So this sounds like a good idea and I was a big supporter of it when the prices here in Australia went up, but I was wrong. We increased the prices with the thought that this would reduce uptake for young people and increase quitting or at least reduce use in older people. Instead we ended up creating a black market for untaxed tobacco. Since then we have had a massive increase in the level of gang activity. This means a fair few young people getting involved with these gangs and ending up committing crimes and going through the “justice” system. We have had drive by shootings, stabbings, abductions, and recently a mistaken abduction of the wrong person resulting in his dismemberment and death.
Increasing the price a little can have an impact but once you cross a threshold the criminal side becomes much more attractive and things become dire. The increase in people quitting may be because people have quit smoking, and I sincerely hope that is it, but in my opinion it is likely a significant portion of the change is a reduction of legal tobacco use and an increase in black market tobacco use.
I feel lucky to live in a place where this black market existed for ages before prices went up lol, it’s mostly chill, old granny-looking vendors just trying to make a buck. Border patrol gets countered the same way it always was, either corruption, agricultural drones, or both, and it probably helps a lot we grow a bunch of our own tobacco.
Like if it didn’t go completely untaxed I’d rather have a black market than a market where big tobacco gets even richer.
In my opinion if it was just a crop like zucchini and you just had to meet agricultural standards, manage exposure to things like e. coli, get the product tested occasionally for heavy metals, and so on, it would be much better. Making it illegal doesn’t work, regulating it out of existence doesn’t work, but dealing with the harms from the other end, setting up programs for getting people off addictive things and using the health system etc, seems much better. I really think getting rid of the control and access these massive tobacco companies have and which was built directly off slavery and genocide would be a good idea.
The price for a 20 packet of cigarettes here in Australia is around $42 in AU dollars, so about $29. The production price is closer to $5, or about $4 USD. All the rest of that is taxes and that means you as a black market producer can make something for $5 and sell it for $30 and make $25 in profit, or you can sell way more at $20 or $15 and still make massive amounts of profit. You could kill the cartels and gangs tomorrow by dropping the tax and it would reduce the market for illegal tobacco to zero. The fact that our government don’t is a good indicator that they don’t actually care.
Is that meant as a sort of joking, the smoking causes the cancer thing? I mean, yes, we all know smoking causes cancer, that isn’t being debated. It is more about the effect of taxation on rates of smoking and this type of strategy seems to have the effect of driving black market tobacco, not reducing smoking.
Yeah, it is insane. My partner used a vape to quit and it was actually useful. I titrated the nicotine level down by 10% per refill, usually taking about a fortnight to get through. The use level would increase for the first few days but drop back down by the next refill. By the end when we dropped all the way to zero there was so little nicotine it wasn’t really noticeable. After that it was just the behavioural habit and that dropped by itself after a few months.
Compared with nicotine gum and patches it was way more effective and really did result in a long term quit. They are now approaching 10 years quit and it was absolutely worth doing. Harm reduction would suggest using vapes to help people quit and honestly to replace smoking all together.
California doesn’t have jurisdiction over the hundred or so Indian reservations in the state, so pretty much everyone is within an hour’s drive of an ordinary storefront legally selling untaxed cigarettes.
Yeah, so it makes me think that more people are professing to quit or their data on sales shows a reduction but it is more likely just a shift to untaxed tobacco.
So only the good people can’t get them but the bad people still can? Poor people can’t protect themselves but rich people can because of course they’re better than us? Sounds like a good plan I guess.
But I was led to believe that was impossible, that if you make them illegal nobody but the police (who we all trust, right?) will have them.
Well, since you can’t get rid of them, and since “guns for everybody all the time” is a strawman that actually means “guns for people who haven’t proved themselves to be a danger to themselves or others yet,” I’m gonna say I prefer the “innocent until proven guilty” model.
That still isn’t “everybody,” all felonies, DV misdemeanors, adjudicated IVCs, children, and drug addicts (admittedly self reported on that one, but still), all bar you from gun ownership even in the land of 600,000,000 guns (not an exaggeration). Actually I even think for nonviolent felons there should be a path back to gun ownership and voting (they also lose that right, as fucked up as it is), and some violent misdemeanors should be added to the list (something like simple assault can be the result of just a fight, but robbery or aggravated battery otoh should probably be on there even in places where it isn’t a felony, and it should probably just be a felony in those places too but what can ya do.)
And yes, criminals gonna criminal, but I’d prefer that if they can just get them anyway, so can I. If even in Aus the criminals can still get them, then the US has no hope that we can stop it either. You’re an island with 90% unusable territory that only has to control the ports and you still have smugglers, we can’t even control our ports either much less the two big ass land borders and we never will, we will always have smugglers.
Are you rich and powerful? Because if so you could get one yes.
I couldnt get a gun. I couldn’t just nip round my mates house and nick his dad’s. They are rare and expensive and risky af to own. Not just anybody can have one. I bet most people in the West outside USA havent even seen one. You’re not going to need one to defend yourself from one because the people who actually have them aren’t going to risk getting caught for a simple mugging, and theyre not walking around constantly strapped in case they lose their temper at some mundane shit.
If you want a gun to protect yourself from guns, you’re already living in Breaking Bad.
Edit to add : im not Australian but I assume its the same everywhere where the bad has worked
Something about stabbings and kidnappings was mentioned earlier? Guns aren’t only to protect against guns, in fact the only time I’ve ever had to “use” a gun for self defense it was because a guy pulled a knife on me. “Use” because I only had to show it, not shoot it, thankfully.
But they can come in handy, even for us lesser people, the poors, even though I don’t make meth, it’s all made in the surrounding rural towns and trafficked here.
So this sounds like a good idea and I was a big supporter of it when the prices here in Australia went up, but I was wrong. We increased the prices with the thought that this would reduce uptake for young people and increase quitting or at least reduce use in older people. Instead we ended up creating a black market for untaxed tobacco. Since then we have had a massive increase in the level of gang activity. This means a fair few young people getting involved with these gangs and ending up committing crimes and going through the “justice” system. We have had drive by shootings, stabbings, abductions, and recently a mistaken abduction of the wrong person resulting in his dismemberment and death.
Increasing the price a little can have an impact but once you cross a threshold the criminal side becomes much more attractive and things become dire. The increase in people quitting may be because people have quit smoking, and I sincerely hope that is it, but in my opinion it is likely a significant portion of the change is a reduction of legal tobacco use and an increase in black market tobacco use.
I feel lucky to live in a place where this black market existed for ages before prices went up lol, it’s mostly chill, old granny-looking vendors just trying to make a buck. Border patrol gets countered the same way it always was, either corruption, agricultural drones, or both, and it probably helps a lot we grow a bunch of our own tobacco.
Like if it didn’t go completely untaxed I’d rather have a black market than a market where big tobacco gets even richer.
In my opinion if it was just a crop like zucchini and you just had to meet agricultural standards, manage exposure to things like e. coli, get the product tested occasionally for heavy metals, and so on, it would be much better. Making it illegal doesn’t work, regulating it out of existence doesn’t work, but dealing with the harms from the other end, setting up programs for getting people off addictive things and using the health system etc, seems much better. I really think getting rid of the control and access these massive tobacco companies have and which was built directly off slavery and genocide would be a good idea.
The price for a 20 packet of cigarettes here in Australia is around $42 in AU dollars, so about $29. The production price is closer to $5, or about $4 USD. All the rest of that is taxes and that means you as a black market producer can make something for $5 and sell it for $30 and make $25 in profit, or you can sell way more at $20 or $15 and still make massive amounts of profit. You could kill the cartels and gangs tomorrow by dropping the tax and it would reduce the market for illegal tobacco to zero. The fact that our government don’t is a good indicator that they don’t actually care.
The problem is not the quality, it’s that the practice of combustion and inhalation causes cancer.
Is that meant as a sort of joking, the smoking causes the cancer thing? I mean, yes, we all know smoking causes cancer, that isn’t being debated. It is more about the effect of taxation on rates of smoking and this type of strategy seems to have the effect of driving black market tobacco, not reducing smoking.
Then I don’t see how regulating the quality of the product is related.
While in recent times, simultaneously making vapes more difficult to purchase.
Yeah, it is insane. My partner used a vape to quit and it was actually useful. I titrated the nicotine level down by 10% per refill, usually taking about a fortnight to get through. The use level would increase for the first few days but drop back down by the next refill. By the end when we dropped all the way to zero there was so little nicotine it wasn’t really noticeable. After that it was just the behavioural habit and that dropped by itself after a few months.
Compared with nicotine gum and patches it was way more effective and really did result in a long term quit. They are now approaching 10 years quit and it was absolutely worth doing. Harm reduction would suggest using vapes to help people quit and honestly to replace smoking all together.
California doesn’t have jurisdiction over the hundred or so Indian reservations in the state, so pretty much everyone is within an hour’s drive of an ordinary storefront legally selling untaxed cigarettes.
Yeah, so it makes me think that more people are professing to quit or their data on sales shows a reduction but it is more likely just a shift to untaxed tobacco.
Drive by shootings? In Australia?! How is that possible, didn’t you guys ban guns 30yr ago?
Super bad guys still get guns. The rich and powerful, good or bad, can have whatever they want.
So only the good people can’t get them but the bad people still can? Poor people can’t protect themselves but rich people can because of course they’re better than us? Sounds like a good plan I guess.
But I was led to believe that was impossible, that if you make them illegal nobody but the police (who we all trust, right?) will have them.
I see what you’re saying, but the answer isnt actually “guns for everybody all the time.”
Criminals gonna criminal.
Well, since you can’t get rid of them, and since “guns for everybody all the time” is a strawman that actually means “guns for people who haven’t proved themselves to be a danger to themselves or others yet,” I’m gonna say I prefer the “innocent until proven guilty” model.
That still isn’t “everybody,” all felonies, DV misdemeanors, adjudicated IVCs, children, and drug addicts (admittedly self reported on that one, but still), all bar you from gun ownership even in the land of 600,000,000 guns (not an exaggeration). Actually I even think for nonviolent felons there should be a path back to gun ownership and voting (they also lose that right, as fucked up as it is), and some violent misdemeanors should be added to the list (something like simple assault can be the result of just a fight, but robbery or aggravated battery otoh should probably be on there even in places where it isn’t a felony, and it should probably just be a felony in those places too but what can ya do.)
And yes, criminals gonna criminal, but I’d prefer that if they can just get them anyway, so can I. If even in Aus the criminals can still get them, then the US has no hope that we can stop it either. You’re an island with 90% unusable territory that only has to control the ports and you still have smugglers, we can’t even control our ports either much less the two big ass land borders and we never will, we will always have smugglers.
Are you rich and powerful? Because if so you could get one yes.
I couldnt get a gun. I couldn’t just nip round my mates house and nick his dad’s. They are rare and expensive and risky af to own. Not just anybody can have one. I bet most people in the West outside USA havent even seen one. You’re not going to need one to defend yourself from one because the people who actually have them aren’t going to risk getting caught for a simple mugging, and theyre not walking around constantly strapped in case they lose their temper at some mundane shit.
If you want a gun to protect yourself from guns, you’re already living in Breaking Bad.
Edit to add : im not Australian but I assume its the same everywhere where the bad has worked
Something about stabbings and kidnappings was mentioned earlier? Guns aren’t only to protect against guns, in fact the only time I’ve ever had to “use” a gun for self defense it was because a guy pulled a knife on me. “Use” because I only had to show it, not shoot it, thankfully.
But they can come in handy, even for us lesser people, the poors, even though I don’t make meth, it’s all made in the surrounding rural towns and trafficked here.
imagine legislators wanting to make criminals of people suffering from addiction
Luckily for Californians they are not on an Island yet. They will just drive to a neighboring state for a cheaper price.