Hampering The Habit

In theory it sounds like a good idea. But that's theory; reality will impinge as reality tends to do. People will seek out alternatives. And if something is unlawful, that isn't really a deterrent because people have a tendency to rationalize and the fact that government will have chosen to increase taxes on a product that has meaning to people, placing it a little more out of their economic reach, that represents an impediment they can solve, looking for other, less costly sources. And those sources are there. Aren't they always?

"Some of those killed in middle age might have died soon anyway, but others might have lived on for decades. The risks are big, and the benefits of quitting are huge. This prompted us to ask, what would it take to really knock down consumption?
"Our evidence suggests that, even in Canada, a big increase in the federal excise tax could get about one million smokers to quit and save about five thousand lives a year.
"One of the key messages to smokers worldwide is the extraordinary benefits of quitting. And the best way for governments to help smokers quit is to raise the price."
Pranhat Jha, director, Centre for Global Health Research, St.Michael's Hospital/University of Toronto,  and co-author, Sir Richard Peto, University of Oxford

Their research findings have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Their recommendation is that governments should seriously consider raising the tax on cigarettes; tripling it, in fact. If that were done, they claim, smoking-related deaths worldwide over the next few decades would decline significantly. Roughly 200-million premature deaths could be avoided over the rest of the century.

Tobacco is on track to kill about one billion people in this century, if current smoking trends are not interrupted by meaningful action, is what they're saying. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Canada, with over 40,000 Canadians dying annually from lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases, statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada state. Many died in middle-age. And what's true for Canada is equally true elsewhere in the world.

Studies out of the U.K., U.S., Japan and India conclude that smokers are two to three times likelier to die between the ages of 30 and 69 than non-smokers. Dying of any cause represents an arguably fairly permanent consequence of behaviours that can and should be controlled. In hospitals there are posters everywhere encouraging smoking cessation, implicating the use of tobacco in terminal illnesses that can be avoided with lifestyle change. That's the appeal to people's reasonableness.

Trouble is, people never seem to believe that these unfortunate events have anything to say to them personally, because they're fine, and they have no intention of popping off anytime soon. The smoking habit, unfortunately, takes that decision out of the hands of unlikelihood and places it firmly in the unwavering hands of fate. Smoking costs people on average a full decade of their lives, according to this new research.

It's a conclusion reached before. What's new about this one is that the authors of the study believe they have a solution to the problem. If people cannot be convinced by the logic of scientific evidence of the dangers of ingesting nicotine into one's lungs, then pinching their pocketbook very tightly might be more convincing. They're obviously non-smokers themselves, knowing little of the compulsive reliance that smokers tend to have on their nicotine fixes.

The federal excise tax on a carton of cigarettes in Canada is $17; federal and provincial sales taxes mean the cost of a carton of cigarettes is between $46 and $87. France and South Africa, point out the authors, halved consumption in fewer than fifteen years by tripling the price of cigarettes there. Five million Canadians were smokers in 2011. Worldwide profit for the tobacco industry was about $50-billion. Or, the way the study authors put it; about $10,000 for every smoking-related death.

The fly in the ointment of their recommendation to make smoking more expensive, relying on that device to hinder people from their habit is that there is a thriving black market in illegal tobacco production in Canada. Indian reservations which consider themselves a nation and a law unto themselves host smugglers and manufacturers of knock-off cigarettes selling openly in the reservations and quietly, anywhere else in Canada at a fraction of the price of legal cigarettes.

And few governments in Canada really, truly want to tackle the smuggling and illegal contraband that emanates from those sources. Committed smokers -- and they are legion -- will always be enabled to access their tobacco at preferable prices. And young people, who often have less disposable income than the general population see no difficulty in acquiring their smokes through the accommodating auspices of First Nations entrepreneurs.