $15 a pack and offer smokers free smoking cessation programs and support if they then choose to quit.
Caffine also ONLY affects the person choosing to ingest it… it does not have any affect on the people in the same room, or standing next to, the drinker.
Whereas smoking is invasive to everyone in the vicinity.
And about coffee (not necessarily caffine), all those morning-cups of acid in your empty stomach can lead to ulcers, or stomach cancer, especially if you use artificial sweetener… so there is something to be careful of. Happened to my Dad. But soda is even worse for you…. and that’s targetted to kids!
I’d like to see them tax that.
Heh…read an article in Nat. Geographic a few years ago on coffee…it talked about a student who died of an OD on caffeine after drinking 100 cups of coffee within, like, a day or less.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a smoker who doesn’t also drink a caffeine based drink, so you’re just screwing over the smokers twice.
Ahhh but PAS, no one cares if we get screwed over or how often.
Good Point. Haven’t smokers suffered enough already?
I don’t recall any futuristic films, that has explored “ideal” states, ever using taxes as the way in which the government bent the population to conform to their idea of what is acceptable. It is usually some extreme tactic (war, punishment and drugs combined with propaganda) not a simple nudging in the desired direction (although propaganda has accompanied the taxation). Effective, I see, but rather sneaky (manipulative).
Miles cares!!! 😉
Thanks shoe_chick. I try. 😛
If I stand beside someone and drink a cup of coffee I’m not forcing toxins into their body.
just grow the eff up and quit smoking,it can KILL you,no body has died of coffee …but thats what smokers do,they blame everyone else except themselves..get a backbone and
grow a spine…smokers are rude,do what then want without regard to others and the taxes are collected to pay for the health care when they go to hospital to die of cancer..pathetic man
Oh STFU and GTFO.
I’m not a smoker and I don’t drink coffee and I think you’re fucking retarded.
Go get lung cancer.
Well let’s put it this way, when everyone quits (or goes to the Indian smokes), the government will have to raise taxes on everything else. Remember they just looove our money. BTW get ready for another power rate hike thanks to the government’s cap tax. You just know NSP will not be paying it. We will.
Lukin says “”Caffeine has been proven to increase metabolism, increase pain medication effects, increase mental faculty, and reduce asthma symptoms.””
hey Dr feelgood…replace the word “caffeine” with “methamphetemine” and your sentence still rings true…
And all this nonsense about smoking “injects toxins into the bodies of others…”
You have a peer-reviewed study that shows this definitively? I didn’t think so. What you have is a dislike for smoke, wrapped up in bs “science”.
I also “dislike” your cheap aftershave/perfume/body odour/bus exhaust/payphone spittle and the methane you leave in the turlet….but I don’t try to ruin you financially with a “fart” tax, do I?
A caffeine tax will have one great purpose, and that’s to let you coffee addicts walk a mile in a smoker’s shoes and wipe that smug “why don’t you just buy less cigarrettes?” smirk off your coffee-stained teeth…
Maybe you can just quite your morning cup?
Hey frosty: Don’t forget about all the tea drinkers, pop guzzlers and anyone who likes chocolate.
Bad Mr.Frosty, Bad. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I just had to say that because your screen name makes me smile 🙂
Apparently you don’t use Google nor Google Scholar, Bad Mr. Frosty.
Here are some selected links for you:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factshe…
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pi…
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2121/5/1…
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/…
Please note that the links provided for all except the first one are for peer reviewed journals. There is no bs “science” to this. Simply put, you can expose two groups of individuals to similar environmental conditions but have one group exposed to second hand smoke while the other is not. Guess which group will experience a higher proportion of negative health effects?
I’m all for taxing items that are shown to have a negative health effect on the general population. I propose that the next tax be on stupidity.
dsb…one thing that I HAVE learned, is that it is rarely enough to type into Google your desired result, and then cite the first few results that come up.
For instance, typing “study showing the dangers of second smoke” will result in finding studies that purport to, well, to do just that. No surprise there.
In the “biomed” example you gave above, I was able, within a few minutes to find this line:
“” … it is our hope that this work will lead eventually to the realization that “second-hand” smoke exposure can be very damaging.””
Hmmm. Sound like a foregone conclusion to you at all?
Mendel and his peas ring a bell?
Try typing “confirmation bias” into your beloved Googly sometime…
As for any study from a group called “tobacco-control” .com…lol…that’s a bit like debating God on a site called “Jesus-loves-us-can’t-you-see DOT com, innit?
Furthermore, find a study that shows the “dangerous” effects of having a sealed off smoking area with proper ventilation, not one that sprays “second hand smoke” into chicken embryos and mice, and I’ll give it a once over…
🙂
So, what search terms would you use if you were looking for information on the effects of second hand smoke?
Also, why do you want to see a study on the dangerous effects of smoking in a sealed off room with proper ventilation? Would that be because cigarette smoke is dangerous and if there wasn’t proper ventilation that would be tantamount to actually smoking the cigarette directly?
It would also be highly unethical to lock human beings in a room with and without proper ventilation and second hand smoke for how ever long it takes to assess the health risks. What can be done, and is done, is you do surveys about people who have been exposed under various conditions and try to find trends. In addition, you simplify the system by using chicken embryos and mice in controlled conditions. Together all this data points to the conclusion that second hand smoke is a human health risk. The strength of the conclusion does not hang on one peer reviewed study, but a LOT of peer reviewed studies.