Hacker News Reader

Comment by atlasunshrugged | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree that advertising is the most sane course of action here - if you take tobacco as a reference then the intervention that causes the highest decrease in usage is tax (and higher price coincidentally usually leads to lower usage rates especially in younger people because they're more price sensitive). So if banning is too far to go, then a middle ground might be to have a very high tax on the product in order to 1) decrease usage and 2) put money into a fund in case all these users end up getting a new form of cancer in 20 years that we didn't see coming and that we (society/the state) have to collectively pay for

View on HN

From one perspective I would be in favor of this as long the tax on cigarettes is higher than the tax on vaping products. That way both appear unattractive, but cigarettes more so.

From another perspective I wouldn't be in favor of higher taxes on vaping products because it would be yet another tax affecting primarily lower income people.

So, while I don't think it's a bad idea, I think I would need to do some more research on the ramifications before supporting it.

Why do you say it would primarily affect lower income people? You mean because the cigarette smoker user base skews low income? I guess it affects them in the sense that some pay more, but many others quit something that is harmful which "helps" them (but of course net negative if you value personal will higher than the health cost and believe that people who smoke are entirely rational)

But agreed, in light of the current evidence that vaping seems to be better than cigarettes the tax should be lower, ideally pushing people who smoke to switch to vapes as an alternative

> Why do you say it would primarily affect lower income people?

For the reason you stated here. It's more a conflict in personal philosophy I guess.

Fair enough, lots of people do consider tobacco and "sin" taxes to be regressive. The counter I said is just a reframing of it, I honestly have mixed feelings about it too

Reply on news.ycombinator.com