Cigarettes went UP 5 cents a cigarette at midnight last night in beautiful, downtown, Nova Scotia (Provincial Taxes). The province expects to collect $21 million more in taxes this year with the hike. The bootleggers expect to collect $21 million more in profit this year from increased sales. I wonder who’s going to win this one 😛
—irked
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2009.
My money’s on the bootlegger, literally. Fuck morals, ethics and principals and fuck the NS government… this is how crime is born
I KNOW!!! THIS IS A PISS OFF!
and then they put in the metro today that they think illegal smoke prices will raise WELL DUH! of course!! they will!
I say they should regulate the cost of smokes and raise the price on booze. They just lowered the price of exspensive wine you knwo the $250 stuff i say raise that!!!
The less of you nic addicts puffing your cancer sticks and messing up my clean air the better. Add on another 5 cents I say, or better yet a quarter.
Go fuck yourself.
Who is really in control of your life if you smoke? You or the cigarette producers? Smokers actions are ruled by nicotine cravings every time they light up. The cigarette producers -legal and illegal- don’t care how many lives are taken by the use of their product…they care only about the profits. Isn’t your life worth more than that? Seriously. It’s funny how one sees the big picture here when they start burying loved ones who died from smoking.
Who’s in control of your life, if you drink, eat, have sex, etc etc etc.
And lets take away cars, trucks, trains, planes, escalators, etc etc etc because they all cause death too.
Dear NL; I’m not a smoker, and am not a supporter of the habit either, but its only a matter of time before the government decides that something that you enjoy is worthy of taxing into oblivion. Careful what you wish for.
The bigger issue is The government is forcing its agenda on smokers via taxation. Fine, maybe smokers cost the healthcare system more $$$, ( and they pay more taxes for it ) well at least give some options instead of bending someone over so they can enjoy something they choose.
The government’s agenda is to help protect the people who vote for them. Smoking is a health risk, so they try to discourage it, not just through taxation, but through educational campaigns and warning labels. The government is being responsible, not greedy, when it is “forcing its agenda” on you.
Sometimes I forget that some people smoke.
I wonder how many of the people who are boycotting the grocery store to avoid paying 5 cents a bag will also quit smoking now that they’re 5 cents more expensive.
Miles that was….sweet,..the govt cares????? OMG that is priceless..I think I was that naive when I was……10…..pleasantly refreshing 🙂
and PAS….touche…….. LOLOL
I didn’t actually say the government cares. I was implying that the government’s agenda is to satisfy the voters. Smokers don’t have a lot of political sway, non-smoking health promoters do. Policy only follows the trend towards non-smoking.
But, if as the cynics are implying, the government’s agenda is only to make money off smokers, why pass legislation that forces vendors to hide cigarettes behind screens? Why force the addition of warning labels? Why restrict tobacco advertising? Why fund anti-smoking campaigns? It’s because the government is responding to the will of the people who want to protect themselves and their kids from the harms of smoking.
It bothers me when people think they have no control over the government and that the government has some nefarious agenda. Neither is true. The people still have the power, problem is getting them to wield it. Our apathy and resignation is what allows governments to pass laws and implement policies we don’t agree with.
You can hate on us smokers
BUT if we didnt smoke you wouldnt have a good health care system AND your childrens education would not be paid for
THANK YOU CRIME STOPPERS!
lmfao ur are sooo right,
also agree with kay
LOL….smokers suck….literally in more ways than one!
Miles, for the same reasons ON has legislated the price of a plastic bag… government does these silly things to appease the public, not protect it. It has everything to do with, yes, satisfying voters but ultimately one needs to just follow the money (those bags are subject to tax, smokes are subject to a “luxury” tax, violating retailers are fined… we were going to pay for bylaw enforcement anyway). If the government’s motive for raising the price of cigarettes was to protect you tobacco would be illegal to manufacture. But it’s not that way because this is Canada and Canadians want their freedom to choose… a bunch of bullshit expensive stop-gap, red-tape measures are put in place to heave it on the smoker/consumer.
Besides, protection is not the issue (or it would be illegal!). The slow forming of a dictatorship that penalizes you for enjoying your life is the bigger problem.
And for the record, Jane, Crime Stoppers receives zero funding from the courts, from the RCMP and from your government. Crime Stoppers is 100% run and administered by volunteers and donated dollars. You’d be surprised how often the Crime Stoppers volunteer is told to go fuck their hand by RCMP and other police forces. And have you ever seen a television advertisement encouraging you to report your local crack dealer? No. Instead, you’re encouraged to make criminals out of people who enjoy smoking but can’t afford all the dam taxes.
oh i can completely see someone telling crime stoppers to go fuck themselves
BUT
it’s the truth that where the money goes from tobacco sales!
Smokers take a big toll on the health care system – fact. More taxes = more funding for health care – fact. Do the fucking math.
I’m pretty sure we’d still have a good health care system Jane, unless the smoking lobbyists invent time travel to kill Tommy Douglas.
blahblahblah *yawn*
BroTim: Food, drink and sex are necessities of life.
Vehicles are transportation and resultant deaths are usually accidental.
Cigarette smoking is neither of the above.
Smoking is a habit that we all know causes death. Choosing not to eat causes death too. Choosing not to smoke increases one’s chance of life. Your comparisons lack reason.
Smoking doesn’t cause death. Cancer causes death, sometimes. Smoking causes cancer, sometimes. Logically, in order to assert that one thing definitively causes another, it would have to occur more than 50% of the time. Smoking certainly increases the risk of diseases like cancer, but cannot be said to CAUSE cancer. As well, there are a plethora of other things that contribute to cancer, such as choice of lifestyle or profession, common household/environmental toxins, and unfortunate genetics. None of which have ever been considered or accounted for in any ‘scientific study’ on the health effects of smoking, from which all the anti-smoking dinks draw their ‘statistics’…….None of which has anything to do with why the price of cigarettes has been raised.
I’m no advocate for smoking, but all this ridiculous anti-smoking rhetoric and bullshit about the gov’t’s concern for people’s health leading them to raise taxes drives me crazy. Raising cigarette taxes is merely going to boost illegal cigarette sales, like it always does everytime they do this, thereby putting the burden on ALL taxpayers for the law enforcement to bust all the bootleggers. I’d love to see a comparison of the increased cigarette tax revenue versus the cost of all the sting operations on black market cigarette sellers…
“Do you realize if you were to take that lettuce.. Dry it, and roll it, and smoke it.. If you smoke your lettuce.. You’re going to end up with similar problems than if you were smoking to-bac-co..”
Irrelevant, but brilliant all the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eooXNd0heM
me0w, i’m not going to debate all of this with you, but seriously, have you not heard of control groups and multivariate regression analysis to remove confounding variable from studies? you are flat out wrong to suggest that other factors are not considered or accounted for in scientific studies.
also it’s not just about cancer – there’s a host of other illness not least of which is COPD. pretty much everyone who suffers from COPD is a smoker or former smoker (in some locals we can add miners to the list). virtually no one who suffers from copd has never been a smoker.
i’m not interested in talking about taxes and what they contribute or don’t, or health care costs or what have you. but to say that smoking doesn’t have health effects, up to and including death in the long term, is ridiculous
“It’s not the nicotine that kills.. It’s the smo-o-o-o-oke, the smo-o-o-o-oke..”
Still irrelevant, but even more hilarious the second (and sixth) time..
Jammie, to be clear, nowhere in my post did I infer that smoking doesn’t have serious health effects, or the potential to contribute to illness causing death. I was merely objecting to the sensationalist and overly simplistic viewpoint that smoking = death.
As far as the scientific studies go, I’ve read numerous articles in which respected independent scientists and MDs have stated that they disagree with the methods and findings of several of the more prominent smoking studies. While I harbour no illusions about the risks of smoking, I have reason to doubt the statistics that are currently being thrown around. Perhaps you are aware of more recent and valid studies I’ve yet to see, in which case I’ll gladly stand corrected.
In any case, this bitch was about cigarette taxes, not health statistics, so further debate is somewhat irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I believe there are far more obese and diabetic (as a result of poor food choices) Canadians costing the health care system with ongoing eating-related issues as well. Obesity leads to all kinds of ailments including death. The correct response when government is asked to improve the health and safety of obese Canadians is to educate them, not to penalize them with “financial disincentives”. We don’t target and penalize these people for their lifestyle because it wold be unethical and insensitive for us to identify and label them with a “luxury” tax. Why is it okay to do this to smokers? These are just Canadians living their lives the way they want to.
you’re right me0w in that i overstated when i suggested that you said “that smoking doesn’t have health effects”. you did however attempt to diminish or minimize the known effects by implying that scientific studies on the matter didn’t consider other risk factors, which is not true.
it is interesting that as smoking rates have decreased by fully one third in the past ten years, deaths from cardiovascular disease have also decreased by, you guessed it, one third in the past ten years. the authors of the study on heart disease did consider other factors including health promotion activities, medication use, etc. and they figure the change in smoking rates accounts for a significant portion of the change but not all of it.
in any case, this bitch being about taxes, i will say that cigarette taxes are in fact part of the department of health promotion and protection’s comprehensive tobacco reduction strategy, and have been for years. this strategy was produced by health promotion staff – generally nursey or social worky types – so it was genuine, not just n exercise in lip service by some politician. thus at least one government department is in fact trying to use taxes as a disincentive to smoking.
that’s not to say that other departments don’t see it as simply a revenue source.
and that’s not to say that the tax disincentive works either. ever notice that folks who are too poor to afford good food, clothing, transportation, or recreation for their children can be INCREDIBLY resourceful when it comes to getting their smokes? and it just keeps ’em poorer.
but, you know, it’s a right.
kay you’re right – overweight and obesity and the related illnesses are now considered to be pretty much on par with smoking as the largest strains on people’s health.
unfortunately it’s probably not very accurate to suggest that they aren’t also taxed to death. contrary to popular convention, the junk food that these folks eat in enormous amounts, is really expensive when you look at its real food value versus its price. and tends to be sold in little “convenient” packages that has folks going back to the store for more all the time.
this is actually a really interesting question you raised. if you could look at the “excess” food eaten by the obese and calculate its “extra” cost over what it it would cost for them to simply sustain themselves with normal amounts of more natural foods, what would that extra cost be? how much tax would it include? and how much more or less would it be than the taxes collected on tobacco products?
(i’m sure it wouldn’t be nearly as much, but still significant. could be eye-opening!)
ah, we’ve come full circle to my point… it’s none of your business, your government’s business nor your neighbour’s business what you stuff in your pie hole nor why. Have you ever seen a boxer eat to make weight? How about fat and pregnant? How about the six foot eight bean pole down the road who’s always got burger joint crap falling out of his car? All that is required to make poor food choices is a grocery store. Fast food and junk food help a lot but 2 or 3 helpings of mom’s home cookin’ can service a food addiction and make you unhealthy just as fast. We don’t need government to decide lifestyle for us nor do eating/smoking/partying happy Canadians deserve special taxation for their choice of lifestyle. Again, if it were about your safety, nicotine and tobacco would be an illegal and controlled substance as would be deep fryer equipment and iced cream.
Speaking of iced cream… hehe
I’d like to see smoking illegal, just so that I can see what society blames cancer on next.
Tobacco causes death – Ban tobacco
Alcohol causes death – Ban alcohol
Obesity causes death – Ban fats and Fast food joints (and folks there’s talk about that
Sex causes death – Ban sex
As for the government doing what the majority want, that is utter bullshit. If it were true, there would be no homosexual marriages.
One reason this bitch exists is because cigarettes are taxed according to an absolute value (dollars and cents) rather than a relative value (a portion/percent of the purchase price).
In case you have never heard of INFLATION, EVERYTHING that is taxed at all gets its tax hiked up continuously. Absolute taxes don’t rise automatically with the market, though, so upward corrections have to happen every so often.
A pack of gum that costs 1 $ today will have 0.13 $ of tax.
…but at 2%/year inflation, the same gum will cost 1.08 $ after four years, and it will have 0.14 $ of tax.
So something that costs 1 $ will be taxed by an extra quarter of a cent every year.
Something that costs 20 $ will be taxed by an EXTRA FIVE CENTS EVERY YEAR.
Of course, a cigarette costs more like 0.20 $, so to keep pace with the market you would expect an absolute tax to be corrected upward by five cents only every 100 YEARS.
So yes…definitely a legit gripe. …just not because there is a hike at all.
Anyway…legalize all drugs and then the tax rate could be lowered drastically all around and still generate the same amount of revenue.
This was smart. ps i am a smoker.
smokee
this was smart. ps i am a smoker
Dogma, there is a slight flaw with your example. Inflation is loss of purchasing power, not a direct increase in prices. You make it sound like the Government is making money hand over fist (in this case, there is a tax increase), however, dependent on where inflation falls year over year, the government could receive less. Remember, a dollar in the government’s hand is the same as a dollar in yours.
I don’t see the flaw. I’m not saying there isn’t one, but I am pretty sure I addressed that.
My whole point was that the government automatically maintains the purchasing power of its tax revenue stream when it comes to proportional taxes, but in order to do the same for absolute taxes it must explicitly update them periodically.
I was not describing taxes outpacing inflation.
I was outlining what the proper hike amounts would be to keep pace exactly, to illustrate that hikes should be expected.
…just not at the rate we are seeing here!
Jammie, I’m not attempting to minimize the effects of smoking, but I am definitely implying that the statistics that are used in the anti-smoking crusade are based on studies with flawed methodology and I will continue to stand by this opinion unless shown proof to the contrary. There are a number of papers, articles, etc on the subject, written by reputable doctors and scientists who have nothing to gain by disputing these statistics, except to promote actual science instead of politically influenced factoids.
You’re right in that deaths from cardiovascular disease are down, but they’ve been on the decline since the 60s, and heart disease mortality has declined in smokers at the same rate as non-smokers. The largest reason for the decrease in deaths is not owing to primary prevention, as you suggest, but rather to improved management of the disease. However, the *rate* of heart disease is actually still on the rise in both smokers and non-smokers.
Regardless of what the statistics are, I don’t think anyone has the right to dictate what others can or cannot do with their bodies. While I agree with legislation that pertains to one’s right to not have their health/safety infringed upon, I do not agree with legislation that pertains to one’s personal choice in matters that affect only themselves.
I’m sick of the gov’t nickel & dimeing the so called luxuries and preying on the NS taxpayer because we’re so isolated and can’t cross-border shop as easy as most of the rest of Canada.
In my world alcohol, gasoline, and up until not long ago smoker are a necessity. It’d be great to one day squeeze these bastards back by having a day where no one smokes drives, or drinks. It would have to be a day when everyone’s really hung over though.
“I’d like to see smoking illegal, just so that I can see what society blames cancer on next.”
Me too!
Meow, can you show me the studies you refer to? I’m curious.
Also, if you don’t think anyone has the right to dictate what you can do with your body how do you feel about other, illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine? Should they be legalized in your opinion?
Jane: Society already blames other things for cancer. Pesticides, BPA, tar ponds, cell phones…etc, etc.
Society will point the blame on anything that they find your very right Miles!!
and dont want to see smokign ilegal!
*whoosh*
Murder Junkie, LOL… thank you!
Do the math however you want. With a $1 increase in tax on smokes they just gave it to is more than 10%… imagine if GST suddenly became 15% overnight, but only if you actually enjoy your life do you have to pay it. Like I said… this is how crime begins…. when you back me into a corner. I’m not here to “serve my country”, per se, I’m here to live my life.
I don’t mind taxes as long as they’re fair. Maybe they’ll raise the taxes on fast food by 10%. Bet if they do all these anti-smoking zealots would scream blue bloody murder.
Actually Bro I suspect that the anti-smoking zealots would equally celebrate a fast food tax, and bans on trans fats, and all sorts of other measures to try to discourage consumption of any items known to cause chronic disease. Remember these zealots are generally health professionals whose jobs it is to try to change the culture of indulgence to something healthier. Whether any of these measures is fair or unfair is up for debate but I don’t think you’d hear these particular folks complaining about the price of cheetos.
I’d take exception. Why should the government benefit from anyone’s choice to indulge in some junk food? I’m not a fat stinkin’ cow! I don’t have diabetes or any other diet related illness. I don’t even have any cavities in my teeth! Tell me again who the government is to make an exceptional profit with an exceptional taxes (on anything)? Charge more so I’ll eat less? WTF? It’s our government not our parents! I grew up and moved out a long time ago. Go ahead, put an exceptional taxes on my chocolate and my smokes… put them out of my (average) reach and I’ll show you what illegal machine guns are good for.
I hear ya kay re: government collecting $$.
But I’m speculating about Departmental staff in my above post, not “government”. These are do-gooders whose goal, whether misguided or not, is to provide disincentives to unhealthy behaviors. These staff are not looking for the $$ – they’ll never see the $$. They’re looking for the most effective ways to discourage unhealthy behaviors in the general population of province; they’re trying to find ways to improve the health culture. They may believe that eliminating the argument that healthy food is more expensive than junk food will be one way to help achieve their goals.
Remember I’m talking about health promotion staff. Now, if you’re talking about the elected Minister of Finance, that’s a different perspective. You are quite free to accuse that politician of trying to hoard money.
Just saying, there aren’t just two sides to the argument.
I disagree. There are only two sides of this coin, the taxpayer’s side and the side of the government (municipal, provincial, federal, whatever).
Do we charge people extra for using condoms? Do we have an extra tax on that to deal with the number of STI’s in this country at the expense of safely and freshly fucked Canadians? NO. We EDUCATE. That’s the government’s job, not to raise all us “dumb” Canadians or to “create a new culture” within our multi-cultural society. Why do people confuse the government’s role with that of a parent’s?
Here’s another side to that coin: Imagine being a small business that produces sugary snacks (say lollipops) and the government all of a sudden one day declares your product an unwise food choice for Canadians and therefore subjects it to some “luxury tax”. How does this affect lollipop sales and is it the government’s job to put the lollipop producer out of business? Isn’t that the job of capitalism?
I think the gov’t needs to stay in it’s place and Canadians need to keep it there rather than whining to our government who simply creates a new law for every little thing (never to be abolished since it creates a new source of revenue for a greedy government).
I’m not debating that taxes suck and that they may not be the right way to try to influence culture. That’s a broad argument about the whole purpose of taxes. They are supposed to be to fund government programs, but they’ve been hijacked in some cases to – depending on how you look at it – provide disincentive to use of purportedly harmful products, or to “punish” the folks who are victim to whatever “addiction” they might have – junk food, tobacco, alcohol, gasoline, gambling, what have you.
What I am debating is the motivation of the health staff, in particular, that think they are doing a good thing by using taxes this way. They are glassy-eyed idealists who think they are “saving the children” and creating a healthier world by influencing the broad culture (not a new culture, nothing to do with multiculturalism) to be one that encourages people not to smoke, to eat well, to exercise, etc. etc. These staff, not elected officials, are not just reaching into your pockets – they for the most don’t get the money that the government collects. They are not the government – they are staff who are hired by other staff who are hired by other staff, who are ultimately hired by the elected officials who form the government.
Do the elected officials give a shit about the health or environmental benefits of collecting taxes on harmful products? I doubt it. Do they see the taxes as little more than revenue generators? Probably not. I wouldn’t disagree with you on this.
But the staff, misguided or not, think they are doing a good thing by recommending these taxes to government. Does price increase really work? Who really knows. There are studies out there that say, yes, it helps, but we all know how debates about “studies” among the scientifically illiterate can go…
That said, taxes are part of a broad strategy that collectively has seen the smoking rate in NS drop from the worst in the country at 30%, to one of the better rates at 20% in ten years – that’s a one third drop in the number of smokers. I’m sure no one would suggest that this is a bad thing.
Here I am rooting for the folks who sell cigarettes by the bag. Supposedly these cigarettes are ‘illegal’ . Not because they are any better or worse for a persons health. But because the Government doesn’t get their ‘cut’. We need more bagged smokes & home brew, as well as a lot more bootleggers selling shine.
Because after all boys & girls the government hasn’t labeled this stuff illegal because they care if it hurts anyone or not, or that bikers or Mafia are getting wealthy !
No they are pissed because they are LOSING MONEY ! The largest organized criminal organization in Canada… our government wins that hands down, & they hate competition .
Miles, one of the studies I was referring to was conducted by the CDC using the SAMMEC method (Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs), which is basically a computer program that uses death records to generate an estimate of deaths attributable to smoking. Have a quick look into their methodology and results, and you’ll see that they’re flawed. I can’t say that I’m familiar with every smoking study that’s been done, but the stats from this study are some of the most lauded by the anti-smoking lobby, and others have used similar models.
Look, I’m not saying smoking isn’t bad for you, but I think the all-out war on smoking is a bit much and that many statistics are being overblown. I think the role of our government in this area is to educate, improve public safety, and protect young people, not to overtax and demonize adults for making their own choices, and I think this applies to hard drugs, soft drugs, and all other types of consensual crime.
I’ll try to track that study down Meow, but off the bat I can see what a study like that can be flawed. I’ll add however that if I did a quick search of scientific journals for “tobacco and cancer” and I got about 30,000 results. If, after that much research, which covers the spectrum from epidemiology to molecular biology and biochemistry, the resounding consensus is that smoking causes or greatly increases your risk for cancer, I think it should be taken seriously, even if a handful of the studies are flawed.
Also, after thinking about this subject for the last few days, I am inclined to agree that the over-taxation approach is probably ineffective and philosophically flawed.
I would not go so far as to say that hard drugs like heroin and cocaine should be legal however. It would be highly irresponsible to condone these products by legalizing them when they pose such acute health risks to those who use them (e.g. overdose) and the long term effects of addiction on individuals, families and communities. Cigarettes and alcohol and pot are clearly in a different league than other street drugs. We have a hard enough time dealing with the negative effects of these soft drugs when used by irresponsible consenting adult users.
Miles (from home),
Glue is legal. Gasoline is legal. …and people are not barred from visiting building rooftops or horsing around with garden shears or electrical sockets in the privacy of their own homes.
People who want to hurt themselves most likely will. To try to force a stop to that gives to small a yield (if any) for too great a cost (in freedom).
…and let’s not forget the cost in danger promoted by trade being forced underground.
Has anyone here been paying attention to the brutal police versus black market drug trade war that is going on in Mexico?
Dogma, I appreciate the argument against a nanny state and I really do agree with it. What I am trying to say is that either side of that particular sentiment can only go so far before it reaches the point of absurdity. Too much coddling by the government leads to loss of freedom, too much freedom leads to chaos. The risk to personal and public safety of legalizing hard drugs does not come close to trumping the relatively minor loss of person freedom by keeping it illegal, IMO. There are clearly times when it is the government’s responsibility to step in and protect the society it serves from real threats. Glue, gasoline, electrical sockets, and I would say cigarettes, should not be on that threat list.
With respect to the smoking situation, I think we currently live in a society that is in love with the notion of political correctness and harbours irrational fears about imagined or exaggerated threats. Smokers fall victim to both trends as it is currently inappropriate to smoke in public and we are afraid of the health risks associated with smoking. Smokers make a juicy target for taxation because they have a very limited and diminished political voice.
I think one thing that gets missed is that maybe some of the folks aren’t quite as hysterical as they let on about the dangers of second-smoke. Their real goal is to change the peer pressure, to make smoking socially unacceptable, and thereby to change the culture. Creating a second-hand smoke boogeyman is one way of influencing that. Well-intentioned – yes. Misguided? Perhaps? Effective? It seems to be with at least 80% of the population!
I am disagreeing with your view that “too much freedom leads to chaos”. That is simply not true when it comes to self-harm. With respect to all of the things I mentioned, we have perfect freedom, and yet we do not have millions of people using them to hurt themselves.
You could kill yourself pretty quickly with gasoline or a tall building. You could hurt or kill yourself with any of an endless list of things, 99.9999% of which are not illegal.
There are two points here.
1. Any activity involving self-harm (and if you really look at it, ANYTHING in life has risk attached) has a disincentive built in. For most activities, the threat of death or harm is enough to dissuade people from it, and to try to add another disincentive is ridiculous.
2. For the remaining activities—the ones where the danger is not clear enough—the government still has no business trying to dictate what people do only to themselves. The most they should be doing is help people SEE the REAL DANGERS in order to inform their choices. They should not invent new dangers (punishments) ones to force people’s hands.
One more point: I think the drug trade (turf wars etc) provide a clear example that the addition of government sanctions to personal activity is the course of action that leads to MORE chaos in the end.
Gas, tall buildings and garden shears all have purposes other than self-harm and they are used in these non-harmful way the vast majority of the time. It would obviously be silly to regulate these because they have the potential to cause self harm.
Illicit drugs have no use other than to cause harm. The pleasure people derive from these substances is part of the harm process. It makes perfect sense that these things should be kept off the streets and inaccessible to the public. Further, the inherent disincentive with hard drugs (risk of addiction/death) that works to deter most adults is readily ignored or overridden by drug abusers. Once addiction takes hold, rational thought checks out. In the same way we authorize physicians to control our intake of addictive prescription drugs, we should authorize the government to keep their illicit counterparts out of the hands of the general population.
Legalized alcohol, tobacco, gambling and prostitution have not eliminated the illegal market for these things. No amount of decriminalization will ever stop illegal trafficking of these things. Drugs and addictions control and ruin people’s lives. We are not just talking about self harm here. The cost of the individual’s lifestyle is shouldered by the whole of society. Rehab costs money. Medical treatment costs money. Lost work and wages from the addictive behaviour costs money. With the exception of suicide, self-harming behaviour is not really only self-harming. Also, the effects of hard drugs are more severe and more immediate than alcohol or tobacco or fast food and that is why they should remain illegal.
Jammie, I’m with you in that health staff are simply not qualified to use economics as some form of blanket “treatment”.
Miles, “Illicit drugs have no use other than to cause harm”. You know they use to say that about alcohol too, right? Have you ever tried getting your wife to take a puff off a joint in the middle of a heated argument? The argument soon ends and all are cool and relaxed. No harm. In fact, harm was prevented in this case.
I agree the hard drugs that quickly take hold of their user and prevent them from working and contributing to society are a danger to us all so let’s focus the “war on drugs” not on tobacco and not on marijuana but on the drugs that actually cause harm. If we legalized marijane I’m sure we’d have an easier time focusing our efforts and winning this “war”
Kay,just to be clear, I was referring to things like heroin and crack with that statement, not pot. I mentioned earlier that “Cigarettes and alcohol and pot are clearly in a different league than other street drugs” and are not on my list of drugs that the government needs to protect us from. I think we might actually be in agreement.
Miles (from home),
Even if it were true that people’s will with respect to their own bodies should be overwritten by those who ‘know better’ (and I don’t think you’ve made that case)…
You still have not dealt with the fact that the cure is worse than the disease.
Drug use pales in comparison with organized crime in terms of harming the general public. The first of many points: public money wasted on ‘wars on drugs’.
*overridden
So, what is your alternative? If you decriminalize hard drugs who do you think will be dealing them? There will still be a criminal element involved. Organized crime already has their fingers in a lot of “legal” pies. Illegal tobacco and alcohol and gambling are real problems.
Waging futile wars on drugs is not the same as taking a political and legal stance to say that society does not support production and sale of something that is dangerous to the people it is charged with protecting.
Take a look at a rehab center, or areas like downtown eastside vancouver and tell me that recreational drugs only affect the person using them. These drugs ruin lives. They ruin families and they ruin communities and legalizing them will not change that.
Again, to be clear, I am not talking about tobacco or weed. My point is that I think there is a point where your freedom to do self harm inevitably causes harm to others and that is when it is fair for the government to step in and protect both you and the community through legislation.
Solution: Tax-dodging.
Miles (from home),
I suggested a system that spreads the government’s drug-specific taxes across a wider range of drugs to generate the same revenue with a smaller tax on each drug. I take the point that that still leaves room for the black market, but we could remove that problem legalizing (not ‘decriminalizing’) everything and simply not charging any special taxes on anything. Wal-Mart would quickly undercut organized crime on tobacco AND heroin.
Marijuana is a special case, though. If you can grow it at home, there’s a good chance people wouldn’t bother to have big box stores import it for them. It would be a personal garden thing or a farmer’s market thing.
In every case, though, the criminal element would evaporate from the market. A criminal enterprise has the extra costs of secrecy, turf wars, bribery, etcetera to pass on to its customers, and it does not have a hope of competing.
…and again I say that the twin victories of (1) suffocating the black market for what some would call vices and (2) ensuring the freedom of society when it comes to those ‘vices’ would be worth the price of more people hooked…if that would even happen. By the way, in the picture I am describing, people who take drugs would not be marginalized, and therefore those who are hooked would have less to lose by seeking help.