Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
The (stopped?) trend in the US had been to tax cigs to make them unaffordable. Just before the last major hike, my brand was about $5/pack. Now it is $10-12. So glad I quit.
Is that a viable strategy, to continue tax/price hikes?
Did it stop you smoking? If so, then yes it worked.
Every 10% increase in cigarette tax results a 4% reduction in consumption among adults, and a 7% decrease amongst youth. Source
It was a minor motivator for me. Bigger ones were things like not dying and my son.
Interesting stats, thanks.
It’s a hella regressive tax though… and we know social ad campaigns actually work.
I went to Niagara Falls in 2004, and I was a little perplexed with the stop smoking campaign flyers attached to the back of individual cigarette packs (pictures of rotten teeth, black lung, etc.). Ended going over to New York to buy smokes because they were SIGNIFICANTLY less expensive and without the flyers.
I mean taxes change habits, there is no doubt about that. Some people quit, some people buy illegal cigarettes imported from the south, others buy Indian cigarettes, others stop smoking, some roll their own with pipe tobacco that no one has ever smoked In a pipe. But the ad campaigns worked surprisingly well for long term smoke cessation. They really did nip it in the butt
They’ve been doing that in New Zealand. A pack is now $50. Violent robbery of gas stations and corner stores for them have massively increased