How Should Non-Smokers Make Up The Tax Revenue They Benefit From When Smoking Is Banned?
Taxes collected on cigarrettes do not even come close to covering the healthcare costs from smoking. If smoking is ever banned outright, there will be a period of about 20 years where there is a shortfall from current tax levels until we let all the past smokers die off. This means that they should increase cigarrette taxes to double their current amount for the next 20 years before banning smoking at that time. Got your attention yet? Actually people do a ton of stuff to themselves that are bad for them, those of us who don’t smoke still eat a ton of fast food, drink way too much coffee and soda etc. In the end, the government either needs to get out of the business of taxing us for our bad habits, or needs to tax all of them. I think the only way to do so effectively would be to tax these products at their source, either when they are produced or when they are imported into the country. Of course I also favour legalizing prostitution and taxing that very heavily, so perhaps we could
