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In Texas there are 3 million smokers. The avg smoker smoke 14 cigs per day, which is 255 packs per year. A pack of cigarettes is currently taxed at about $5 in Texas. That 3mil255packs$5 = 3.8 billion in tax revenue.

I doubt we're spending anywhere near that much money on cleaning up cigarettes.

Note* these numbers are wrong.

The actual taxes on a pack of cigarettes in Texas are 2.42. i grabbed the $5 from a proposal.

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Your numbers are way off. The average cost is ~ $5.75 of which $1.41 is tax. That's revenues of about a billion per year. Pretty sure we can find a billion dollars in externalities related to smoking.

We're both wrong it's 2.42. you didn't include the federal tax, the $5 was wrong.

We might spend that much if we actually cleaned most of them up.

So maybe we could consider the tax isn't really about cleaning them up, but compensating the rest of us for having to look at them.

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