Why smokers are more sinned against than sinning
Friday, December 2, 2011 at 12:55 Oh the joys of modern communications.
Working from a comfortable armchair off the foyer of Buswells Hotel, close to the Irish Parliament in Dublin, I have spent the morning drinking industrial quantities of coffee while swapping emails with my colleagues John Mallon in Cork and Tom Miers in the Scottish Borders.
The result is a press release which I have just sent - via my iPad - to our Irish media contacts calling for a cut in tobacco duty in next week's Budget.
Tom has also drafted three press releases, only one of which will be released next week. That's because each one features a response to three different scenarios: the Irish government announces that tobacco duty will (1) go up, (2) go down (unlikely, I know), or (3) remain the same.
In the course of the morning a fourth press release has been drafted, inspired in part by an article published this week on The Free Society website.
Traditional sin taxes, writes Martin Cullip, have focussed on unhealthy practices:
The problem in modern times is that sin taxation has far exceeded acceptable levels, and cannot possibly be reduced to something resembling the modest reasons for which it was introduced without a wholesale re-thinking of the role of the state, and a seismic hit to the budgets public bodies that have grown to rely on it.
It is clear that sin taxes are now merely being used as an instrument to squeeze as much income as possible from an already over-taxed society, and are actively impinging on the liberties and prosperity of every tax paying citizen, without even a nod to the original justification for their existence.
We can quite correctly call for reductions and a return to measured rates based on sober financial calculations, but there is little or no chance of such concerns ever being entertained. It is quite simply not affordable for any government to do so.
While taxing us for the sins they have identified in us, politicians have succumbed to the sin of avarice themselves by becoming dependent on ill-conceived revenue which blights the lives of every one of the people they are elected to serve.
Worth reading.
Reader Comments (3)
On page 6 of Statistics on Smoking: England, 2011 provided by the NHS it says:
"Prevalence of smoking amongst people in the routine and manual socio-economic group continues to be greater than amongst those in the managerial and professional group (28% and 14% respectively)."
So basically cigarette taxes and minimum pricing of alcohol are effectively taxes on the poor. How socialists can reconcile that with their conscience I have no idea.
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/003_Health_Lifestyles/Statistics%20on%20Smoking%202011/Statistics_on_Smoking_2011.pdf
"How socialists can reconcile that with their conscience I have no idea"
Dave - Socialists and conscience are two words that do not sit well together!
Don't forget the lottery. About 50p from each £1 is tax or goes to good causes, which, over the years, have become no different to things funded from general taxation. Incidentally, ASH Scotland received a large sum of good causes money.