Should there be higher taxes on buying cigarettes?
Hi everyone,
I swear everyone knows how horrible the cigarettes are, and you must have heard some data like “Smokers are 2 to 4 times more likely than nonsmokers to develop coronary heart disease, and are 13-23 times to develop lung cancer.” Look, smoking really kills right, but sometimes people forget that these diseases that caused by smocking are actually preventable. Only one year after quitting smoking, the risk of coronary heart disease is about half that of a smoker, and after 10 years of cessation, the risk of lung cancer also falls to about half that of a smoker. It’s time to do something, so for my topic, “Should there be higher taxes on buying cigarettes?” I will say “definitely yes!”
Increasing taxes on cigarettes is the most straightforward and the most highly effective strategy to reduce the cigarettes demand. I understand that people once smoking will be addicted, thus I didn’t say the taxes would let people quit, but at least it reduces the affordability of tobacco products, it forces the smokers to reduce the level of the tobacco consumption after considering their basic needs of life. Some people will doubt the feasibility of this policy that the rich people will not care about the price at all. Unfortunately, maybe because of the pressure of life, the fact is 29 percent of poor adults smoke, compared to 18 percent of non-poor adults. They are sensitive to the price of the cigarettes since the expensive tobacco means they have to choose between the cigarettes, the thing you choose to have or the bread, the thing you have to have. The low-income people are not the only group of smokers that worries about the prices, the teenager smokers have limited pocket money as well. Existing research indicates that a 10 percent increase in cigarette prices will lead people under age 18 to reduce their smoking by 5-15 percent. In total, according to the recent study of Turkey, the increasing of the taxes on cigarettes led to a reduction in tobacco sales by 12% between 2008 and 2012. American research also provides a good illustration of the impact of tobacco taxation against the consumption of tobacco, which we can see how effective this policy is.
Smoking is never associated only about one person, I believe everyone here has inhaled the second-smock not only once, terrible feeling right? Let’s just follow the train of thought, if the increasing taxes placed on buying cigarettes leads to a fall in demand, it is logical to deduce that the second-hand smoke we inhaled will reduce as well. Someone may haven’t realize how awful the second-hand smock is, let me tell you. An analysis of experiments has shown that particulate matter in inhaled fresh side stream smoke is three to four times as toxic per gram compared with mainstream cigarette smoke. Each year, tobacco kills a further 600,...
